Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt on SCOTUS’ Joseph A. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District ruling

TOPEKA – Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt voiced his opinion on today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Joseph A. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

Schmidt said, “Today’s decision confirms what many of us long have long understood: The U.S. Constitution protects personal religious expression, and that protection is not shed merely because a person of faith is employed by the government in a public role. As the Court concluded, ‘Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head.’ I’m proud Kansas stood on the right side in this historic case rejecting government discrimination against people because of their free expression of religious faith.”

The Joseph A. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District  case was brought to the court after a former Washington high school football coach lost his job over reciting a prayer on the 50-yard line after games.

At issue was whether a public school employee praying alone but in view of students was engaging in unprotected “government speech,” and if it is not government speech, does it still pose a problem under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday in a 6-3 decision that the answer to both questions is no saying,

“Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the Court’s opinion. “Religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”