I agree, but the point her was that he claimed he was not leading the students. If he had, it would have been covered by earlier cases.
The point was, for him and SCOTUS, was that he was making a personal prayer, after hours, and in some cases some students just happen to join him.
I think it’s a little shaky, but it wasn’t a clear cut case.
And the whole private prayer thing is not the issue for SCOTUS. It wasn’t even in their summary, but mentioned back in the 75 pages I think.
So those of you talking about sex on the 50 are totally missing the point and bringing up an issue not really under consideration. Read the actual decision. The issue was that it was a personal prayer, not that it was a private prayer.
But that is where I am confuzzled. A teacher is not allowed to lead a prayer in a public school in the classroom, right? So why was he allowed to lead a prayer on a public school’s football field? I am honestly having trouble seeing the difference.
People probably make personal prayers all the time in public, but in this case, in this venue, with the whole coercion thing, with players having to choose to join in, it seems over the line.
I would say two things – public prayer in a classroom is too obviously an establishment, even for these justices to motivate their reasoning out of. Second, maybe it will be allowed if a school prayer case comes before this ridiculous court.
Too bad such a case won’t get there before I retire. I’d absolutely LOVE to go out leading prayers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Or whatever would honk off the Mormons and the Baptists in town the most.
The whole point of public prayer for many is to show how religious they are, and to be an example to others. Avoiding obvious public displays means foregoing ego-boosting and proselytizing, anathema to the devout.
It has never been possible to ban public prayer, although certain restrictions i.e. in classrooms have been placed on the mandatory “Look at me! Look at me! Listen to me!” type.
Thanks. That does make sense the way you describe it. However, I think the school did the right thing to assume what he was doing was over the line (Church, state, and all that). Altho, according to the court’s interpretation, it was over-reaction by the school.
The coach did start out by privately (by himself and quietly) praying as the teams came out to shake hands after the game but, as players started to joining him at some point, that morphed into religion themed motivational speeches along with not-so-quiet short prayers. It’s literally in the article posted by the OP.
That was the part the school got uncomfortable with (though not to the extent he “lost his job” as both he and his lawyer repeatedly have stated in public) that SCOTUS kind of glossed over entirely and made entirely about personal practice when he was more or less openly proselytizing in a setting where the players were more or less expected to be (shaking hands with the other team after the game).
Basically, they ruled on facts not in existence. This was even in the ruling - that the coach offered his prayers quietly while the students were otherwise occupied. That was literally false yet part of the basis of the ruling.
The ruling is based literally on the idea that he was quietly praying while the students had other things to do (shaking hands and such) so did not feel compelled.
The majority opinion of SCOTUS was that he somehow did not literally give speeches and audibly pray (hence not compelling students to join) when there’s plenty of video evidence otherwise.
It’s ONLY a gray area if the literal facts of the case are misrepresented. It makes for a headache all around when you need to figure out if/when SCOTUS will do the same for your particular case or not.
They were between a rock and a hard place, in that if they let it continue down the path it was obviously taking they might have been sued. They didn’t anticipate that the current SC would support the bullshit story the coach’s lawyers would spin.
Well, here’s a clip on YouTube from KING5 Seattle with a direct example from 2015 (the reporter does talk over it). And a CNN article with video of the coach pretty much saying he was openly and vocally doing so. And that’s with 10s of Googling.
Those students aren’t “otherwise occupied” and that coach was not “without his students”.
I mean, jeez. These facts aren’t really in question, except by SCOTUS apparently.
Anecdotally, when my son played HS football, some of the players would go off to the side by themselves for a few minutes before a game, without the coaches or trainers, kneel and bow their heads, with hands on others’ shoulders. Sometimes my son joined and sometimes not. It seemed voluntary, and when a player initiates this there is no positional power in play as when a coach does. Sure, you could argue the players voluntarily joined the coach, but since he is the one of the people who gets to decide who plays and who rides the bench, that is the big difference, to me at least.
Yeah, this seemed like a clear violation by the coach before it got before this ridiculous court, not even a close call. The school was probably much more worried about getting sued by a parent for letting this behavior continue than losing on this case. And, the coach lost at all the lower levels, so the better question would be, why would he persist, given such an obviously losing case.
The answer is that SCOTUS contains a bunch of religious nuts who want to allow other religious nuts to impose their views on the rest of us.
And some of the parents did say they did feel some compulsion as well.
The decision by SCOTUS is a mess for everybody because it replaced an inconvenient reality with one of their own choosing so it could rule the way it wanted. That’s really what worries me. It was a ‘ha-ha’ joke that at least we could count on the adults in our government to agree on basic facts. But that’s no longer the case.
