But they are forced to be there they are forced to listen to the teacher praying, and its during a time when they are ostensibly being supposed to be being educated. They can’t just wander off and talk to their friends. It really comes down to how we can distinguish, Coach is praying on his own time and is willing to let us come and pray with him, versus everyone better come in and sit while coach prays at us or there will be consequences. Having a student who feels pressured to participate against his will is certainly helpful in making this distinction. In a classroom setting where everyone has to sit quietly during class time while the teacher leads a prayer, attendance is obviously not entirely voluntary.
To me, it seems so similar to a school prayer case that I can’t think of a reason SCOTUS would take it up unless they plan on overturning the school prayer precedent.
There’s no way that other members of the team wouldn’t feel pressure to join in on the prayer session or risk losing their starting position on the team (or, their aspirations to be a starter). The coach isn’t off the clock – he’s on school property, surrounded by students and parents.
This. The coach isn’t off the clock when the game is over, he/she is off the clock when the last player has left the school.
The public display of piety is absolutely unprofessional.
It’s an opportunity to roll back the Santa Fe case, but the earlier cases are easily distinguishable. There’s a world of difference between this (and Santa Fe) and the school district establishing formal teacher-led prayer in a mandatory classroom setting (Engle) or even a school-sponsored cleric at a school event (Weisman).
I went and read the Ninth Circuit decision and there’s a lot going on. And I think that in this case the coach should lose. (Part of it is that the school district, either cleverly or inadvertently, took steps to approve his behavior and then regulate it; part of it is that, whatever the prayers started as, they clearly became a quasi-official event). But, on the other hand, the idea that the school district would bar any “demonstrative religious activity, readily observable to (if not intended to be observed by) students and the attending public” seems difficult to square with free exercise (and I have trouble imagining that the Establishment Clause requires that).
And, of course, the Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence is a mess.
You can solve this incredibly easily - Make the coach Muslim and ask if the prayers are still ok or not. What about if he was a satanist or other? What if he was a devout JW (still christian, but not the mainstream) - would it still be ok?
The people saying he should be allowed would change thier position quickly if his belief(s) did not match theirs.
IMHO - it should not be allowed regaurdless of which god the person serves - simply because it will be coercive to members of the team - you try being the Muslim/JW/etc player in these displays.
Of course there is massive hypocracy on the right, that isn’t an issue. Right wingers object to building Islamic community center in the vague vicinity of the 9/11 site. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong to build a church near the 9/11 site, it just means that Conservatives are bigots.
As I said earlier, its really hard to keep those scenarios entirely analogous. If a Muslim coach was seen bowing to Mecca after the game, maybe he would have gotten in trouble and been fired, but that doesn’t mean that they would have been right to do so. The main difference is that unlike what happened in this case the Muslim coach wouldn’t have had many members of his team showing up to pray with him. So there is no way that this scenario could have evolved the same way it did if the coach was Muslim.
But being forced to sit quietly is not mandating a religious practice.
Assuming it is, under your test, the school could say that class starts at 8am. Prayer and devotions from 8:00-8:05. Any student who appears by at least 8:06 will not be marked tardy or otherwise penalized.
Is that okay under your test?
- Are school resources still being used?
- Will any religious/philosophical group have the same privileges?
- Yes.
- No.
Exactly the same as the coach.
Why not “Yes” for #2?
Wait, what? Being forced to participate in any fashion, and that includes being forced into any particular behavior during the event, is mandating a religious practice.
Forcing a student to pray would be mandating a religious practice. Telling a student to be orderly while a practice is ongoing that others are participating in is just good manners.
Nowhere else, other than in school prayer cases, is such an overly and unnecessarily broad meaning of the word “force” used. In what universe is sitting silent, respectfully allowing others to pray around you an adoption of the beliefs in those prayers?
In the situation with the coach, there is no school official who is offering a Muslim, Jewish, etc. gathering on the other side of the football field.
Then the school is effectively endorsing a religion, and it fails on Constitutional grounds.
How is that different than what the coach is doing? My only argument in this thread is that a ruling in favor of the coach must logically overrule the school prayer cases. I don’t see the meaningful difference between what the coach is doing and a teacher leading a prayer in front of a class.
ETA: And that is one of the criticism of the school prayer cases. An “establishment of religion” (not endorsement) is what is forbidden by the Constitution and has a specific legal meaning. A prayer at the beginning of class is light years different from having something like the Church of the United States with the President being the leader. Light years away and it shows how off base some of these religion cases are.
In your scenario the school is setting aside a specific time to recognize a specific religion, even if it isn’t requiring active participation. That in itself pushes it way over the line that the coach is already straddling.
How is the coach not setting aside a specific time to recognize a specific religion? Just because he doesn’t say 9:42 p.m or “ten minutes after the game” or announce the time makes it better?
Your example literally sets out an official school policy on the matter. The coach is doing it on an ad hoc basis, (even if he always does it) and without the validation of the school.
Note that I’m not saying that the coach isn’t also violating the First Amendment here; only that his case is less clearcut than the hypothetical you have set out.
The coach is an employee and agent of the school and if his case is successful, would be doing it on school property at a school event.
If that is the test, it must be ad hoc and not officially done by the school, can a teacher pull the same trivially easy trick to have prayer at the beginning of the class day? No official times announced, it is just we know that the teacher begins the class with prayer. The school “knows nothing” about it and “doesn’t encourage” the prayer at all.
It would seem an odd sort of doctrine that “the school” proper cannot do something that one of its agents can do. I mean, who is “the school” but the individuals who make it up?
I don’t know what you’re arguing against here. I’m merely pointing out that the two scenarios are not the same. And they’re not.
Also, the school has made it explicitly clear that the coach is not acting as an agent of the school. And the “nudge nudge wink wink” hypotheticals you propose are unlikely to fool anyone, not least the SCOTUS.
If they aren’t the same, they are very, very close to the same. The school could argue that the teacher who starts some classes with a prayer (hey, it’s not an official event or time) is NOT acting as an agent of the school. It would still violate existing prohibitions of school prayer. Or, a teacher in the last class ends the day with a prayer (after the bell) and invites other students to join in and give thanks to Allah for the things they’ve learned that day. That wouldn’t pass muster with existing prohibitions either, but would be pretty analogous to what the coach is doing.
I think what @UltraVires is trying to point out is that there’s not much daylight between what the coach is doing and what SCOTUS has said is not allowed in the past. It would be a very tricky needle to thread if they allow the coach’s behavior but disallow school prayer.
My view is that they took the case to overturn the other precedent. There’s no reason to take the case to allow that behavior, because it’s so close to what’s already disallowed that there’s no way to make any rational distinction (in my view).
If anything, a coach’s behavior is more coercive for many students than a teacher – the coach controls highly coveted positions on the team.