Slate Magizine reporters Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern recently sat down to discuss the Supreme Court’s ruling on Kennedy v. Bremerton School District which was brought by a High School football coach who was placed on administrative leave by his Bremerton, Washington school district for refusing to stop his practice of leading his team in prayer.
And what a discussion it was!
Stern particularly pulled no punches characterizing Gorsuch and his specious opinion, though Lithwick got in her own shots as well…
I will summarize parts of the conversation so as not to exceed fair usage, and at the bottom of the post I have included an ABC News broadcast about the case, in case you want to familiarize yourself with it.
Buckle in.
Ms. Lithwick kicks off the conversation by pointing out that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, disputed Gorsuch’s contention in his opinion that Coach Kennedy was prevented from praying in private, that, in fact, the school district specifically asked him not to lead his team in prayer.
Stern knocked that softball out of the park:
“Mark Joseph Stern: There were two narratives in this case. One is that Coach Kennedy was simply engaged in quiet, private prayer at the 50-yard line and students voluntarily joined him. The other is that Coach Kennedy created a spectacle by engaging in loud prayer circles, to which he invited not only the members of his own team but also opposing teammates and individuals who attend the school. And the Supreme Court adopted this first narrative, even though—as the pictures in Sotomayor’s dissent illustrate—it is flatly false. This was not quiet, silent prayer. This was coercive, loud prayer during the course of school duties by a school official who was hired in part to serve as a leader and role model for students. He conveyed the reality that if you did not join his Christian prayer circle, you were not a full and true teammate, and you might not even deserve to be playing on that team.“
Lithwick follows this verbal barrage with an on point shelling of her own…
“Lithwick: And just to go through the facts for a minute, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the court accepts the narrative that Kennedy was fired. Which he wasn’t—he was put on paid administrative leave. And Gorsuch accepts the narrative that this was “private” and “quiet,” even though there were TV cameras and elected officials and people storming the field and knocking over the tuba players to join.
It’s as if Gorsuch is writing some sort of medieval tract about a holy saint on a journey through the desert who’s just trying to pray, and this dumb school district keeps throwing obstacles in his way that it calls “accommodations.” It’s such a strange framing of the facts.”
Not to be outdone, Stern re-trains his howitzers on target Gorsuch:
“Gorsuch evinces an almost divine certainty, as though he is a holy man traveling the countryside of a medieval land back in the 13th century, receiving these visions from a deity that must supersede any puny, mortal illusions of reality. As he so often does, Gorsuch reflects an almost pathological certainty in his own rightness, an inability to believe that something he perceives to be true might not be true. He bulldozes over the facts of this case and blows past photographic evidence.
This is a horrifying approach to judging. It ratifies the Supreme Court’s stature as a group of gods on Mount Olympus who speak the truth because anything they say must be the truth. And in Kennedy v. Bremerton, we get this pathology in its purest form. The Supreme Court can just manipulate the facts to craft a narrative—a “siren song of a deceitful narrative,” as a lower court judge put it—to get where they want to go when rewriting the Constitution.“
Whew!
The two then get into an involved conversation about The Lemon Test which has been used in establishment clause cases since the Burger Court first deployed it in Lemon vs. Kurtzman in 1971…
“Lemon test, while it has been criticized and modified through the years, remains the main test used by lower courts in establishment clause cases, such as those involving government aid to parochial schools or the introduction of religious observances into the public sector. Under the three-part test, the court would examine the proposed aid to the religious entity and ensure that it had a clear secular purpose. The Court also would determine if the primary effect of the aid would advance or inhibit religion. For the third prong, the Court would examine whether the aid would create an excessive governmental entanglement with religion.“
This entire discussion is a very compelling read, but as I don’t want to test Slate’s tolerance, I will just quote one more short para:
“Stern: Here, the answer is obvious: Any reasonable observer would look at what Kennedy did and say, duh, this is an endorsement of Christianity. This is an employee of the school, in uniform, smack dab in the middle of his official duties, expressing thanks to a Christian God. But Gorsuch gets around that problem by saying: “That (Lemon) test is overruled. We have a new test, which is ‘history and tradition.’ Go back and figure out what James Madison would’ve wanted in public schools today.” And magically, the majority’s policy preferences align perfectly with their imagined idea of what James Madison would’ve wanted.”
A “new test” that exactly opposes everything that Madison stood for…
Perhaps Gorsuch should have cracked a history book in Law School.
You think it would have been different if some guy with a turban and a beard laid donw a prayer rug and chanted to Allah?
Of course not. All the times that Tim Tebow “took the knee” on the football field (only after a successful play, incidentally), there was no outrage over his public spectacle even though Tebow never sought to hide it as anything more than “praising God.” But, when Colin Kaepernick took the knee during the anthem to draw attention to how minorities are treated by the police, suddenly it’s a case that requires the NFL to demand subservience of “its” players.
I’d pointed out many times that IF a Muslim player had taken similar “praise God” actions on the field, the “fans” would’ve demanded the NFL punish him for “causing a disturbance” or “unsportsmanlike conduct” or some inane penalty.
The best part is that the so-called ‘Christians’ actually do the opposite of what Jesus told them Check the Gospel of St Matthew, Chapter 6, Verse 5 to find out what they were actually told:
“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites. are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and. in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”
Hope everyone realizes now religious liberty is for con x-tians and ONLY con x-tians.
We’re on our way to becoming more and more like Afghanistan because as anyone with ANY sense knows: a taliban is a taliban, Islamic or x-tian makes no difference.
Christaliban. Fuck the Islamic version, fuck the Christian version, and same for a Jewish version that insists THEIR particular brand of their faith, even though it contradicts what the founding prophet of that faith taught (the ole “well – this is what he REALLY meant” – kinda like conservative SCOTUS asshats when you think about it!) is the ONLY one and by god everybody else will follow it or there will be hell on earth for them to pay for not doing so.
Look, they can believe what they want. And they can worship in their churches with like minded people. They gather for their extremist worship all the time without interference. What they DON’T have the right to do is shove it in everyone else’s face, and especially not from a taxpayer funded position of authority. And especially not to coerce others into participating. How many of those players would rather have been hitting the showers, or getting treatment for minor injuries sustained during the game or hoping for more playing time in the next game felt they had damned well better be there to please their coach?
Whatever it is keep your goddamned rituals of religious worship out of our classrooms and off school property or property where school events like sports take place!
And yes, I felt that way from early adulthood. Decades before I became agnostic.