Next week, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. The case is about Joseph Kennedy, a Christian high school football coach in Washington state who regularly prayed before games. Eventually a majority of the players joined in as well, and one player’s parent complained that he felt pressured to pray as well. Kennedy lost his job after refusing to comply with school district’s orders to stop.
Nicole Garnett of Notre Dame Law School and Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State join host Jeffrey Rosen to discuss the case; the questions raised around the limits of free speech, free exercise of religion, and the separation of church and state in schools; and how the Court might rule based on its prior jurisprudence—from the Lemon v. Kurtzmann test to the Abington v. Schempp case—and some justices’ questioning of it.
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This episode was produced by Melody Rowell and engineered by Greg Scheckler. Research was provided by Kevin Closs, Ruben Aguirre, Sam Desai, and Lana Ulrich.
Participants
Nicole Garnett is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School. With the Religious Liberty Clinic, she wrote a brief in support of Joseph A. Kennedy. She is the author of two books, Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America (2014) and Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing and the Restoration of Urban America (2009).
Rachel Laser is the President and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Previously she was the deputy director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (the RAC), where Rachel worked to further its historic mission of strengthening the separation of religion and government. Before the RAC, Rachel directed the Culture Program at Third Way, a Washington, D.C., progressive think tank specializing in understanding and reaching moderates.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- “Football, Faith, and the First Amendment,” on We the People, January 31, 2019
- Amicus brief by the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Initiative
- Respondent’s brief by Americans United for Separation of Church and State
- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, by Thomas Jefferson
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
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