User:Vdktwin/Kennedy v. Bremerton School District

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Barron v Baltimore is a landmark 1833 Supreme Court Case between John Barron and the City Council of Maryland. The case helped redefine the ideas and limitations between State and Federal government at the time. The case determined that the Bill of Rights should not apply to state government however this led to the creation and ratification of the 14th amendment in the U.S Constitution after the Civil War. Today Barron v Baltimore is one of the most prominent legal cases in U.S history.

Opinion of the Court

Gorsuch was chosen to deliver the opinion alongside Roberts, C.J., and Thomas, Alito, and Barrett, JJ. Gorsuch wrote that the school's actions against Kennedy violated his rights under both the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Gorsuch wrote "We are aware of no historically sound understanding of the Establishment Clause that begins to '(make) it necessary for government to be hostile to religion' in this way". Gorsuch's opinion stated that Kennedy "offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied" and that he made "short, private, personal prayer". Gorsuch rejected the school district’s argument that it could prohibit Kennedy’s post-game prayers so that students did not feel compelled to join him in praying. Gorsuch noted that "There is no indication in the record ... that anyone expressed any coercion concerns to the District about the quiet, postgame prayers that Mr. Kennedy asked to continue and that led to his suspension.” Gorsuch distinguished this case from cases "in which this Court has found prayer involving public schools to be problematically coercive". Gorsuch reasoned that unlike those earlier cases, Kennedy’s prayers "were not publicly broadcast or recited to a captive audience" and students “were not required or expected to participate". Gorsuch concluded that the school district’s actions "rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech", and that "The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination".

The Court also reasoned that one of the main purposes of the First Amendment is to protect religious speech which was "a natural outgrowth of the framers' distrust of the government attempts to regulate religion" and further reasoning that "government suppression of speech has so commonly been directed precisely at religious speech that a free-speech clause without religion would be Hamlet without the prince." The