Tag Archives: First Amendment

Religious Rights And Privileges

Religious Liberty, , ,

Religious conflicts have been the subject of a number of my recent posts, and have triggered some fairly robust discussions in the comments. I think both the posts and the subsequent conversations evidence the persistence and extent of efforts to have government privilege certain beliefs over others.

Significant numbers of Americans reject the Constitutional separation of church and state.

The First Amendment has two religion clauses. The Establishment Clause basically removes government from matters of faith. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled, government cannot sponsor religious observances or endorse religious beliefs. (As I rather inelegantly put it to my students, government is supposed to “butt out” of our souls.) The Free Exercise Clause forbids government from interfering with the beliefs of citizens, or with citizens’ religious observances to the extent that those don’t violate “laws of general application.” (Your religion may tell you to sacrifice your firstborn, or ingest hallucinogens, but laws of general application prevent you from acting on those particular beliefs.)

Government was withdrawn from matters the Founders believed should properly be the purview of churches and individual consciences.–This decision was based upon respect for individual autonomy, but it was also an effort to minimize public conflicts over matters of faith. (The Founders were all too aware of Europe’s history of religious conflict).

So why are people in the United States constantly arguing about religion?

Katherine Franke, a law professor who recently plunged into the religious wars in a column for the Washington Post, suggests one reason. She writes that this administration has “weaponized the notion of religious liberty” to advance a blatantly partisan, conservative agenda. In other words, efforts to privilege some religious beliefs over others are really efforts to advance a decidedly political agenda.

The column began with a description of an unusual lawsuit by a religious order–nuns who claim their religious-freedom rights are being violated by the construction and pending use of a natural-gas pipeline on their land in Pennsylvania. They say their faith requires that they “treasure” the land.

Needless to say, the government’s response has been less than solicitous, despite numerous sanctimonious pronouncements about religious “liberty” from Vice-President Pence and Attorney General Sessions. As Franke notes,

You can count on the government’s support if you’re a cake baker who considers same-sex marriage to be an abomination, or a nun who believes that contraception is murder, or a school administrator whose faith tells him that a person’s sex is fixed by God at birth. In these cases, Justice Department lawyers will show up like the cavalry, ready to go down fighting.

But not so much for Unitarians, whose faith drives them to leave water and food in the desert for migrants who will die without help. Or Catholic activists who believe that nuclear weapons are a death pact with the devil. Or the “Adorers,” who oppose the building of a gas pipeline on their property. Or Muslims in almost any context.

…..

The Justice Department is aggressively prosecuting faith-based humanitarian volunteers with the organization No More Deaths, a group affiliated with the Unitarian Church in southern Arizona. Its mission includes leaving water and food for migrants crossing the scorching-hot Sonoran Desert, where hundreds of people die every year. The government lawyers have trivialized these faith-based humanitarians’ religious-liberty claims, calling them scoundrels. This prompted a group of law professors who are experts in law and religion, myself included, to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, pointing out to the judge how the Justice Department has misconstrued religious liberty law in this case.

These official responses to actions motivated by faith make it patently obvious that the pious proclamations of concern for religious sensibilities are highly–and politically–selective. A congregation feeding undocumented immigrants cannot expect the same degree of forbearance or respect as the baker or florist refusing to serve a same-sex couple.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly noted that religious-liberty rights are not absolute, yet they should be given serious consideration in light of the government’s other compelling interests. What we see from this government is the evangelization of its own policy goals, accompanied by the demonization of its critics. In no way was this what religious liberty meant to the nation’s founders, nor should it be what it means today.

Activist Courts And Unintended Consequences

Constitution, Free Speech, , ,

The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in the case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. As a recent op-ed in the New York Times put it, unlike other cases that find their way to the country’s highest court, we already know how this one is going to be decided.

The Supreme Court is widely expected to rule in favor of Janus on a party line 5-to-4 basis and overturn a 1977 precedent, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. Abood permitted fair-share fees, which cover only organizing and collective bargaining and do not include social or political activities in the public sector.

Why are we so sure about the Janus outcome? The court heard a similar case in 2016, and it split 4-4 after Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death. Neil Gorsuch has proved himself more conservative than Justice Scalia on most issues, so there is little hope that labor will win this time around.

I will, for purposes of this post, omit my diatribe about stolen Supreme Court seats and the erosion of time-honored democratic norms.

The  plaintiff in this case is asserting a First Amendment right not to be compelled to support unions, even when that “support” is limited to payment for services from which he benefits. The op-ed to which I link focuses on the unintended consequences of his likely victory–consequences that would give pause to justices less ideologically rigid than those currently serving.

The popular understanding of the case is limited to recognizing that, if the court bans fair-share fees, it will hurt unions. It will deprive them of funds and (more insidiously) encourage “free riding”–non-contributing workers’ ability to benefit from the contributions of others. Those are intended consequences of what has been a concerted, well-funded effort to destroy workers’ ability to bargain collectively.

But fewer people have considered what conservatives are risking: Union fair-share fees do not exist in an employment vacuum; the same logic and legal framework that permits the government to mandate these fees allows the government to conduct itself as an employer. Janus is largely being discussed as a case that is likely to defund and disrupt labor unions, but the case cannot simply injure unions and leave everything else intact.

At last count, federal, state and local governments employed over 21 million workers, so the courts have had to develop a framework for governments to be able to manage their work forces without constantly confronting the Constitution. Imagine if a teacher called in sick, and an administrator had to procure a warrant before searching her desk drawer for a text book, or else risk violating the Fourth Amendment. Or imagine if a police sergeant who tells an officer that he didn’t have time to listen to a complaint about the break room now has to worry that he violated the First Amendment.

Over the years, the Court has carefully balanced the government’s legitimate needs as an employer against the equally compelling need to protect public employees when they exercise their constitutional rights in the workplace. A “victory” for Janus in this case threatens to turn every workplace dispute into a constitutional issue.

The prominent conservative legal scholars Eugene Volokh and William Baude went further and filed a brief supporting the unions. They argue that the government compels subsidies of others’ speech all the time and that there is nothing constitutionally suspect about that. Mr. Volokh and Mr. Baude point to the fact that we don’t have a right to opt out of paying a portion of our taxes for issues we disagree with.

Furthermore, the government regularly requires people to purchase speech related to services that they may not want, such as doctors and lawyers having to enroll in continuing education courses. Or even the general requirements that people purchase car insurance or vaccinations, despite the fact that some may disagree with that mandate. To recognize a general First Amendment right to not fund things that one may disagree with, despite the government’s interests in mandating such payments, would completely upend many areas of life that are necessary for our society to function.

The Court used to be wary of decisions that would “unleash a floodgate of litigation.”  The likely Janus victory will be evidence that it no longer cares.

Compelling Honesty

Criminal Justice, , ,

It’s interesting how many people indignantly wrap themselves in the Free Speech provisions of the First Amendment in order to justify behaviors that–properly understood–aren’t really speech at all.

In all fairness, it can be difficult to distinguish between actions that are intended to communicate a message (protected) from actions that are committed through speech (not protected).

If you describe that cubic zirconium you are selling as an expensive diamond, the fact that your fraud involved the spoken word won’t turn your deception into a free speech issue. On the other hand, if you burn an American flag (assuming it’s yours to burn), you are clearly doing so in order to convey a message. (The content of that message is precisely why people get so angry.)

This little exercise in First Amendment philosophy is an introduction to an interesting case involving Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) are pro-life organizations that often offer women incorrect, incomplete or misleading information about their reproductive options.

In response, some localities have passed legislation requiring CPCs to make disclosures to their clients. California, for example, passed the Reproductive FACT Act in 2015. Under this law, CPCs must notify clients of public resources available to prevent or terminate pregnancies. It also mandates that CPCs inform their patients if they are not licensed as a medical facility.

Anti-choice advocates have taken issue with these requirements. The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates has sued California’s attorney general on behalf of CPCs. In November 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court decided it would hear the case.

The question the Court will have to decide is deceptively simple: does requiring Crisis Pregnancy Centers to disclose accurate information that counters or undermines their beliefs violate their First Amendment right to free speech?

At first blush, the idea of requiring speech to be truthful seems like a great idea. (Fox “news” anyone?) In practice, it’s difficult if not impossible to separate opinion from flat-out lying. After all, most lies aren’t as obvious as those constantly being told by Donald Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. In the case of Crisis Pregnancy Centers, however, the intent to mislead is pretty transparent.

A 2016 paper published in the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology found that nearly half of the 85 websites surveyed promoted abstinence-only sexual education. Over 60 percent of these websites provided negative facts about condoms, including minimizing their efficacy and suggesting they break often, and less than 10 percent encouraged the use of condoms to prevent sexually transmitted infections.

A larger examination of 254 CPC websites, published in Contraception in 2014, found that 80 percent provided at least one item of false or misleading information — most commonly, claiming links between abortion and mental health concerns.

A study published in 2017 in Women’s Health Issues focused on the websites of crisis pregnancy centers in Georgia. It reviewed all of the accessible websites of the CPCs in the state and found that more than half had “false or misleading statements regarding the need to make a decision about abortion or links between abortion and mental health problems or breast cancer.” Eighty-nine percent of sites did not indicate that their centers do not offer contraceptives or direct patients to resources where they might find them.

There is considerably more abortion research at the link.

The question that the Justices will have to weigh, however, is unrelated to the issue of reproductive choice–although attitudes about abortion will undoubtedly play an outsized role.

The legal issue to be resolved will apply in areas far removed from reproductive rights. What level of harm to the public justifies government interference with an advocacy organization’s communications? Do the lies being peddled rise to the level of fraud, as in our cubic zirconium example? Or should the risks to the “consumers” of these services be governed by the doctrine of caveat emptor–let the buyer (or in this case, the pregnant woman) beware? Should the imposition of government sanctions require intent–that is, should a finding of culpability require evidence that the people making the false claims know better?

I personally think that organizations willing to lie to women who are already distraught are despicable. But legal analysis must consider the consequences of a decision based upon that sort of emotional reaction.

Can the Supreme Court craft a decision that limits the ability of dishonest folks to prey on vulnerable women, without handing government a cudgel with which to beat the merely opinionated? And if so, what should be the burden of proof?

 

Voucher Programs and the Constitutional Ethic

Academic Papers, , ,

with Cullen Merritt

ABSTRACT

America’s public schools have not been exempt from the enthusiasm for “privatization” and contracting-out that has characterized government innovations over at least the past quarter century. A number of the issues raised by school voucher programs and to a lesser extent charter schools mirror the management and efficacy questions raised by privatization generally; however, because public education is often said to be “constitutive of the public,” using tax dollars to send the nation’s children to private schools implicates the distinctive role of public education in a democratic society in ways that more traditional contracting arrangements do not. We explore the unique role of primary and secondary public schools in forging a broad consensus about the nature and importance of America’s constitutional ethic, and growing concerns that vouchers, in particular, are failing to address, let alone facilitate, an ethic of citizenship.

INTRODUCTION

Concerns about failing schools, especially in America’s poor urban neighborhoods, have triggered a number of reform efforts, including voucher programs in which government agencies issue certificates to parents who use them to enroll their children in a participating school of the parent’s choice. Schools are paid a predetermined amount for each voucher received (Levin 2001). The vouchers are used at private schools, the majority of which are religiously affiliated. In most programs, vouchers are awarded through a lottery system, in which eligible students—usually but not always determined on the basis of socioeconomic status—are pooled and recipients are chosen at random (Peterson et al. 1998).

Proponents argue that vouchers create a market-based educational system in which schools must compete for students, a process they believe incentivizes innovation and positive academic outcomes. (Levin and Belfield 2005). That belief is based upon economic models of supply and demand in which markets have been shown to benefit consumers; it ignores, however, both the civic mission of public education and the other ways in which education differs from ordinary consumer goods.

Voucher programs have generated acrimonious policy debates as well as a number of lawsuits. The debates are largely between those who believe that education is basically another variety of consumer good, in this case a set of skills preparing young people to enter the job market, and those who argue that education is also an important public good (Carnoy et al. 2003), and that private schools, particularly religious ones, are ill-equipped to fulfill education’s public mission.

TRANSMITTING THE CONSTITUTIONAL ETHIC

The civic mission of public schools includes, at a minimum, the teaching of America’s history and the transmittal of the country’s core constitutional values. Those values guide appropriate individual participation in a democratic polity; even more importantly, a sound and accurate civics education provides students with an understanding of the genesis and evolution of the rules that shape and constrain public service in the United States, and provide a standard against which to measure the performance of public officials and the bona fides of those who ask for their votes.  At its best, civics education transmits the philosophical premises which undergird the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, premises which require allegiance to a particular code of conduct for citizens and public servants alike. That code defines the public good as essentially secular and rights-driven, and situates public service in a world that is increasingly multi-sectoral, multi-cultural, and international in scope.  (Kennedy & Schultz, 2010) The public mission of the schools thus requires them to teach students about this country’s approach to and experience with the principles of democratic self-governance–what Kennedy and Schultz have called the Constitutional Ethic.

The politics of liberal democracies is the politics of faction, as Madison clearly understood. Individuals have economic interests, social goals, and political and religious beliefs that are affected by public policies and that motivate political behavior. When they lack a common understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of America’s approach to governance and fail to form an ethical commitment to those common undertakings, a diverse polity inevitably fragments into tribal components contending for power and influence.  One of the concerns voiced by voucher program opponents is the participation in such programs of religious schools grounded in a wide variety of beliefs that conflict with important constitutional principles. Many of these schools teach students that the First Amendment does not require separation of church and state, and that biblical commands (for example, that women should be submissive and homosexual citizens shunned) take precedence in the public arena over jurisprudence confirming the constitutionality of very different civic imperatives. Opponents of voucher programs also point out that the racial segregation that has re-emerged as a result of some voucher programs (Witte 2000) is both socially undesirable and violative of America’s Constitutional Ethic.

During the 2013-14 academic year, ten percent of students in grades K-12 attended private schools, and those private schools comprised twenty-five percent of all schools within the United States (U.S. Dept. of Education). Just under eleven percent of these private schools, however, are nonsectarian; the remainder are religious. Catholic schools account for just over fifty-four percent of the nation’s parochial schools (U.S. Dep’t of Education). A growing but indeterminate number are fundamentalist Protestant schools that are reportedly teaching creationism, asserting a Christian biblical foundation for the U.S. Constitution, portraying evolution as an evil doctrine and using textbooks published by religious organizations that scholars criticize as wildly inaccurate. (https://www.sheilakennedy.net/2017/10/footing-the-bill-for-proselytizing/) In most voucher programs, parents can choose to enroll their children in any of them.

Challenges to the constitutionality of providing government funding to religious schools were resolved, albeit not without criticism from legal scholars, when the Supreme Court decided Zellman v. Simmons-Harris in 2002. Then- Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote that financial assistance via vouchers should not be considered a subsidy to religious schools, because the voucher is provided to individuals, allowing them to “exercise genuine choice among options public and private, secular and religious,” (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), 663). According to Rehnquist, the fiction that the vouchers go to the parents (in most states, the parent chooses the school to which the voucher is sent, but is never actually given possession of the voucher) “the circuit between government and religion was broken, and the Establishment clause was not implicated.” Similar reasoning has doomed challenges brought under state laws prohibiting the use of public funds for parochial or other religious institutions. See e.g., Anderson v. Town of Durham, 2006; Meredith v. Pence, 984 N.E.2d 1213 (Ind. 2013), 1217).

Research studies evaluating outcomes of the various voucher programs now in effect have focused upon academic achievement, the consequences of diverting education funds from public schools in order to support private and religious ones, and a variety of social equity issues including the racial and socio-economic identitites of voucher recipients. (CITATIONS) There has been little to no research investigating the impact of voucher programs on civic knowledge and cohesion, or any effort to measure their effect on the transmittal of the constitutional ethic.

 

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Given existing case law, it is unlikely that voucher programs will be ruled unconstitutional or otherwise illegal, and despite the growing number of negative evaluations of their academic outcomes, such programs continue to enjoy considerable political support. Assuming that private and religious schools will continue educating approximately ten percent of the American school-age population for the foreseeable future, lawmakers should, at a minimum, condition receipt of government funding on the schools’ obligation to fulfill the civic mission we expect public schools to fulfill. At present, however, there is no generally accepted understanding of the nature or importance of that civic mission, and no standards or procedures for assessing whether individual schools are creating knowledgable, responsible American citizens familiar with and prepared to observe the constitutional ethic.

In the following two sections, we supplement our definition of the Constitutional Ethic and suggest how government might ensure compliance with a requirement that it be taught.

The Constitutional Ethic

The U.S. Constitution is the basis of America’s legal system and civic culture; as it has operated over the years, it has shaped a distinctive value system, a framework within which Americans make public policy and operate our common institutions. Elected and appointed officials take an oath to uphold that constitutional system, an oath that implicitly obliges them to understand its most basic and important characteristics. Both citizens and policymakers need to know not just that the U.S. has a government of checks and balances, but why the system was constructed that way.

At its most basic, adherence to the Constitutional Ethic requires that American citizens, especially but not exclusively public officials and others in positions of authority, act in ways that are consistent with the basic premises of the country’s governing systems, and avoid acting in ways that would undermine them. For example, respect for due process   guarantees would seem to rule out drone strikes on persons–especially but not exclusively Americans–who have not been afforded legal process to determine guilt or innocence. Respect for government’s obligation to treat citizens equally would seem to rule out efforts to marginalize members of minorities, or refuse them access to the institutional benefits enjoyed by other citizens. Respect for the right to vote, one of American citizens’ most fundamental rights, imposes an ethical obligation to refrain from vote suppression tactics or other partisan “dirty tricks.” Respect for the principle of free speech, protected by the First Amendment, imposes an ethical obligation to refrain from attempts to censor ideas of which some people disapprove.

Maintaining the integrity of a constitutional system requires broad citizenship education and civic participation consistent with the values of that system. As Keith Whittington has argued, leaving constitutional compliance to the courts is both empirically and normatively problematic. (Whittington, The Good Society pg. 60) Constitutional rules give rise to conventions, norms and customs that should guide American political behavior. As Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Foundation has written, increasing young people’s “informed engagement” in our national life requires school-based civic education. “After all, understanding and actively participating in our civic life was one of the principal missions given to American schools from the very beginning.” (https://www.carnegie.org/media/filer_public/85/8b/858b7e5d-c538-42e2-ae78-24471dce73d7/ccny_creview_2011_civic.pdf )

Regulatory and Monitoring Proposals

The nature and extent of state oversight is a key, and often contentious, consideration when states enact voucher programs.  Typically, private schools participating in voucher programs must comply with regulations regarding health and safety, but requirements for compliance with other standards, such as teaching certification, curriculum, accreditation, anti-discrimination and civil rights laws, number of school days, and recordkeeping and reporting vary by state.  No voucher program of which we are aware imposes standards for civics education on participating schools. Because the civic mission of the nation’s schools is so fundamental to the continued operation of American democratic institutions, we propose that inclusion of a robust civics education curriculum be a condition of voucher program participation.

Ideally, private schools accepting vouchers would integrate curriculum content from the We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution Program within their curricula.  Developed in 1987, the We the People education program is administered by the Center for Civic Education, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education program; it was adopted by the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution as the principal education program of the federal Constitution’s bicentennial.  The curriculum promotes civic competence and responsibility among elementary, middle, and high school students through “an innovative course of instruction in the history and principles of the U.S. constitutional democracy.”  Through the curriculum, students gain insight into (1) the philosophical and historical foundation of the American political system, (2) how the framers created the Constitution, (3) how the Constitution has evolved to further the ideals contained in the Declaration of Independence, (4) how the values and principles embodied in the Constitution shaped American institutions and practices, (5) the rights protected by the Bill of Rights, and (6) the challenges the American constitutional democracy may face in the twenty-first century.

Multiple studies have found that students who have participated in the We the People program score significantly higher on tests of civic knowledge compared to their peers, especially in the areas of understanding and respect for the rule of law, political attentiveness, civic duty, community involvement, and commitment to government service, among others (e.g., Leming 1996; Owen and Schroeder 2017; Owen Schroeder, and Riddle 2016; Owen 2015a; Owen 2015b).  Participating voucher schools in states electing not to adopt the We the People curriculum would be allowed to develop their own civics education curricula, or to select another existing program, subject to evaluation and approval by the state’s board of education.

It is one thing to require that schools participating in state voucher programs provide adequate and accurate civics education, assuming that such a requirement is  politically feasible. Ensuring that the schools comply with that requirement is another, especially since many states have exhibited a startling laxity in monitoring compliance even with basic health and safety requirements. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-florida-school-voucher-investigation-1018-htmlstory.html

At a minimum, private schools participating in voucher programs should be required to demonstrate compliance with applicable civics education regulations by maintaining  records documenting class participation in the civics curriculum in applicable grade levels on a yearly basis.  Schools should also report student performance in civics-related courses.

CONCLUSION

Acceptance of a voucher by a private school should be subject to that school’s compliance with certain basic requirements. At a minimum, school buildings should meet relevant code requirements and fire safety standards; teachers should be able to offer evidence that they are equipped to teach their subject matter; and the school should both teach and model foundational constitutional values and behaviors. Ideally, schools receiving public funds should not be permitted to discriminate on the basis of race,  disability or sexual orientation (religious schools have a constitutional right to discriminate on the basis of religion in certain situations, although they do not have a right to do so on the taxpayer’s dime) and should be required to afford both students and staff at least a minimum of due process. At present, we are unaware of any voucher program that requires these commitments.

A long line of political theorists have described citizenship as a process of sharing, of forming community around basic values and ethical principles held in common. There are few public issues that do not presuppose a civic understanding of, and broad agreement with, a common purpose, a shared vision of the public good. A constant tension between the public or common good and a commitment to individual rights is a truism of Constitutional law and political debate, and an exploration of that tension should be an explicit part of any civics curriculum.

A quotation from Stephen Macedo is relevant to this issue of teaching the Constitutional Ethic:

Talk of diversity and difference too often proceeds without taking adequate account of the degree of moral convergence it takes to sustain a constitutional order that is liberal, democratic, and characterized by widespread bonds of civic friendship and cooperation.” (Macedo, 2000, 2)

Voucher proponents define the public purpose to be served by education solely as the achievement of a level of academic competence sufficient to sustain economic growth and make America competitive in the global marketplace. We quarrel with this definition. We argue that schools funded by tax dollars, whether public or private, should be contractually obligated to foster the Constitutional Ethic, and that the public good requires more than the transmittal of literacy and technical knowledge sufficient to support economic growth and individual self-sufficiency. It also requires the creation and perpetuation of a political community steeped in the Constitutional Ethic and prepared to contribute to the process of creating unum from our pluribus.

 

 

 

Persecuted? Puh-leese

Religious Liberty, , , ,

Imagine you and three friends rent a house together. You all pay your shares of the rent, maintenance, utilities and food costs. One of your roommates is vegan, and insists that no food can be purchased or brought into the house that does not meet strict vegan requirements.

If you protest, saying that you are happy to keep your preferred foods separate, but that as an equal contributor to the household, you have a right to eat in accordance with your own dietary preferences, he whines that you are persecuting him.

Most of us would say that the roommate is being an unreasonable bully. Yet his argument is no different from that of the “Christians” who demand laws that privilege their beliefs while ignoring the rights of those whose beliefs differ.

Hemant Mehta over at The Friendly Atheist has a perfect example.

The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) has a simple rule when it comes to reciting Christian prayers over the loudspeakers before football games: Don’t do it. It’s a fair policy considering it echoes what the U.S. Supreme Court said more than 16 years ago.

Last year, two Christian schools made it to the championship game, which would be played in a government-owned arena, the Citrus Bowl. The coach of one of the teams asked to say a prayer over the arena’s loudspeaker. Because the Citrus Bowl is a public facility, the FHSAA refused, and a Christian “defense” group sued. As Mehta noted,

The state didn’t do anything wrong. They didn’t block kids from praying. They merely said a public loudspeaker in a public facility couldn’t be used to broadcast prayer during a state event. This isn’t hard to understand unless you work for a Christian legal group, and your paycheck requires you to scream “Persecution!!!” three times a day…

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits government from endorsing or sponsoring religion. The Free Exercise Clause prohibits government from interfering with private religious expression. As Mehta quite accurately explained,

This game was overseen and managed by the state, even if Christian schools were involved, and that meant following state law. Both teams were obviously allowed to pray before the game, and after the game, and during halftime, and silently whenever the hell they want. They could pull a Tebow during the game if they wanted to. And because they were private schools, the coaches could legally join in.

The lawsuit argued that just giving the schools this expansive right to pray wasn’t enough:

By denying access to the loudspeaker,” the suit states, “the FHSAA denied the students, parents and fans in attendance the right to participate in the players’ prayer or to otherwise come together in prayer as one Christian community.”

Evidently, prayer only counts when it’s Christian, and done publicly and loudly.

A couple of quotes from representatives of Freedom From Religion are worth sharing:

Their right to their own religious prayer practice ends where the rights of non-adherents begin, especially as it involves students. To think that the government should be required to concede to this demand is arrogance of highest order. Would they sit still for Muslim or Hindu prayers over the loudspeakers should such a group field a championship football team? Would they want the government to effectively endorse those religions through such largess?

Cambridge Christian is within its rights to force prayers on students and parents over its own loudspeakers, but not at a state-sanctioned high school championship. We hope the court will see that this is not a matter of censorship, but the appropriate use of a public facility for a secular sporting event and not a religious revival.

The libertarian principle that underlies our Constitution gives each of us the right to “do our own thing,” so long as we do not thereby harm the person or property of others, and so long as we are willing to give an equal right to others.

Forbidding government from privileging certain religious beliefs over others is not censorship, and demanding respect for the “equal right” of all citizens (or roommates) is not “persecution.”

It’s time for religious bullies to get over themselves.