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<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nPrayer at the Fifty-Yard Line<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case of a high school football coach who lost his job after defying the school\u2019s orders to stop praying at the fifty-yard line after games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coach, Joseph Kennedy, says his Christian beliefs require him to give thanks through prayer at the end of each game, Kennedy initially prayed alone. But, eventually, most of the team joined his after-game prayers. He was told to stop. He said no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first is whether his prayer (visible to students) is government speech (no First Amendment protection) or his personal speech that is protected. This is a common issue when government employees want to exercise their religious beliefs during or at work\u2014where is their government hat off and their personal hat on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second is whether the establishment clause (government cannot support a particular religion) requires the school district to ban his prayers, even if the prayers are private speech entitled to protection under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kennedy argues that teachers do not shed their free speech rights at the schoolhouse gate. The school district argues that Kennedy declined the school\u2019s offers for him to pray after games in the press box or in other places where he would not be visible to the public and students and not, as eventually occurred, surrounded by the team. The school says they are not restricting his Free Speech at all and the Bible does not say he has to pray at the 50 yard line where everyone can see him on bended knee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I do not know Kennedy\u2019s response to that argument, but it might be that prayer is a personal decision and that he finds paying in that ceremonial location to be more meaningful to him, where he feels the presence of God and the school has no right to direct his prayer location. He may also argue that it is important for students to see teachers exercising their religious beliefs, whatever those beliefs might be.
Here is the clash of rights\u2014the public has a right to be free of government-endorsed religion, but the coach has the right to exercise his religion. What right wins on the fifty-yard line?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ketanji Brown Jackson: Harvard to the High Court<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Judge Jackson is a historic nomination, and let\u2019s celebrate that aspect of her nomination. But who is she?
Daughter of a successful lawyer and school administrator, politically connected family holding numerous appointed and elected positions. High school (a good high school) debate club president who went to Harvard undergraduate then Harvard law (eight of the nine present supreme court justices went to either Harvard or Yale). She was a Supreme Court clerk, then spent a little time in private practice before being appointed to a federal position. She worked inside the government, in DC, until she was appointed by President Obama to be a DC federal judge and then moved up to the DC Court of Appeals, which is commonly called the Little Supreme Court (Roberts, Thomas, Kavanaugh, RGB, and Scalia came from the DC COA). Let\u2019s celebrate the historic nomination but understand that she is another ivy-league educated, Washington insider installed at the very top of our government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitchell Driskell has been an Oxford lawyer for twenty-one years. He practices criminal law, family law, business transactions, and civil litigation. Email him mdriskell@danielcoker.com. Follow on Instagram @mdriskell, twitter @MODIIItweets, TikTok @DriskellLaw and on Facebook.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wedding Wars Part Deux The Supreme Court is going to review a case involving a Colorado wedding website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123458,"featured_media":114720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18405],"tags":[20803,18399,18283],"class_list":["post-118212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mitchell-driskell","tag-local-lawy","tag-local-lawyer","tag-mitchell-driskell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/MitchellDriskell-columnHeader-03.jpg?fit=996%2C504&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"