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The US Supreme Court Just Voted To Protect A Man’s Right To Pray On A Football Field

Rachel Lang

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| Last updated 

The US Supreme Court Just Voted To Protect A Man’s Right To Pray On A Football Field

Featured Image Credit: First Liberty Institute/YouTube. UPI/Alamy Live News.

The US Supreme Court has voted in support of a man's right to pray on a football field.

Reuters reports that Joe Kennedy was sacked from his job in 2015 for doing exactly this.

However in a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court believes the former state high school assistant football coach has a constitutional right to pray in the middle of a game.

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Bremerton High School justified firing him by claiming he had violated the separation of church and state, CNN.

He challenged his sacking all the way to the Supreme Court as he claimed his first amendment rights has been violated.

That's the one that states Americans cannot make 'law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise'. Essentially, the state can't curb your right to practice religion.

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Justice Neil Gorsuch rejected the local school district's concern that Kennedy's prayers would either be seen as a 'governmental endorsement of a particular religion' or that it could be 'coercive to students', according to Reuters.

“The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” Justice Gorsuch wrote for the majority.

He added: "Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic - whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head."

The ruling comes just a few days after the same US Supreme Court struck down constitutional legislation that gave women in America access to safe abortions nationwide.

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The now-overturned legislation, Roe v Wade, was decided on back in 1973 by Justice Harry Blackmun.

To sum up, he ruled that the US Constitution implies right to abortions and therefore there should be a nationwide mandate that permits the procedure.

However, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito handed down a 78-page opinion last week on the contrary, as per Politico.

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Alito said that the US Constitution doesn't actually say that people have implicit right body autonomy.

Simply translated, women don't get a say on their own wombs.

"The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision," Alito wrote.

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Women don't actually feature in the US Constitution at all, so who knows what liberties could be snatched away from them next. But guns do, so go figure.

But reminder: Religion is still a constitutional right.

Last month the US Supreme Court ruled that Catholic-run social services can discriminate against same-sex parents who are willing to take on foster children, Forbes reported.

As in, religious organisations can withhold children, who don't have anywhere to call home, from actual loving families who wish to house them.

Topics: News, US News, Sex and Relationships

Rachel Lang
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