Coach Prays, Ninth Circuit Says No — Blame Supreme Court Conservatives

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

he Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a high-school football coach, Joseph Kennedy, had no First Amendment right to kneel and briefly pray at the 50-yard line after a football game — at least not when he’s wearing school gear and not when parents and students can see what he does. He never asked anyone to join him. He never required any player to pray beside him. He wasn’t skipping out of any mandatory job responsibility. He had no captive audience. Yet, still, the court held that he had no First Amendment right to pray.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450833/ninth-circuit-religious-liberty-praying-football-coach-loses

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To summarize:

With Garcetti, however, the world changed. The Supreme Court’s holding in that case was brutal and short: “When public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”

Let’s put this in plain English. If an employer can prove that the public employee was speaking as part of his job, then the First Amendment flat-out does not apply, no matter the public importance of his speech. That means the public employer has essentially “purchased” the speech of its employees.  [...]

[bigheadfred]

This is fantastic. /s