Straight Brother
Since the conservative justices who constitute the majority of the 39 justices of the U.S. Supreme Court html ruled on June 24 that the U.S. Constitution no longer protects women’s right to abortion, many American media and mainstream public opinion in the United States have denounced this. A ruling said that it was not only depriving women of their rights and freedom to control their own bodies, but also setting the clock back on history.
However, just as many places across the United States were protesting against this ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court made another decision on the 27th local time that was once again seen as "reversing the wheels of history" and inciting "the unification of politics and religion." The controversial penalty...
According to reports from many American media, including CNN (CNN) and the online news magazine Slate.com, this ruling is related to a public school in Washington State, USA. The school's rugby coach is concerned.
The general story of what happened is that this public school called Bremerton High School hired a man named Joe Kennedy as the school's football coach in 2008, but this coach was a very "devout" Christian. Believers, often pray before and after intercollegiate football games. At first he just prayed in the locker room, but later he even started praying directly on the field, and he started praying publicly in the middle of the field immediately after the game.
The picture shows Kennedy's "personal prayer" publicly performed on the field after the game, but because he was the coach, the students had to join him. The screenshot is from Slate.com's report
Although Kennedy claimed that this was only his personal choice, Because of his status as a coach, students who are players have to join him to avoid being "sneaked up" or subjected to "discriminatory treatment." In this way, the prayer becomes an act of the entire team, and the team represents the school. Therefore, no matter what he said personally, the impression created by his prayer was that it was a school behavior.
However, public schools in the United States are prohibited from supporting any religious behavior. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that it prohibited public schools representing the government from promoting any religious prayer activities, even if they were voluntary. Because this not only risks "integration of church and state", but also violates the rights of free expression granted to Americans by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is the public power behind public schools that infringes on students and parents who believe in other religions or do not believe in religion. freedom of.
Pictures come from the Internet
So, after Kennedy began to publicly perform religious prayers on the playing field in 2015, the school that learned about this tried to communicate with him, hoping that he would not perform religious prayers in public on behalf of the school. But not only did he refuse, he also found a group of religiously conservative lawyers and the media to complain, saying that the school was persecuting his "religious freedom" and was "anti-Christian." Moreover, he continued to pray publicly on the field after games. His move even caused some students who were also religiously "fanatic" to injure other students when they came to pray with him.
As a result, the school couldn't bear it and had to suspend him with pay and not renew his contract after it expired. Kennedy, who was extremely dissatisfied with the school's approach, began to file lawsuits through legal channels, and eventually went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Screenshot from Slate.com report
On Monday, 6 conservative justices among the 9 tenured justices of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Kennedy, unanimously ruling that the school’s practices violated Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. Kennedy’s personal freedom of expression and freedom of speech were granted to him by the First Amendment. This seems to make sense at first glance.
However, it is worth noting that the three liberal justices who disagreed with this ruling accurately pointed out that Kennedy was an employee of a public school, so his practice of praying publicly on the field violated the prohibition on the promotion of any religion in public schools. It also violates the freedom of expression and religious freedom of students and parents who believe in other religions or have no religious beliefs.
Not only that, these three liberal justices also believed that the six conservative justices' support for Kennedy would undermine the 1962 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that public schools are not allowed to promote religious prayer activities, and thus infringe on the separation of church and state in the United States. The principles of .
This is why CNN and other media that reported on this ruling directly accused the US Supreme Court of "destroying the separation of church and state" in their headlines.
At the same time, CNN also pointed out that this is actually not the first ruling made by the U.S. Supreme Court in recent times that is suspected of encouraging the "integration of church and state." Before making the abortion rights ruling that detonated the United States last week, the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled in another case that religious schools in the United States should also receive subsidies used by the government education department to support the development of the private education industry.
Therefore, abolishing the constitutional protection of women’s abortion rights is probably just the beginning. The U.S.'s "historical reversal" is probably about to be kicked back to the Middle Ages by the U.S. Supreme Court.
