Professor Abner Greene was quoted in a USA Today article discussing the Supreme Court decision to side with a former high school coach praying at the sidelines.
In a decision with sweeping implications for the separation of church and state, the Supreme Court on Monday sided with a former high school football coach who lost his job for offering prayers at the 50-yard line after games despite objections from the school district that students felt compelled to take part.
In the latest instance of the nation’s highest court backing a religious freedom claim, a majority of the justices said that assistant coach Joseph Kennedy’s prayers were a private matter and did not amount to the school district’s endorsement of Christianity.
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“In some ways, the court’s ruling … is unexceptional,” said Abner Greene, a professor at Fordham University’s School of Law. “But this Court again reaches more broadly than necessary, in its apparent mission to return us to understandings of our Founding Fathers.”