Prayer ruling: CNN's Toobin frets Supreme Court 'allowing more state involvement with religion'
The Supreme Court said that a Washington state school district violated the First Amendment rights of a high school football coach when he lost his job after praying at the 50-yard line after games. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin discusses the court ruling and what the recent decision may mean for First Amendment rights.
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin argued that the government was becoming more "involved with religion" after the Supreme Court decided that a public school district didn't have the right to stop a high school coach from praying alone after football games.
In Monday's ruling on Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court agreed that the Washington state school district had violated the First Amendment rights of former high school football coach Joe Kennedy by firing him over post-game prayers from the field.
Reacting to the breaking news on Monday, CNN's Toobin blasted the decision as the court "allowing more state involvement with religion."
Last week, the court ruled in favor of First and Second Amendment rights and struck down the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade. "CNN Newsroom" host Jim Sciutto suggested the court had gone rogue and "eroded" precedent.
"Is precedent dead on the court? We heard every justice when they were asked repeatedly talk about respect for precedent. Are we seeing that eroded here?" he asked the network's legal analyst.
"Yes," Toobin declared at once, blaming the Trump-appointed justices.
He went on to say that by arguing that Coach Kennedy shouldn’t have been fired for exercising his free speech and religious rights, the court was allowing the state to become "more involved" with religion.
"This is not like Dobbs where they are explicitly overruling a case in Roe v. Wade, but this is a case where they're moving the law incrementally in a very clear direction, to allow more state involvement with religion. You know, it can be with regard to prayer in schools, it can be in regard to money going to religious organizations, or it can be exempting religious organizations from government mandates like in the Hobby Lobby case about contraception. All of that is part of a package, and that's what Donald Trump promised he would deliver to the Supreme Court, and that is precisely what he did deliver to the Supreme Court," Toobin claimed.
Toobin reacted in the same way to the court’s ruling last week upholding the rights of religious schools in Maine. He complained that the "Free Exercise Clause" in the First Amendment had trumped the "Establishment Clause."
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