In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court announced Monday that a school district cannot prohibit a football coach from praying on the field after a game.
The decision came in the Kennedy v. Bremerton case. The six conservative justices all voted in the majority with Neil Gorsuch writing the majority opinion.
“The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” he wrote.
The case was over the firing of Joseph Kennedy, who was removed from his job as a coach in the Bremerton School District. Kennedy would privately kneel on the field after the game.
The district had a policy that prohibited "an employee, while still on duty, to engage in religious conduct."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the three liberals' dissent.
"It elevates one individual’s interest in personal religious exercise, in the exact time and place of that individual’s choosing, over society’s interest in protecting the separation be-tween church and state, eroding the protections for religious liberty for all," she wrote.