Con Law: How a Fake Document Could Help the Supreme Court Diminish Our Democracy

 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/12/moore-v-harper-charles-pinckney/

In June’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court took a hammer to the wall separating church and state, when the six conservative justices sided with a public school football coach, Joseph Kennedy, who claimed he was fired for quietly praying alone after the final whistle. “Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his majority opinion. “He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied.”

This is not what happened. The record in the case shows that Kennedy’s prayers were neither quiet nor private; students joined in, some because they felt pressured—which is precisely why schools prohibit such prayers. “Kennedy’s practice evolved into postgame talks in which Kennedy would hold aloft student helmets and deliver speeches with ‘overtly religious references,’” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, which included a picture showing Kennedy raising a helmet while players kneel around him. When asked to make his prayers private, Kennedy had refused.