NOTICE: This opinion is subject to
formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the
United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter
of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington,
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															SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 21–418

															_________________

															JOSEPH A. KENNEDY, PETITIONER v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT

															on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit

															[June 27, 2022]

															Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the
Court.

															Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school
football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a
quiet prayer of thanks. Mr. Kennedy prayed during a period when
school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a
reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other
personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students
were otherwise occupied. Still, the Bremerton School District
disciplined him anyway. It did so because it thought anything less
could lead a reasonable observer to conclude (mistakenly) that it
endorsed Mr. Kennedy’s religious beliefs. That reasoning was
misguided. Both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the
First Amendment protect expressions like Mr. Kennedy’s. Nor does a
proper understanding of the Amendment’s Establishment Clause
require the government to single out private religious speech for
special disfavor. The Constitution and the best of our traditions
counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and
suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.

															I

															A

															Joseph Kennedy began working as a football
coach at Bremerton High School in 2008 after nearly two decades of
service in the Marine Corps. App. 167. Like many other football
players and coaches across the country, Mr. Kennedy made it a
practice to give “thanks through prayer on the playing field” at
the conclusion of each game. Id. , at 168, 171. In his
prayers, Mr. Kennedy sought to express gratitude for “what the
players had accomplished and for the opportunity to be part of
their lives through the game of football.” Id. , at 168. Mr.
Kennedy offered his prayers after the players and coaches had
shaken hands, by taking a knee at the 50-yard line and praying
“quiet[ly]” for “approximately 30 seconds.” Id. , at
168–169.

															Initially, Mr. Kennedy prayed on his own. See ibid. But over time, some players asked whether they could
pray alongside him. 991 F.3d 1004, 1010 (CA9 2021); App. 169. Mr.
Kennedy responded by saying, “ ‘This is a free country. You
can do what you want.’ ” Ibid. The number of players
who joined Mr. Kennedy eventually grew to include most of the team,
at least after some games. Sometimes team members invited opposing
players to join. Other times Mr. Kennedy still prayed alone. See ibid . Eventually, Mr. Kennedy began incorporating short
motivational speeches with his prayer when others were present. See id. , at 170. Separately, the team at times engaged in
pregame or postgame prayers in the locker room. It seems this
practice was a “school tradition” that predated Mr. Kennedy’s
tenure. Ibid . Mr. Kennedy explained that he “never told any
student that it was important they participate in any religious
activity.” Ibid . In particular, he “never pressured or
encouraged any student to join” his postgame midfield prayers. Ibid .

															For over seven years, no one complained to the
Bremerton School District (District) about these practices. See id. , at 63–64. It seems the District’s superintendent first
learned of them only in September 2015, after an employee from
another school commented positively on the school’s practices to
Bremerton’s principal. See id. , at 109, 229. At that point,
the District reacted quickly. On September 17, the superintendent
sent Mr. Kennedy a letter. In it, the superintendent identified
“two problematic practices” in which Mr. Kennedy had engaged. App.
40. First, Mr. Kennedy had provided “inspirational talk[s]” that
included “overtly religious references” likely constituting
“prayer” with the students “at midfield following the completion of
. . . game[s].” Ibid. Second, he had led “students
and coaching staff in a prayer” in the locker-room tradition that
“predated [his] involvement with the program.” Id. , at
41.

															The District explained that it sought to
establish “clear parameters” “going forward.” Ibid . It
instructed Mr. Kennedy to avoid any motivational “talks with
students” that “include[d] religious expression, including prayer,”
and to avoid “suggest[ing], encourag[ing] (or discourag[ing]), or
supervis[ing]” any prayers of students, which students remained
free to “engage in.” Id. , at 44. The District also explained
that any religious activity on Mr. Kennedy’s part must be
“nondemonstrative ( i.e. , not outwardly discernible as
religious activity)” if “students are also engaged in religious
conduct” in order to “avoid the perception of endorsement.” Id. , at 45. In offering these directives, the District
appealed to what it called a “direct tension between” the
“Establishment Clause” and “a school employee’s [right to] free[ly]
exercise” his religion. Id. , at 43. To resolve that
“tension,” the District explained, an employee’s free exercise
rights “must yield so far as necessary to avoid school endorsement
of religious activities.” Ibid. After receiving the District’s September 17
letter, Mr. Kennedy ended the tradition, predating him, of offering
locker-room prayers. Id. , at 40–41, 77, 170–172. He also
ended his practice of incorporating religious references or prayer
into his postgame motivational talks to his team on the field. See ibid. Mr. Kennedy further felt pressured to abandon his
practice of saying his own quiet, on-field postgame prayer. See id. , at 172. Driving home after a game, however, Mr. Kennedy
felt upset that he had “broken [his] commitment to God” by not
offering his own prayer, so he turned his car around and returned
to the field. Ibid. By that point, everyone had left the
stadium, and he walked to the 50-yard line and knelt to say a brief
prayer of thanks. See ibid .

															On October 14, through counsel, Mr. Kennedy sent
a letter to school officials informing them that, because of his
“sincerely-held religious beliefs,” he felt “compelled” to offer a
“post-game personal prayer” of thanks at midfield. Id. , at
62–63, 172. He asked the District to allow him to continue that
“private religious expression” alone. Id. , at 62. Consistent
with the District’s policy, see id. , at 48, Mr. Kennedy
explained that he “neither requests, encourages, nor discourages
students from participating in” these prayers, id. , at 64.
Mr. Kennedy emphasized that he sought only the opportunity to
“wai[t] until the game is over and the players have left the field
and then wal[k] to mid-field to say a short, private, personal
prayer.” Id. , at 69. He “told everybody” that it would be
acceptable to him to pray “when the kids went away from [him].” Id. , at 292. He later clarified that this meant he was even
willing to say his “prayer while the players were walking to the
locker room” or “bus,” and then catch up with his team. Id. ,
at 280–282; see also id. , at 59. However, Mr. Kennedy
objected to the logical implication of the District’s September 17
letter, which he understood as banning him “from bowing his head”
in the vicinity of students, and as requiring him to “flee the
scene if students voluntarily [came] to the same area” where he was
praying. Id. , at 70. After all, District policy prohibited
him from “discourag[ing]” independent student decisions to pray. Id. , at 44.

															On October 16, shortly before the game that day,
the District responded with another letter. See id. , at 76.
The District acknowledged that Mr. Kennedy “ha[d] complied” with
the “directives” in its September 17 letter. Id. , at 77. Yet
instead of accommodating Mr. Kennedy’s request to offer a brief
prayer on the field while students were busy with other
activities—whether heading to the locker room, boarding the bus, or
perhaps singing the school fight song—the District issued an
ultimatum. It forbade Mr. Kennedy from engaging in “any overt
actions” that could “appea[r] to a reasonable observer to endorse
. . . prayer . . . while he is on duty as a
District-paid coach.” Id. , at 81. The District did so
because it judged that anything less would lead it to violate the
Establishment Clause. Ibid. B

															After receiving this letter, Mr. Kennedy
offered a brief prayer following the October 16 game. See id. , at 90. When he bowed his head at midfield after the
game, “most [Bremerton] players were . . . engaged in the
traditional singing of the school fight song to the audience.” Ibid . Though Mr. Kennedy was alone when he began to pray,
players from the other team and members of the community joined him
before he finished his prayer. See id. , at 82, 297. This
event spurred media coverage of Mr. Kennedy’s dilemma and a public
response from the District. The District placed robocalls to
parents to inform them that public access to the field is
forbidden; it posted signs and made announcements at games saying
the same thing; and it had the Bremerton Police secure the field in
future games. Id. , at 100–101, 354–355. Subsequently, the
District superintendent explained in an October 20 email to the
leader of a state association of school administrators that “the
coach moved on from leading prayer with kids, to taking a silent
prayer at the 50 yard line.” Id. , at 83. The official with
whom the superintendent corresponded acknowledged that the “use of
a silent prayer changes the equation a bit.” Ibid . On
October 21, the superintendent further observed to a state official
that “[t]he issue is quickly changing as it has shifted from
leading prayer with student athletes, to a coaches [ sic ]
right to conduct” his own prayer “on the 50 yard line.” Id. ,
at 88.

															On October 23, shortly before that evening’s
game, the District wrote Mr. Kennedy again. It expressed
“appreciation” for his “efforts to comply” with the District’s
directives, including avoiding “on-the-job prayer with players in
the . . . football program, both in the locker room
prior to games as well as on the field immediately following
games.” Id. , at 90. The letter also admitted that, during
Mr. Kennedy’s recent October 16 postgame prayer, his students were
otherwise engaged and not praying with him, and that his prayer was
“fleeting.” Id. , at 90, 93. Still, the District explained
that a “reasonable observer” could think government endorsement of
religion had occurred when a “District employee, on the field only
by virtue of his employment with the District, still on duty”
engaged in “overtly religious conduct.” Id. , at 91, 93. The
District thus made clear that the only option it would offer Mr.
Kennedy was to allow him to pray after a game in a “private
location” behind closed doors and “not observable to students or
the public.” Id. , at 93–94.

															After the October 23 game ended, Mr. Kennedy
knelt at the 50-yard line, where “no one joined him,” and bowed his
head for a “brief, quiet prayer.” 991 F. 3d, at 1019; App.
173, 236–239. The superintendent informed the District’s board that
this prayer “moved closer to what we want,” but nevertheless
remained “unconstitutional.” Id. , at 96. After the final
relevant football game on October 26, Mr. Kennedy again knelt alone
to offer a brief prayer as the players engaged in postgame
traditions. 443 F. Supp. 3d 1223, 1231 (WD Wash. 2020); App.
to Pet. for Cert. 182. While he was praying, other adults gathered
around him on the field. See 443 F. Supp. 3d, at 1231; App.
97. Later, Mr. Kennedy rejoined his players for a postgame talk,
after they had finished singing the school fight song. 443
F. Supp. 3d, at 1231; App. 103.

															C

															Shortly after the October 26 game, the
District placed Mr. Kennedy on paid administrative leave and
prohibited him from “participat[ing], in any capacity, in
. . . football program activities.” Ibid. In a
letter explaining the reasons for this disciplinary action, the
superintendent criticized Mr. Kennedy for engaging in “public and
demonstrative religious conduct while still on duty as an assistant
coach” by offering a prayer following the games on October 16, 23,
and 26. Id. , at 102. The letter did not allege that Mr.
Kennedy performed these prayers with students, and it acknowledged
that his prayers took place while students were engaged in
unrelated postgame activities. Id. , at 103. Additionally,
the letter faulted Mr. Kennedy for not being willing to pray behind
closed doors. Id. , at 102.

															In an October 28 Q&A document provided to
the public, the District admitted that it possessed “no evidence
that students have been directly coerced to pray with Kennedy.” Id. , at 105. The Q&A also acknowledged that Mr. Kennedy
“ha[d] complied” with the District’s instruction to refrain from
his “prior practices of leading players in a pre-game prayer in the
locker room or leading players in a post-game prayer immediately
following games.” Ibid. But the Q&A asserted that the
District could not allow Mr. Kennedy to “engage in a public
religious display.” Id. , at 105, 107, 110. Otherwise, the
District would “violat[e] the . . . Establishment Clause”
because “reasonable . . . students and attendees” might
perceive the “district [as] endors[ing] . . . religion.” Id. , at 105.

															While Mr. Kennedy received “uniformly positive
evaluations” every other year of his coaching career, after the
2015 season ended in November, the District gave him a poor
performance evaluation. Kennedy v. Bremerton School
Dist ., 869 F.3d 813, 820 (CA9 2017). The evaluation advised
against rehiring Mr. Kennedy on the grounds that he “ ‘failed
to follow district policy’ ” regarding religious expression
and “ ‘failed to supervise student-athletes after
games.’ ” Ibid. Mr. Kennedy did not return for the next
season. Ibid. II

															A

															After these events, Mr. Kennedy sued in
federal court, alleging that the District’s actions violated the
First Amendment’s Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses. App. 145,
160–164. He also moved for a preliminary injunction requiring the
District to reinstate him. The District Court denied that motion,
concluding that a “reasonable observer . . . would
have seen him as . . . leading an orchestrated session of
faith.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 303. Indeed, if the District had not
suspended him, the court agreed, it might have violated the
Constitution’s Establishment Clause. See id. , at 302–303. On
appeal, the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Kennedy , 869 F. 3d,
at 831.

															Following the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, Mr.
Kennedy sought certiorari in this Court. The Court denied the
petition. But Justice Alito, joined by three other Members of the
Court, issued a statement stressing that “denial of certiorari does
not signify that the Court necessarily agrees with the decision
. . . below.” Kennedy v. Bremerton School
Dist ., 586 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 1). Justice
Alito expressed concerns with the lower courts’ decisions,
including the possibility that, under their reasoning, teachers
might be “ordered not to engage in any ‘demonstrative’ conduct of a
religious nature” within view of students, even to the point of
being forbidden from “folding their hands or bowing their heads in
prayer” before lunch. Id. , at ___
(slip op., at 4).

															B

															After the case returned to the District Court,
the parties engaged in discovery and eventually brought
cross-motions for summary judgment. At the end of that process, the
District Court found that the “ ‘sole reason’ ” for the
District’s decision to suspend Mr. Kennedy was its perceived “risk
of constitutional liability” under the Establishment Clause for his
“religious conduct” after the October 16, 23, and 26 games. 443
F. Supp. 3d, at 1231.

															The court found that reason persuasive too.
Rejecting Mr. Kennedy’s free speech claim, the court concluded that
because Mr. Kennedy “was hired precisely to occupy” an “influential
role for student athletes,” any speech he uttered was offered in
his capacity as a government employee and unprotected by the First
Amendment. Id. , at 1237. Alternatively, even if Mr.
Kennedy’s speech qualified as private speech, the District Court
reasoned, the District properly suppressed it. Had it done
otherwise, the District would have invited “an Establishment Clause
violation.” Ibid. Turning to Mr. Kennedy’s free exercise
claim, the District Court held that, even if the District’s
policies restricting his religious exercise were not neutral toward
religion or generally applicable, the District had a compelling
interest in prohibiting his postgame prayers, because, once more,
had it “allow[ed]” them it “would have violated the Establishment
Clause.” Id. , at 1240.

															C

															The Ninth Circuit affirmed. It agreed with the
District Court that Mr. Kennedy’s speech qualified as government
rather than private speech because “his expression on the field—a
location that he only had access to because of his
employment—during a time when he was generally tasked with
communicating with students, was speech as a government employee.”
991 F. 3d, at 1015. Like the District Court, the Ninth Circuit
further reasoned that, “even if we were to assume . . .
that Kennedy spoke as a private citizen,” the District had an
“adequate justification” for its actions. Id. , at 1016.
According to the court, “Kennedy’s on-field religious activity,”
coupled with what the court called “his pugilistic efforts to
generate publicity in order to gain approval of those on-field
religious activities,” were enough to lead an “objective observer”
to conclude that the District “endorsed Kennedy’s religious
activity by not stopping the practice.” Id. , at 1017–1018.
And that, the court held, would amount to a violation of the
Establishment Clause. Ibid .

															The Court of Appeals rejected Mr. Kennedy’s free
exercise claim for similar reasons. The District “concede[d]” that
its policy that led to Mr. Kennedy’s suspension was not “neutral
and generally applicable” and instead “restrict[ed] Kennedy’s
religious conduct because the conduct [was] religious.” Id. ,
at 1020. Still, the court ruled, the District “had a compelling
state interest to avoid violating the Establishment Clause,” and
its suspension was narrowly tailored to vindicate that interest. Id. , at 1020–1021 . Later, the Ninth Circuit denied a petition to
rehear the case en banc over the dissents of 11 judges. 4 F. 4th
910, 911 (2021). Among other things, the dissenters argued that the
panel erred by holding that a failure to discipline Mr. Kennedy
would have led the District to violate the Establishment Clause.
Several dissenters noted that the panel’s analysis rested on Lemon v. Kurtzman , 403 U.S.
602 (1971), and its progeny for the proposition that the
Establishment Clause is implicated whenever a hypothetical
reasonable observer could conclude the government endorses
religion. 4 F. 4th, at 945–947 (opinion of R. Nelson, J.). These
dissenters argued that this Court has long since abandoned that
“ahistorical, atextual” approach to discerning “Establishment
Clause violations”; they observed that other courts around the
country have followed suit by renouncing it too; and they contended
that the panel should have likewise “recognized Lemon ’s
demise and wisely left it dead.” Ibid ., and n. 3. We granted
certiorari. 595 U. S. ___ (2022).

															III

															Now before us, Mr. Kennedy renews his argument
that the District’s conduct violated both the Free Exercise and
Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. These Clauses work in
tandem. Where the Free Exercise Clause protects religious
exercises, whether communicative or not, the Free Speech Clause
provides overlapping protection for expressive religious
activities. See, e.g. , Widmar v. Vincent , 454 U.S.
263 , 269, n. 6 (1981); Rosenberger v. Rector and
Visitors of Univ. of Va. , 515 U.S.
819 , 841 (1995). That the First Amendment doubly protects
religious speech is no accident. It is a natural outgrowth of the
framers’ distrust of government attempts to regulate religion and
suppress dissent. See, e.g. , A Memorial and Remonstrance
Against Religious Assessments, in Selected Writings of James
Madison 21, 25 (R. Ketcham ed. 2006). “[I]n Anglo–American history,
. . . government suppression of speech has so commonly
been directed precisely at religious speech that a
free-speech clause without religion would be Hamlet without the
prince.” Capitol Square Review and Advisory Bd. v. Pinette , 515 U.S.
753 , 760 (1995).

															Under this Court’s precedents, a plaintiff bears
certain burdens to demonstrate an infringement of his rights under
the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses. If the plaintiff carries
these burdens, the focus then shifts to the defendant to show that
its actions were nonetheless justified and tailored consistent with
the demands of our case law. See, e.g. , Fulton v. Philadelphia , 593 U. S. ___, ___–___, ___ (2021) (slip
op., at 4–5, 13); Reed v. Town of Gilbert , 576 U.S.
155, 171 (2015); Garcetti v. Ceballos , 547
U.S. 410 , 418 (2006); Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye , Inc. v. Hialeah , 508 U.S.
520 , 546 (1993); Sherbert v. Verner , 374 U.S.
398 , 403 (1963). We begin by examining whether Mr. Kennedy has
discharged his burdens, first under the Free Exercise Clause, then
under the Free Speech Clause.

															A

															The Free Exercise Clause provides that
“Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free
exercise” of religion. Amdt. 1. This Court has held the Clause
applicable to the States under the terms of the Fourteenth
Amendment. Cantwell v. Connecticut , 310 U.S.
296 , 303 (1940). The Clause protects not only the right to
harbor religious beliefs inwardly and secretly. It does perhaps its
most important work by protecting the ability of those who hold
religious beliefs of all kinds to live out their faiths in daily
life through “the performance of (or abstention from) physical
acts.” Employment Div. , Dept. of Human Resources of
Ore. v. Smith , 494 U.S.
872 , 877 (1990).

															Under this Court’s precedents, a plaintiff may
carry the burden of proving a free exercise violation in various
ways, including by showing that a government entity has burdened
his sincere religious practice pursuant to a policy that is not
“neutral” or “generally applicable.” Id. , at 879–881. Should
a plaintiff make a showing like that, this Court will find a First
Amendment violation unless the government can satisfy “strict
scrutiny” by demonstrating its course was justified by a compelling
state interest and was narrowly tailored in pursuit of that
interest. Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 546.[ 1 ]

															That Mr. Kennedy has discharged his burdens is
effectively undisputed. No one questions that he seeks to engage in
a sincerely motivated religious exercise. The exercise in question
involves, as Mr. Kennedy has put it, giving “thanks through prayer”
briefly and by himself “on the playing field” at the conclusion of
each game he coaches. App. 168, 171. Mr. Kennedy has indicated
repeatedly that he is willing to “wai[t] until the game is over and
the players have left the field” to “wal[k] to mid-field to say
[his] short, private, personal prayer.” Id. , at 69; see also id. , at 280, 282. The contested exercise before us does not
involve leading prayers with the team or before any other captive
audience. Mr. Kennedy’s “religious beliefs do not require [him] to
lead any prayer . . . involving students.” Id. , at
170. At the District’s request, he voluntarily discontinued the
school tradition of locker-room prayers and his postgame religious
talks to students. The District disciplined him only for his
decision to persist in praying quietly without his players after
three games in October 2015. See Parts I–B and I–C, supra .

															Nor does anyone question that, in forbidding Mr.
Kennedy’s brief prayer, the District failed to act pursuant to a
neutral and generally applicable rule. A government policy will not
qualify as neutral if it is “specifically directed at
. . . religious practice.” Smith , 494 U. S.,
at 878. A policy can fail this test if it “discriminate[s] on its
face,” or if a religious exercise is otherwise its “object.” Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 533; see also Smith , 494
U. S., at 878. A government policy will fail the general
applicability requirement if it “prohibits religious conduct while
permitting secular conduct that undermines the government’s
asserted interests in a similar way,” or if it provides “a
mechanism for individualized exemptions.” Fulton , 593
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6). Failing either the neutrality
or general applicability test is sufficient to trigger strict
scrutiny. See Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 546.

															In this case, the District’s challenged policies
were neither neutral nor generally applicable. By its own
admission, the District sought to restrict Mr. Kennedy’s actions at
least in part because of their religious character. As it put it in
its September 17 letter, the District prohibited “any overt actions
on Mr. Kennedy’s part, appearing to a reasonable observer to
endorse even voluntary, student-initiated prayer.” App. 81. The
District further explained that it could not allow “an employee,
while still on duty, to engage in religious conduct.” Id. , at 106 (emphasis added). Prohibiting a religious
practice was thus the District’s unquestioned “object.” The
District candidly acknowledged as much below, conceding that its
policies were “not neutral” toward religion. 991 F. 3d, at
1020.

															The District’s challenged policies also fail the
general applicability test. The District’s performance evaluation
after the 2015 football season advised against rehiring Mr. Kennedy
on the ground that he “failed to supervise student- athletes after
games.” App. 114. But, in fact, this was a bespoke requirement
specifically addressed to Mr. Kennedy’s religious exercise. The
District permitted other members of the coaching staff to forgo
supervising students briefly after the game to do things like visit
with friends or take personal phone calls. App. 205; see also Part
I–B, supra . Thus, any sort of postgame supervisory
requirement was not applied in an evenhanded, across-the-board way.
Again recognizing as much, the District conceded before the Ninth
Circuit that its challenged directives were not “generally
applicable.” 991 F. 3d, at 1020.

															B

															When it comes to Mr. Kennedy’s free speech
claim, our precedents remind us that the First Amendment’s
protections extend to “teachers and students,” neither of whom
“shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or
expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker v. Des Moines
Independent Community School Dist. , 393
U.S. 503 , 506 (1969); see also Lane v. Franks , 573 U.S.
228 , 231 (2014). Of course, none of this means the speech
rights of public school employees are so boundless that they may
deliver any message to anyone anytime they wish. In addition to
being private citizens, teachers and coaches are also government
employees paid in part to speak on the government’s behalf and
convey its intended messages.

															To account for the complexity associated with
the interplay between free speech rights and government employment,
this Court’s decisions in Pickering v. Board of Ed. of
Township High School Dist. 205 , Will Cty. , 391 U.S.
563 (1968), Garcetti , 547 U.S.
410 , and related cases suggest proceeding in two steps. The
first step involves a threshold inquiry into the nature of the
speech at issue. If a public employee speaks “pursuant to [his or
her] official duties,” this Court has said the Free Speech Clause
generally will not shield the individual from an employer’s control
and discipline because that kind of speech is—for constitutional
purposes at least—the government’s own speech. Id ., at
421.

															At the same time and at the other end of the
spectrum, when an employee “speaks as a citizen addressing a matter
of public concern,” our cases indicate that the First Amendment may
be implicated and courts should proceed to a second step. Id. , at 423. At this second step, our cases suggest that
courts should attempt to engage in “a delicate balancing of the
competing interests surrounding the speech and its consequences.” Ibid . Among other things, courts at this second step have
sometimes considered whether an employee’s speech interests are
outweighed by “ ‘the interest of the State, as an employer, in
promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through
its employees.’ ” Id. , at 417 (quoting Pickering , 391 U. S., at 568).

															Both sides ask us to employ at least certain
aspects of this Pickering – Garcetti framework to
resolve Mr. Kennedy’s free speech claim. They share additional
common ground too. They agree that Mr. Kennedy’s speech implicates
a matter of public concern. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 183; Brief
for Respondent 44. They also appear to accept, at least for
argument’s sake, that Mr. Kennedy’s speech does not raise questions
of academic freedom that may or may not involve “additional” First
Amendment “interests” beyond those captured by this framework. Garcetti , 547 U. S., at 425; see also Keyishian v. Board of Regents of Univ. of State of N. Y. , 385 U.S.
589 , 603 (1967); Brief for Petitioner 26, n. 2. At the first
step of the Pickering – Garcetti inquiry, the parties’
disagreement thus turns out to center on one question alone: Did
Mr. Kennedy offer his prayers in his capacity as a private citizen,
or did they amount to government speech attributable to the
District?

															Our cases offer some helpful guidance for
resolving this question. In Garcetti , the Court concluded
that a prosecutor’s internal memorandum to a supervisor was made
“pursuant to [his] official duties,” and thus ineligible for First
Amendment protection. 547 U. S., at 421. In reaching this
conclusion, the Court relied on the fact that the prosecutor’s
speech “fulfill[ed] a responsibility to advise his supervisor about
how best to proceed with a pending case.” Ibid. In other
words, the prosecutor’s memorandum was government speech because it
was speech the government “itself ha[d] commissioned or created”
and speech the employee was expected to deliver in the course of
carrying out his job. Id. , at 422.

															By contrast, in Lane a public employer
sought to terminate an employee after he testified at a criminal
trial about matters involving his government employment. 573
U. S., at 233. The Court held that the employee’s speech was
protected by the First Amendment. Id. , at 231. In doing so,
the Court held that the fact the speech touched on matters related
to public employment was not enough to render it government speech. Id. , at 239–240. Instead, the Court explained, the “critical
question . . . is whether the speech at issue is itself
ordinarily within the scope of an employee’s duties.” Id. ,
at 240. It is an inquiry this Court has said should be undertaken
“practical[ly],” rather than with a blinkered focus on the terms of
some formal and capacious written job description. Garcetti ,
547 U. S., at 424. To proceed otherwise would be to allow
public employers to use “excessively broad job descriptions” to
subvert the Constitution’s protections. Ibid .

															Applying these lessons here, it seems clear to
us that Mr. Kennedy has demonstrated that his speech was private
speech, not government speech. When Mr. Kennedy uttered the three
prayers that resulted in his suspension, he was not engaged in
speech “ordinarily within the scope” of his duties as a coach. Lane , 573 U. S., at 240. He did not speak pursuant to
government policy. He was not seeking to convey a
government-created message. He was not instructing players,
discussing strategy, encouraging better on-field performance, or
engaged in any other speech the District paid him to produce as a
coach. See Part I–B, supra . Simply put: Mr. Kennedy’s
prayers did not “ow[e their] existence” to Mr. Kennedy’s
responsibilities as a public employee. Garcetti , 547
U. S., at 421.

															The timing and circumstances of Mr. Kennedy’s
prayers confirm the point. During the postgame period when these
prayers occurred, coaches were free to attend briefly to personal
matters—everything from checking sports scores on their phones to
greeting friends and family in the stands. App. 205; see Part I–B, supra . We find it unlikely that Mr. Kennedy was fulfilling a
responsibility imposed by his employment by praying during a period
in which the District has acknowledged that its coaching staff was
free to engage in all manner of private speech. That Mr. Kennedy
offered his prayers when students were engaged in other activities
like singing the school fight song further suggests that those
prayers were not delivered as an address to the team, but instead
in his capacity as a private citizen. Nor is it dispositive that
Mr. Kennedy’s prayers took place “within the office”
environment—here, on the field of play. Garcetti , 547
U. S., at 421. Instead, what matters is whether Mr. Kennedy
offered his prayers while acting within the scope of his duties as
a coach. And taken together, both the substance of Mr. Kennedy’s
speech and the circumstances surrounding it point to the conclusion
that he did not.

															In reaching its contrary conclusion, the Ninth
Circuit stressed that, as a coach, Mr. Kennedy served as a role
model “clothed with the mantle of one who imparts knowledge and
wisdom.” 991 F. 3d, at 1015. The court emphasized that Mr. Kennedy
remained on duty after games. Id. , at 1016. Before us, the
District presses the same arguments. See Brief for Respondent 24.
And no doubt they have a point. Teachers and coaches often serve as
vital role models. But this argument commits the error of positing
an “excessively broad job descriptio[n]” by treating everything
teachers and coaches say in the workplace as government speech
subject to government control. Garcetti , 547 U. S., at
424. On this understanding, a school could fire a Muslim teacher
for wearing a headscarf in the classroom or prohibit a Christian
aide from praying quietly over her lunch in the cafeteria.
Likewise, this argument ignores the District Court’s conclusion
(and the District’s concession) that Mr. Kennedy’s actual job
description left time for a private moment after the game to call
home, check a text, socialize, or engage in any manner of secular
activities. Others working for the District were free to engage
briefly in personal speech and activity. App. 205; see Part I–B, supra . That Mr. Kennedy chose to use the same time to pray
does not transform his speech into government speech. To hold
differently would be to treat religious expression as second-class
speech and eviscerate this Court’s repeated promise that teachers
do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or
expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker , 393 U. S.,
at 506.

															Of course, acknowledging that Mr. Kennedy’s
prayers represented his own private speech does not end the matter.
So far, we have recognized only that Mr. Kennedy has carried his
threshold burden. Under the Pickering – Garcetti framework, a second step remains where the government may seek to
prove that its interests as employer outweigh even an employee’s
private speech on a matter of public concern. See Lane , 573
U. S., at 236, 242.[ 2 ]

															IV

															Whether one views the case through the lens of
the Free Exercise or Free Speech Clause, at this point the burden
shifts to the District. Under the Free Exercise Clause, a
government entity normally must satisfy at least “strict scrutiny,”
showing that its restrictions on the plaintiff ’s protected
rights serve a compelling interest and are narrowly tailored to
that end. See Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 533; n. 1, supra . A similar standard generally obtains under the Free
Speech Clause. See Reed , 576 U. S., at 171. The
District, however, asks us to apply to Mr. Kennedy’s claims the
more lenient second-step Pickering – Garcetti test, or
alternatively intermediate scrutiny. See Brief for Respondent
44–48. Ultimately, however, it does not matter which standard we
apply. The District cannot sustain its burden under any of
them.[ 3 ]

															A

															As we have seen, the District argues that its
suspension of Mr. Kennedy was essential to avoid a violation of the
Establishment Clause. Id. , at 35–42. On its account, Mr.
Kennedy’s prayers might have been protected by the Free Exercise
and Free Speech Clauses. But his rights were in “direct tension”
with the competing demands of the Establishment Clause. App. 43. To
resolve that clash, the District reasoned, Mr. Kennedy’s rights had
to “yield.” Ibid . The Ninth Circuit pursued this same line
of thinking, insisting that the District’s interest in avoiding an
Establishment Clause violation “ ‘trump[ed]’ ” Mr.
Kennedy’s rights to religious exercise and free speech. 991
F. 3d, at 1017; see also id. , at 1020–1021.

															But how could that be? It is true that this
Court and others often refer to the “Establishment Clause,” the
“Free Exercise Clause,” and the “Free Speech Clause” as separate
units. But the three Clauses appear in the same sentence of the
same Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.” Amdt. 1. A natural
reading of that sentence would seem to suggest the Clauses have
“complementary” purposes, not warring ones where one Clause is
always sure to prevail over the others. See Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing , 330 U.S.
1 , 13, 15 (1947).

															The District arrived at a different
understanding this way. It began with the premise that the
Establishment Clause is offended whenever a “reasonable observer”
could conclude that the government has “endorse[d]” religion. App.
81. The District then took the view that a “reasonable observer”
could think it “endorsed Kennedy’s religious activity by not
stopping the practice.” 991 F. 3d, at 1018; see also App.
80–81; Parts I and II, supra . On the District’s account, it
did not matter whether the Free Exercise Clause protected Mr.
Kennedy’s prayer. It did not matter if his expression was private
speech protected by the Free Speech Clause. It did not matter that
the District never actually endorsed Mr. Kennedy’s prayer, no one
complained that it had, and a strong public reaction only followed
after the District sought to ban Mr. Kennedy’s prayer. Because a
reasonable observer could (mistakenly) infer that by allowing the
prayer the District endorsed Mr. Kennedy’s message, the District
felt it had to act, even if that meant suppressing otherwise
protected First Amendment activities. In this way, the District
effectively created its own “vise between the Establishment Clause
on one side and the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses on the
other,” placed itself in the middle, and then chose its preferred
way out of its self-imposed trap. See Pinette , 515
U. S., at 768 (plurality opinion); Shurtleff v. Boston , 596 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2022) (Gorsuch, J.,
concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 4–5).

															To defend its approach, the District relied on Lemon and its progeny. See App. 43–45. In upholding the
District’s actions, the Ninth Circuit followed the same course. See
Part II–C, supra . And, to be sure, in Lemon this
Court attempted a “grand unified theory” for assessing
Establishment Clause claims. American Legion v. American
Humanist Assn. , 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (plurality
opinion) (slip op., at 24). That approach called for an examination
of a law’s purposes, effects, and potential for entanglement with
religion. Lemon , 403 U. S., at 612–613. In time, the
approach also came to involve estimations about whether a
“reasonable observer” would consider the government’s challenged
action an “endorsement” of religion. See, e.g. , County of
Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union , Greater
Pittsburgh Chapter , 492 U.S.
573 , 593 (1989); id. , at 630 (O’Connor, J., concurring
in part and concurring in judgment); Shurtleff , 596
U. S., at ___ (opinion of Gorsuch, J.) (slip op., at 3).

															What the District and the Ninth Circuit
overlooked, however, is that the “shortcomings” associated with
this “ambitiou[s],” abstract, and ahistorical approach to the
Establishment Clause became so “apparent” that this Court long ago
abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot. American Legion , 588 U. S., at ___–___ (plurality
opinion) (slip op., at 12–13); see also Town of Greece v. Galloway , 572
U.S. 565 , 575–577 (2014). The Court has explained that these
tests “invited chaos” in lower courts, led to “differing results”
in materially identical cases, and created a “minefield” for
legislators. Pinette , 515 U. S., at 768–769, n. 3
(plurality opinion) (emphasis deleted). This Court has since made
plain, too, that the Establishment Clause does not include anything
like a “modified heckler’s veto, in which . . . religious
activity can be proscribed” based on “ ‘perceptions’ ” or
“ ‘discomfort.’ ” Good News Club v. Milford
Central School , 533 U.S.
98 , 119 (2001) (emphasis deleted). An Establishment Clause
violation does not automatically follow whenever a public school or
other government entity “fail[s] to censor” private religious
speech. Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist.
66) v. Mergens , 496 U.S.
226 , 250 (1990) (plurality opinion). Nor does the Clause
“compel the government to purge from the public sphere” anything an
objective observer could reasonably infer endorses or “partakes of
the religious.” Van Orden v. Perry , 545
U.S. 677 , 699 (2005) (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment). In
fact, just this Term the Court unanimously rejected a city’s
attempt to censor religious speech based on Lemon and the
endorsement test. See Shurtleff , 596 U. S., at ___–___
(slip op., at 1–2); id. , at ___ (Alito, J., concurring in
judgment) (slip op., at 1); id ., at ___, ___–___ (opinion of
Gorsuch, J.) (slip op., at 1, 4–5).[ 4 ]

															In place of Lemon and the endorsement
test, this Court has instructed that the Establishment Clause must
be interpreted by “ ‘reference to historical practices and
understandings.’ ” Town of Greece , 572 U. S., at
576; see also American Legion , 588 U. S., at ___
(plurality opinion) (slip op., at 25). “ ‘[T]he line’ ”
that courts and governments “must draw between the permissible and
the impermissible” has to “ ‘accor[d ] with history and
faithfully reflec[t ] the understanding of the Founding
Fathers.’ ” Town of Greece , 572 U. S., at 577
(quoting School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp , 374 U.S.
203 , 294 (1963) (Brennan, J., concurring)). An analysis focused
on original meaning and history, this Court has stressed, has long
represented the rule rather than some “ ‘exception’ ”
within the “Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence.” 572
U. S., at 575; see American Legion , 588 U. S., at
___ (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 25); Torcaso v. Watkins , 367 U.S.
488 , 490 (1961) (analyzing certain historical elements of
religious establishments); McGowan v. Maryland , 366 U.S.
420 , 437–440 (1961) (analyzing Sunday closing laws by looking
to their “place . . . in the First Amendment’s history”); Walz v. Tax Comm’n of City of New York , 397 U.S.
664 , 680 (1970) (analyzing the “history and uninterrupted
practice” of church tax exemptions). The District and the Ninth
Circuit erred by failing to heed this guidance.

															B

															Perhaps sensing that the primary theory it
pursued below rests on a mistaken understanding of the
Establishment Clause, the District offers a backup argument in this
Court. It still contends that its Establishment Clause concerns
trump Mr. Kennedy’s free exercise and free speech rights. But the
District now seeks to supply different reasoning for that result.
Now, it says, it was justified in suppressing Mr. Kennedy’s
religious activity because otherwise it would have been guilty of
coercing students to pray. See Brief for Respondent 34–37. And, the
District says, coercing worship amounts to an Establishment Clause
violation on anyone’s account of the Clause’s original meaning.

															As it turns out, however, there is a pretty
obvious reason why the Ninth Circuit did not adopt this theory in
proceedings below: The evidence cannot sustain it. To be sure, this
Court has long held that government may not, consistent with a
historically sensitive understanding of the Establishment Clause,
“make a religious observance compulsory.” Zorach v. Clauson , 343 U.S.
306 , 314 (1952). Government “may not coerce anyone to attend
church,” ibid. , nor may it force citizens to engage in “a
formal religious exercise,” Lee v. Weisman , 505
U.S. 577 , 589 (1992). No doubt, too, coercion along these lines
was among the foremost hallmarks of religious establishments the
framers sought to prohibit when they adopted the First
Amendment.[ 5 ] Members of this
Court have sometimes disagreed on what exactly qualifies as
impermissible coercion in light of the original meaning of the
Establishment Clause. Compare Lee , 505 U. S., at 593,
with id. , at 640–641 (Scalia, J., dissenting). But in this
case Mr. Kennedy’s private religious exercise did not come close to
crossing any line one might imagine separating protected private
expression from impermissible government coercion.

															Begin with the District’s own contemporaneous
description of the facts. In its correspondence with Mr. Kennedy,
the District never raised coercion concerns. To the contrary, the
District conceded in a public 2015 document that there was “no
evidence that students [were] directly coerced to pray with
Kennedy.” App. 105. This is consistent with Mr. Kennedy’s account
too. He has repeatedly stated that he “never coerced, required, or
asked any student to pray,” and that he never “told any student
that it was important that they participate in any religious
activity.” Id. , at 170.

															Consider, too, the actual requests Mr. Kennedy
made. The District did not discipline Mr. Kennedy for engaging in
prayer while presenting locker-room speeches to students. That
tradition predated Mr. Kennedy at the school. App. 170. And he
willingly ended it, as the District has acknowledged. Id. ,
at 77, 170 . He also willingly ended his practice of postgame
religious talks with his team. Id. , at 70, 77, 170–172. The
only prayer Mr. Kennedy sought to continue was the kind he had
“started out doing” at the beginning of his tenure—the prayer he
gave alone. Id. , at 293–294. He made clear that he could
pray “while the kids were doing the fight song” and “take a knee by
[him]self and give thanks and continue on.” Id. , at 294. Mr.
Kennedy even considered it “acceptable” to say his “prayer while
the players were walking to the locker room” or “bus,” and then
catch up with his team. Id. , at 280, 282; see also id. , at 59 (proposing the team leave the field for the
prayer). In short, Mr. Kennedy did not seek to direct any prayers
to students or require anyone else to participate. His plan was to
wait to pray until athletes were occupied, and he “told everybody”
that’s what he wished “to do.” Id. , at 292. It was for three
prayers of this sort alone in October 2015 that the District
suspended him. See Parts I–B and I–C, supra .

															Naturally, Mr. Kennedy’s proposal to pray
quietly by himself on the field would have meant some people would
have seen his religious exercise. Those close at hand might have
heard him too. But learning how to tolerate speech or prayer of all
kinds is “part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society,” a
trait of character essential to “a tolerant citizenry.” Lee ,
505 U. S., at 590. This Court has long recognized as well that
“secondary school students are mature enough . . . to
understand that a school does not endorse,” let alone coerce them
to participate in, “speech that it merely permits on a
nondiscriminatory basis.” Mergens , 496 U. S., at 250
(plurality opinion). Of course, some will take offense to certain
forms of speech or prayer they are sure to encounter in a society
where those activities enjoy such robust constitutional protection.
But “[o]ffense . . . does not equate to coercion.” Town of Greece , 572 U. S., at 589 (plurality
opinion).

															The District responds that, as a coach, Mr.
Kennedy “wielded enormous authority and influence over the
students,” and students might have felt compelled to pray alongside
him. Brief for Respondent 37. To support this argument, the
District submits that, after Mr. Kennedy’s suspension, a few
parents told District employees that their sons had “participated
in the team prayers only because they did not wish to separate
themselves from the team.” App. 356.

															This reply fails too. Not only does the District
rely on hearsay to advance it. For all we can tell, the concerns
the District says it heard from parents were occasioned by the
locker-room prayers that predated Mr. Kennedy’s tenure or his
postgame religious talks, all of which he discontinued at the
District’s request. There is no indication in the record that
anyone expressed any coercion concerns to the District about the
quiet, postgame prayers that Mr. Kennedy asked to continue and that
led to his suspension. Nor is there any record evidence that
students felt pressured to participate in these prayers. To the
contrary, and as we have seen, not a single Bremerton student
joined Mr. Kennedy’s quiet prayers following the three October 2015
games for which he was disciplined. On October 16, those students
who joined Mr. Kennedy were “ ‘from the opposing team,’ ”
991 F. 3d, at 1012–1013, and thus could not have “reasonably
fear[ed]” that he would decrease their “playing time” or destroy
their “opportunities” if they did not “participate,” Brief for
Respondent 43. As for the other two relevant games, “no one joined”
Mr. Kennedy on October 23. 991 F. 3d, at 1019. And only a few
members of the public participated on October 26. App. 97, 314–315;
see also Part I–B, supra .[ 6 ]

															The absence of evidence of coercion in this
record leaves the District to its final redoubt. Here, the District
suggests that any visible religious conduct by a teacher or
coach should be deemed—without more and as a matter of
law—impermissibly coercive on students. In essence, the District
asks us to adopt the view that the only acceptable government role
models for students are those who eschew any visible religious
expression. See also post , at 16–17 (Sotomayor, J.,
dissenting). If the argument sounds familiar, it should. Really, it
is just another way of repackaging the District’s earlier
submission that government may script everything a teacher or coach
says in the workplace. See Part III–B, supra . The only added
twist here is the District’s suggestion not only that it may prohibit teachers from engaging in any demonstrative religious
activity, but that it must do so in order to conform to the
Constitution.

															Such a rule would be a sure sign that our
Establishment Clause jurisprudence had gone off the rails. In the
name of protecting religious liberty, the District would have us
suppress it. Rather than respect the First Amendment’s double
protection for religious expression, it would have us preference
secular activity. Not only could schools fire teachers for praying
quietly over their lunch, for wearing a yarmulke to school, or for
offering a midday prayer during a break before practice. Under the
District’s rule, a school would be required to do so. It is
a rule that would defy this Court’s traditional understanding that
permitting private speech is not the same thing as coercing others
to participate in it. See Town of Greece , 572 U. S., at
589 (plurality opinion). It is a rule, too, that would undermine a
long constitutional tradition under which learning how to tolerate
diverse expressive activities has always been “part of learning how
to live in a pluralistic society.” Lee , 505 U. S., at
590. We are aware of no historically sound understanding of the
Establishment Clause that begins to “mak[e] it necessary for
government to be hostile to religion” in this way. Zorach ,
343 U. S., at 314.

															Our judgments on all these scores find support
in this Court’s prior cases too. In Zorach , for example,
challengers argued that a public school program permitting students
to spend time in private religious instruction off campus was
impermissibly coercive. Id. , at 308, 311–312. The Court
rejected that challenge because students were not required to
attend religious instruction and there was no evidence that any
employee had “us[ed] their office to persuade or force students” to
participate in religious activity. Id. , at 311, and
n. 6. What was clear there is even more obvious here—where
there is no evidence anyone sought to persuade or force students to
participate, and there is no formal school program accommodating
the religious activity at issue.

															Meanwhile, this case looks very different from
those in which this Court has found prayer involving public school
students to be problematically coercive. In Lee , this Court
held that school officials violated the Establishment Clause by
“including [a] clerical membe[r]” who publicly recited prayers “as
part of [an] official school graduation ceremony” because the
school had “in every practical sense compelled attendance and
participation in” a “religious exercise.” 505 U. S., at 580,
598. In Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe , the
Court held that a school district violated the Establishment Clause
by broadcasting a prayer “over the public address system” before
each football game. 530 U.S.
290 , 294 (2000). The Court observed that, while students
generally were not required to attend games, attendance was required for “cheerleaders, members of the band, and, of course,
the team members themselves.” Id. , at 311. None of that is
true here. The prayers for which Mr. Kennedy was disciplined were
not publicly broadcast or recited to a captive audience. Students
were not required or expected to participate. And, in fact, none of
Mr. Kennedy’s students did participate in any of the three October
2015 prayers that resulted in Mr. Kennedy’s discipline. See App.
90, 97, 173, 236–239; Parts I–B and I–C, supra .[ 7 ]

															C

															In the end, the District’s case hinges on the
need to generate conflict between an individual’s rights under the
Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses and its own Establishment
Clause duties—and then develop some explanation why one of these
Clauses in the First Amendment should “ ‘trum[p]’ ” the
other two. 991 F. 3d, at 1017; App. 43. But the project
falters badly. Not only does the District fail to offer a sound
reason to prefer one constitutional guarantee over another. It
cannot even show that they are at odds. In truth, there is no
conflict between the constitutional commands before us. There is
only the “mere shadow” of a conflict, a false choice premised on a
misconstruction of the Establishment Clause. Schempp , 374
U. S., at 308 (Goldberg, J., concurring). And in no world may
a government entity’s concerns about phantom constitutional
violations justify actual violations of an individual’s First
Amendment rights. See, e.g. , Rosenberger , 515
U. S., at 845–846; Good News Club , 533 U. S., at
112–119; Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free
School Dist. , 508 U.S.
384 , 394–395 (1993); Widmar , 454 U. S., at
270–275.[ 8 ]

															V

															Respect for religious expressions is
indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those
expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether
they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head. Here, a
government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a
brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the
Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. And
the only meaningful justification the government offered for its
reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out
and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable
secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates
that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary
judgment on his First Amendment claims. The judgment of the Court
of Appeals is

															Reversed. Notes 1 A plaintiff may also
prove a free exercise violation by showing that “official
expressions of hostility” to religion accompany laws or policies
burdening religious exercise; in cases like that we have “set
aside” such policies without further inquiry. Masterpiece
Cakeshop , Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n ,
584 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 18). To resolve
today’s case, however, we have no need to consult that test.
Likewise, while the test we do apply today has been the subject of
some criticism, see, e.g. , Fulton v. Philadelphia , 593 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op.,
at 5), we have no need to engage with that debate today because no
party has asked us to do so. 2 Because our analysis and
the parties’ concessions lead to the conclusion that Mr. Kennedy’s
prayer constituted private speech on a matter of public concern, we
do not decide whether the Free Exercise Clause may sometimes demand
a different analysis at the first step of the Pickering – Garcetti framework. 3 It seems, too, that it is
only here where our disagreement with the dissent begins in
earnest. We do not understand our colleagues to contest that Mr.
Kennedy has met his burdens under either the Free Exercise or Free
Speech Clause, but only to suggest the District has carried its own
burden “to establish that its policy prohibiting Kennedy’s public
prayers was the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling
state interest.” Post , at 22 (opinion of
Sotomayor, J.). 4 Nor was that decision an
outlier. In the last two decades, this Court has often criticized
or ignored Lemon and its endorsement test variation. See, e.g. , Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue ,
591 U. S. ___ (2020); American Legion v. American
Humanist Assn. , 588 U. S. ___ (2019); Trump v. Hawaii , 585 U. S. ___ (2018); Trinity Lutheran
Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer , 582 U. S. ___
(2017); Town of Greece v. Galloway , 572 U.S.
565 (2014); Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and
School v. EEOC , 565 U.S.
171 (2012); Arizona Christian School Tuition
Organization v. Winn , 563 U.S.
125 (2011); Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation,
Inc. , 551 U.S.
587 (2007); id. , at 618 (Scalia, J., concurring in
judgment); Van Orden v. Perry , 545 U.S.
677 (2005); id. , at 689 (Breyer, J., concurring in
judgment). A vast number of Justices have criticized those tests
over an even longer period. See Shurtleff v. Boston ,
596 U. S. ___, at ___–___, and nn. 9–10 (2022) (Gorsuch, J.,
concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7–8, and nn. 9–10)
(collecting opinions authored or joined by Roberts and Rehnquist,
C. J., and Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Kavanaugh, Stevens,
O’Connor, Scalia, and Kennedy, JJ.). The point has not been lost on
our lower court colleagues. See, e.g. , 4 F. 4th 910,
939–941 (2021) (O’Scannlain, J., respecting denial of rehearing en
banc); id. , at 945 (R. Nelson, J., dissenting from
denial of rehearing en banc); id. , at 947, n. 3
(collecting lower court cases from “around the country” that “have
recognized Lemon ’s demise”). 5 See, e.g. , Lee v. Weisman , 505 U.S.
577 , 640–642 (1992) (Scalia, J. dissenting); Shurtleff ,
596 U. S., at ___–___ (opinion of Gorsuch, J.) (slip op., at
10–13) (discussing coercion and certain other historical hallmarks
of an established religion); 1 Annals of Cong. 730–731 (1789)
(Madison explaining that the First Amendment aimed to prevent one
or multiple sects from “establish[ing] a religion to which they
would compel others to conform”); M. McConnell, Establishment and
Disestablishment at the Founding, Part I: Establishment of
Religion, 44 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 2105, 2144–2146
(2003). 6 The dissent expresses
concern that looking to “histor[y] an[d] tradition” to guide
Establishment Clause inquiries will not afford “school
administrators” sufficient guidance. Post , at 30. But that
concern supplies no excuse to adorn the Constitution with rules not
supported by its terms and the traditions undergirding them. Nor,
in any event, is there any question that the District understands
that coercion can be a hallmark of an Establishment Clause
violation. See App. 105. The District’s problem isn’t a failure to
identify coercion as a crucial legal consideration; it is a lack of
evidence that coercion actually occurred. 7 Even if the personal
prayers Mr. Kennedy sought to offer after games are not themselves
coercive, the dissent suggests that they bear an indelible taint of
coercion by association with the school’s past prayer
practices—some of which predated Mr. Kennedy, and all of which the
District concedes he ended on request. But none of those abandoned
practices formed the basis for Mr. Kennedy’s suspension, and he has
not sought to claim First Amendment protection for them. See Town of Greece , 572 U. S., at 585 (other past practices
do not permanently “despoil a practice” later challenged under the
Establishment Clause). Nor, contrary to the dissent, does the
possibility that students might choose, unprompted, to participate
in Mr. Kennedy’s prayers necessarily prove them coercive. See post , at 18–20, 32–33. For one thing, the District has
conceded that no coach may “discourag[e]” voluntary student prayer
under its policies. Tr. of Oral Arg. 91. For another, Mr. Kennedy
has repeatedly explained that he is willing to conduct his prayer
without students—as he did after each of the games that formed the
basis of his suspension—and after students head to the locker room
or bus. See App. 280, 282, 292–294. 8 Failing under its
coercion theory, the District offers still another backup argument.
It contends that it had to suppress Mr. Kennedy’s protected First
Amendment activity to ensure order at Bremerton football games. See
also post , at 2, 8–9, 11, 34–35 (Sotomayor, J.,
dissenting). But the District never raised concerns along these
lines in its contemporaneous correspondence with Mr. Kennedy. And
unsurprisingly, neither the District Court nor the Ninth Circuit
invoked this rationale to justify the District’s actions.
Government “justification[s]” for interfering with First Amendment
rights “must be genuine, not hypothesized or invented post
hoc in response to litigation.” United States v. Virginia , 518 U.S.
515 , 533 (1996). Nor under our Constitution does protected
speech or religious exercise readily give way to a “heckler’s
veto.” Good News Club v. Milford Central School , 533 U.S.
98 , 119 (2001); supra , at 22–23. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 21–418

															_________________

															JOSEPH A. KENNEDY, PETITIONER v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT

															on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit

															[June 27, 2022]

															Justice Thomas, concurring.

															I join the Court’s opinion because it correctly
holds that Bremerton School District violated Joseph Kennedy’s
First Amendment rights. I write separately to emphasize that the
Court’s opinion does not resolve two issues related to Kennedy’s
free-exercise claim.

															First, the Court refrains from deciding whether
or how public employees’ rights under the Free Exercise Clause may
or may not be different from those enjoyed by the general public.
See ante, at 19, n. 2. In “striking the appropriate balance”
between public employees’ constitutional rights and “the realities
of the employment context,” we have often “consider[ed] whether the
asserted employee right implicates the basic concerns of the
relevant constitutional provision, or whether the claimed right can
more readily give way to the requirements of the government as
employer.” Engquist v. Oregon Dept. of Agriculture , 553 U.S.
591 , 600 (2008). In the free-speech context, for example, that
inquiry has prompted us to distinguish between different kinds of
speech; we have held that “the First Amendment protects public
employee speech only when it falls within the core of First
Amendment protection—speech on matters of public concern.” Ibid. It remains an open question, however, if a similar
analysis can or should apply to free-exercise claims in light of
the “history” and “tradition” of the Free Exercise Clause. Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri , 564 U.S.
379 , 406 (2011) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and
dissenting in part); see also id., at 400 (Thomas, J.,
concurring in judgment).

															Second, the Court also does not decide what
burden a government employer must shoulder to justify restricting
an employee’s religious expression because the District had no
constitutional basis for reprimanding Kennedy under any possibly
applicable standard of scrutiny. See ante, at 20. While we
have many public-employee precedents addressing how the
interest-balancing test set out in Pickering v. Board of
Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205 , Will Cty ., 391 U.S.
563 (1968), applies under the Free Speech Clause, the Court has
never before applied Pickering balancing to a claim brought
under the Free Exercise Clause. A government employer’s burden
therefore might differ depending on which First Amendment guarantee
a public employee invokes. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 21–418

															_________________

															JOSEPH A. KENNEDY, PETITIONER v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT

															on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit

															[June 27, 2022]

															Justice Alito, concurring.

															The expression at issue in this case is unlike
that in any of our prior cases involving the free-speech rights of
public employees. Petitioner’s expression occurred while at work
but during a time when a brief lull in his duties apparently gave
him a few free moments to engage in private activities. When he
engaged in this expression, he acted in a purely private capacity.
The Court does not decide what standard applies to such expression
under the Free Speech Clause but holds only that retaliation for
this expression cannot be justified based on any of the standards
discussed. On that understanding, I join the opinion in full. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

															_________________

															No. 21–418

															_________________

															JOSEPH A. KENNEDY, PETITIONER v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT

															on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit

															[June 27, 2022]

															Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Breyer
and Justice Kagan join, dissenting.

															This case is about whether a public school must
permit a school official to kneel, bow his head, and say a prayer
at the center of a school event. The Constitution does not
authorize, let alone require, public schools to embrace this
conduct. Since Engel v. Vitale , 370 U.S.
421 (1962), this Court consistently has recognized that school
officials leading prayer is constitutionally impermissible.
Official-led prayer strikes at the core of our constitutional
protections for the religious liberty of students and their
parents, as embodied in both the Establishment Clause and the Free
Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

															The Court now charts a different path, yet again
paying almost exclusive attention to the Free Exercise Clause’s
protection for individual religious exercise while giving short
shrift to the Establishment Clause’s prohibition on state
establishment of religion. See Carson v. Makin , 596
U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (Breyer, J., dissenting) (slip op., at
1). To the degree the Court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy’s
prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts. The record
reveals that Kennedy had a longstanding practice of conducting
demonstrative prayers on the 50-yard line of the football field.
Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for
years led student athletes in prayer at the same time and location.
The Court ignores this history. The Court also ignores the severe
disruption to school events caused by Kennedy’s conduct, viewing it
as irrelevant because the Bremerton School District (District)
stated that it was suspending Kennedy to avoid it being viewed as
endorsing religion. Under the Court’s analysis, presumably this
would be a different case if the District had cited Kennedy’s
repeated disruptions of school programming and violations of school
policy regarding public access to the field as grounds for
suspending him. As the District did not articulate those grounds,
the Court assesses only the District’s Establishment Clause
concerns. It errs by assessing them divorced from the context and
history of Kennedy’s prayer practice.

															Today’s decision goes beyond merely misreading
the record. The Court overrules Lemon v. Kurtzman , 403
U.S. 602 (1971), and calls into question decades of subsequent
precedents that it deems “offshoot[s]” of that decision. Ante, at 22. In the process, the Court rejects longstanding
concerns surrounding government endorsement of religion and
replaces the standard for reviewing such questions with a new
“history and tradition” test. In addition, while the Court
reaffirms that the Establishment Clause prohibits the government
from coercing participation in religious exercise, it applies a
nearly toothless version of the coercion analysis, failing to
acknowledge the unique pressures faced by students when
participating in school-sponsored activities. This decision does a
disservice to schools and the young citizens they serve, as well as
to our Nation’s longstanding commitment to the separation of church
and state. I respectfully dissent.

															I

															As the majority tells it, Kennedy, a coach for
the District’s football program, “lost his job” for “pray[ing]
quietly while his students were otherwise occupied.” Ante, at 1. The record before us, however, tells a different story.

															A

															The District serves approximately 5,057
students and employs 332 teachers and 400 nonteaching personnel in
Kitsap County, Washington. The county is home to Bahá’ís,
Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, and many
denominations of Christians, as well as numerous residents who are
religiously unaffiliated. See Brief for Religious and
Denominational Organizations et al. as Amici Curiae 4.

															The District first hired Kennedy in 2008, on a
renewable annual contract, to serve as a part-time assistant coach
for the varsity football team and head coach for the junior varsity
team at Bremerton High School (BHS). Kennedy’s job description
required him to “[a]ccompany and direct” all home and out-of-town
games to which he was assigned, overseeing preparation and
transportation before games, being “[r]esponsible for player
behavior both on and off the field,” supervising dressing rooms,
and “secur[ing] all facilities at the close of each practice.” App.
32–34, 36. His duties encompassed “supervising student activities
immediately following the completion of the game” until the
students were released to their parents or otherwise allowed to
leave. Id., at 133.

															The District also set requirements for Kennedy’s
interactions with players, obliging him, like all coaches, to
“exhibit sportsmanlike conduct at all times,” “utilize positive
motivational strategies to encourage athletic performance,” and
serve as a “mentor and role model for the student athletes.” Id., at 56. In addition, Kennedy’s position made him
responsible for interacting with members of the community. In this
capacity, the District required Kennedy and other coaches to
“maintain positive media relations,” “always approach officials
with composure” with the expectation that they were “constantly
being observed by others,” and “communicate effectively” with
parents. Ibid. Finally, District coaches had to “[a]dhere to
[District] policies and administrative regulations” more generally. Id., at 30–31. As relevant here, the District’s policy on
“Religious-Related Activities and Practices” provided that
“[s]chool staff shall neither encourage or discourage a student
from engaging in non-disruptive oral or silent prayer or any other
form of devotional activity” and that “[r]eligious services,
programs or assemblies shall not be conducted in school facilities
during school hours or in connection with any school sponsored or
school related activity.” Id., at 26–28.

															B

															In September 2015, a coach from another
school’s football team informed BHS’ principal that Kennedy had
asked him and his team to join Kennedy in prayer. The other team’s
coach told the principal that he thought it was
“ ‘cool’ ” that the District “ ‘would allow [its]
coaches to go ahead and invite other teams’ coaches and players to
pray after a game.’ ” Id ., at 229.

															The District initiated an inquiry into whether
its policy on Religious-Related Activities and Practices had been
violated. It learned that, since his hiring in 2008, Kennedy had
been kneeling on the 50-yard line to pray immediately after shaking
hands with the opposing team. Kennedy recounted that he initially
prayed alone and that he never asked any student to join him. Over
time, however, a majority of the team came to join him, with the
numbers varying from game to game. Kennedy’s practice evolved into
postgame talks in which Kennedy would hold aloft student helmets
and deliver speeches with “overtly religious references,” which
Kennedy described as prayers, while the players kneeled around him. Id., at 40. The District also learned that students had
prayed in the past in the locker room prior to games, before
Kennedy was hired, but that Kennedy subsequently began leading
those prayers too.

															While the District’s inquiry was pending, its
athletic director attended BHS’ September 11, 2015, football game
and told Kennedy that he should not be conducting prayers with
players. After the game, while the athletic director watched,
Kennedy led a prayer out loud, holding up a player’s helmet as the
players kneeled around him. While riding the bus home with the
team, Kennedy posted on Facebook that he thought he might have just
been fired for praying.

															On September 17, the District’s superintendent
sent Kennedy a letter informing him that leading prayers with
students on the field and in the locker room would likely be found
to violate the Establishment Clause, exposing the District to legal
liability. The District acknowledged that Kennedy had “not actively
encouraged, or required, participation” but emphasized that “school
staff may not indirectly encourage students to engage in religious
activity” or “endors[e]” religious activity; rather, the District
explained, staff “must remain neutral” “while performing their job
duties.” Id., at 41–43. The District instructed Kennedy that
any motivational talks to students must remain secular, “so as to
avoid alienation of any team member.” Id ., at 44.

															The District reiterated that “all District staff
are free to engage in religious activity, including prayer, so long
as it does not interfere with job responsibilities.” Id. , at
45. To avoid endorsing student religious exercise, the District
instructed that such activity must be nondemonstrative or conducted
separately from students, away from student activities. Ibid . The District expressed concern that Kennedy had
continued his midfield prayer practice at two games after the
District’s athletic director and the varsity team’s head coach had
instructed him to stop. Id., at 40–41.

															Kennedy stopped participating in locker room
prayers and, after a game the following day, gave a secular speech.
He returned to pray in the stadium alone after his duties were over
and everyone had left the stadium, to which the District had no
objection. Kennedy then hired an attorney, who, on October 14, sent
a letter explaining that Kennedy was “motivated by his
sincerely-held religious beliefs to pray following each football
game.” Id., at 63. The letter claimed that the District had
required that Kennedy “flee from students if they voluntarily
choose to come to a place where he is privately praying during
personal time,” referring to the 50-yard line of the football field
immediately following the conclusion of a game. Id., at 70.
Kennedy requested that the District simply issue a “clarif[ication]
that the prayer is [Kennedy’s] private speech” and that the
District not “interfere” with students joining Kennedy in prayer. Id ., at 71. The letter further announced that Kennedy would
resume his 50-yard-line prayer practice the next day after the
October 16 homecoming game.[ 1 ]

															Before the homecoming game, Kennedy made
multiple media appearances to publicize his plans to pray at the
50-yard line, leading to an article in the Seattle News and a local
television broadcast about the upcoming homecoming game. In the
wake of this media coverage, the District began receiving a large
number of emails, letters, and calls, many of them threatening.

															The District responded to Kennedy’s letter
before the game on October 16. It emphasized that Kennedy’s letter
evinced “materia[l] misunderstand[ings]” of many of the facts at
issue. Id., at 76. For instance, Kennedy’s letter asserted
that he had not invited anyone to pray with him; the District noted
that that might be true of Kennedy’s September 17 prayer
specifically, but that Kennedy had acknowledged inviting others to
join him on many previous occasions. The District’s September 17
letter had explained that Kennedy traditionally held up helmets
from the BHS and opposing teams while players from each team
kneeled around him. While Kennedy’s letter asserted that his
prayers “occurr[ed] ‘on his own time,’ after his duties as a
District employee had ceased,” the District pointed out that
Kennedy “remain[ed] on duty” when his prayers occurred “immediately
following completion of the football game, when students are still
on the football field, in uniform, under the stadium lights, with
the audience still in attendance, and while Mr. Kennedy is still in
his District-issued and District-logoed attire.” Id ., at 78
(emphasis deleted). The District further noted that “[d]uring the
time following completion of the game, until players are released
to their parents or otherwise allowed to leave the event, Mr.
Kennedy, like all coaches, is clearly on duty and paid to continue
supervision of students.” Id ., at 79.

															The District stated that it had no objection to
Kennedy returning to the stadium when he was off duty to pray at
the 50-yard line, nor with Kennedy praying while on duty if it did
not interfere with his job duties or suggest the District’s
endorsement of religion. The District explained that its
establishment concerns were motivated by the specific facts at
issue, because engaging in prayer on the 50-yard line immediately
after the game finished would appear to be an extension of
Kennedy’s “prior, long-standing and well-known history of leading
students in prayer” on the 50-yard line after games. Id. , at
81. The District therefore reaffirmed its prior directives to
Kennedy.

															On October 16, after playing of the game had
concluded, Kennedy shook hands with the opposing team, and as
advertised, knelt to pray while most BHS players were singing the
school’s fight song. He quickly was joined by coaches and players
from the opposing team. Television news cameras surrounded the
group.[ 2 ] Members of the public
rushed the field to join Kennedy, jumping fences to access the
field and knocking over student band members. After the game, the
District received calls from Satanists who “ ‘intended to
conduct ceremonies on the field after football games if others were
allowed to.’ ” Id., at 181. To secure the field and
enable subsequent games to continue safely, the District was forced
to make security arrangements with the local police and to post
signs near the field and place robocalls to parents reiterating
that the field was not open to the public.

															The District sent Kennedy another letter on
October 23, explaining that his conduct at the October 16 game was
inconsistent with the District’s requirements for two reasons.
First, it “drew [him] away from [his] work”; Kennedy had, “until
recently, . . . regularly c[o]me to the locker room with
the team and other coaches following the game” and had “specific
responsibility for the supervision of players in the locker room
following games.” Id., at 92–93. Second, his conduct raised
Establishment Clause concerns, because “any reasonable observer saw
a District employee, on the field only by virtue of his employment
with the District, still on duty, under the bright lights of the
stadium, engaged in what was clearly, given [his] prior public
conduct, overtly religious conduct.” Id., at 93.

															Again, the District emphasized that it was happy
to accommodate Kennedy’s desire to pray on the job in a way that
did not interfere with his duties or risk perceptions of
endorsement. Stressing that “[d]evelopment of accommodations is an
interactive process,” it invited Kennedy to reach out to discuss
accommodations that might be mutually satisfactory, offering
proposed accommodations and inviting Kennedy to raise others. Id ., at 93–94. The District noted, however, that “further
violations of [its] directives” would be grounds for discipline or
termination. Id. , at 95.

															Kennedy did not directly respond or suggest a
satisfactory accommodation. Instead, his attorneys told the media
that he would accept only demonstrative prayer on the 50-yard line
immediately after games. During the October 23 and October 26
games, Kennedy again prayed at the 50-yard line immediately
following the game, while postgame activities were still ongoing.
At the October 23 game, Kennedy kneeled on the field alone with
players standing nearby. At the October 26 game, Kennedy prayed
surrounded by members of the public, including state
representatives who attended the game to support Kennedy. The BHS
players, after singing the fight song, joined Kennedy at midfield
after he stood up from praying.

															In an October 28 letter, the District notified
Kennedy that it was placing him on paid administrative leave for
violating its directives at the October 16, October 23, and October
26 games by kneeling on the field and praying immediately following
the games before rejoining the players for postgame talks. The
District recounted that it had offered accommodations to, and
offered to engage in further discussions with, Kennedy to permit
his religious exercise, and that Kennedy had failed to respond to
these offers. The District stressed that it remained willing to
discuss possible accommodations if Kennedy was willing.

															After the issues with Kennedy arose, several
parents reached out to the District saying that their children had
participated in Kennedy’s prayers solely to avoid separating
themselves from the rest of the team. No BHS students appeared to
pray on the field after Kennedy’s suspension.

															In Kennedy’s annual review, the head coach of
the varsity team recommended Kennedy not be rehired because he
“failed to follow district policy,” “demonstrated a lack of
cooperation with administration,” “contributed to negative
relations between parents, students, community members, coaches,
and the school district,” and “failed to supervise student-athletes
after games due to his interactions with media and community”
members. Id., at 114. The head coach himself also resigned
after 11 years in that position, expressing fears that he or his
staff would be shot from the crowd or otherwise attacked because of
the turmoil created by Kennedy’s media appearances. Three of five
other assistant coaches did not reapply.

															C

															Kennedy then filed suit. He contended, as
relevant, that the District violated his rights under the Free
Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment. Kennedy
moved for a preliminary injunction, which the District Court denied
based on the circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s prayers. The court
concluded that Kennedy had “chose[n] a time and event,” the October
16 homecoming game, that was “a big deal” for students, and then
“used that opportunity to convey his religious views” in a manner a
reasonable observer would have seen as a “public employee
. . . leading an orchestrated session of faith.” App. to
Pet. for Cert. 303. The Court of Appeals affirmed, again
emphasizing the specific context of Kennedy’s prayers. The court
rejected Kennedy’s contention that he had been “praying on the
fifty-yard line ‘silently and alone.’ ” Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist ., 869 F.3d 813, 825 (CA9 2017). The
court noted that he had in fact refused “an accommodation
permitting him to pray . . . after the stadium had
emptied,” “indicat[ing] that it is essential that his speech be
delivered in the presence of students and spectators.” Ibid .
This Court denied certiorari.

															Following discovery, the District Court granted
summary judgment to the District. The court concluded that
Kennedy’s 50-yard-line prayers were not entitled to protection
under the Free Speech Clause because his speech was made in his
capacity as a public employee, not as a private citizen. 443 F.
Supp. 3d 1223, 1237 (WD Wash. 2020). In addition, the court held
that Kennedy’s prayer practice violated the Establishment Clause,
reasoning that “speech from the center of the football field
immediately after each game . . . conveys official
sanction.” Id., at 1238. That was especially true where
Kennedy, a school employee, initiated the prayer; Kennedy was
“joined by students or adults to create a group of worshippers in a
place the school controls access to”; and Kennedy had a long
“history of engaging in religious activity with players” that would
have led a familiar observer to believe that Kennedy was
“continuing this tradition” with prayer at the 50-yard line. Id. , at 1238–1239. The District Court further found that
players had reported “feeling compelled to join Kennedy in prayer
to stay connected with the team or ensure playing time,” and that
the “slow accumulation of players joining Kennedy suggests exactly
the type of vulnerability to social pressure that makes the
Establishment Clause vital in the high school context.” Id. ,
at 1239. The court rejected Kennedy’s free exercise claim, finding
the District’s directive narrowly tailored to its Establishment
Clause concerns and citing Kennedy’s refusal to cooperate in
finding an accommodation that would be acceptable to him. Id., at 1240.

															The Court of Appeals affirmed, explaining that
“the facts in the record utterly belie [Kennedy’s] contention that
the prayer was personal and private.” 991 F.3d 1004, 1017 (CA9
2021). The court instead concluded that Kennedy’s speech
constituted government speech, as he “repeatedly acknowledged
that—and behaved as if—he was a mentor, motivational speaker, and
role model to students specifically at the conclusion of the game.” Id. , at 1015 (emphasis deleted). In the alternative, the
court concluded that Kennedy’s speech, even if in his capacity as a
private citizen, was appropriately regulated by the District to
avoid an Establishment Clause violation, emphasizing once more that
this conclusion was tied to the specific “evolution of Kennedy’s
prayer practice with students” over time. Id., at 1018. The
court rejected Kennedy’s free exercise claim for the reasons stated
by the District Court. Id., at 1020. The Court of Appeals
denied rehearing en banc, and this Court granted certiorari.

															II

															Properly understood, this case is not about
the limits on an individual’s ability to engage in private prayer
at work. This case is about whether a school district is required
to allow one of its employees to incorporate a public,
communicative display of the employee’s personal religious beliefs
into a school event, where that display is recognizable as part of
a longstanding practice of the employee ministering religion to
students as the public watched. A school district is not required
to permit such conduct; in fact, the Establishment Clause prohibits
it from doing so.

															A

															The Establishment Clause prohibits States from
adopting laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” Amdt. 1;
see Wallace v. Jaffree , 472 U.S.
38 , 49 (1985) (recognizing the Clause’s incorporation against
the States). The First Amendment’s next Clause prohibits the
government from making any law “prohibiting the free exercise
thereof.” Taken together, these two Clauses (the Religion Clauses)
express the view, foundational to our constitutional system, “that
religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be
either proscribed or prescribed by the State.” Lee v. Weisman , 505
U.S. 577 , 589 (1992). Instead, “preservation and transmission
of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice
committed to the private sphere,” which has the “freedom to pursue
that mission.” Ibid. The Establishment Clause protects this freedom
by “command[ing] a separation of church and state.” Cutter v. Wilkinson , 544 U.S.
709 , 719 (2005). At its core, this means forbidding
“sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the
sovereign in religious activity.” Walz v. Tax Comm’n of
City of New York , 397 U.S.
664 , 668 (1970). In the context of public schools, it means
that a State cannot use “its public school system to aid any or all
religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines
and ideals.” Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Ed. of
School Dist. No. 71, Champaign Cty. , 333
U.S. 203 , 211 (1948).

															Indeed, “[t]he Court has been particularly
vigilant in monitoring compliance with the Establishment Clause in
elementary and secondary schools.” Edwards v. Aguillard , 482 U.S.
578 , 583–584 (1987). The reasons motivating this vigilance
inhere in the nature of schools themselves and the young people
they serve. Two are relevant here.

															First, government neutrality toward religion is
particularly important in the public school context given the role
public schools play in our society. “ ‘The public school is at
once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for
promoting our common destiny,’ ” meaning that “ ‘[i]n no
activity of the State is it more vital to keep out divisive forces
than in its schools.’ ” Id. at 584. Families “entrust
public schools with the education of their children . . .
on the understanding that the classroom will not purposely be used
to advance religious views that may conflict with the private
beliefs of the student and his or her family.” Ibid. Accordingly, the Establishment Clause “proscribes public schools
from ‘conveying or attempting to convey a message that religion or
a particular religious belief is favored or preferred’ ” or
otherwise endorsing religious beliefs. Lee , 505 U. S.,
at 604–605 (Blackmun, J., concurring) (emphasis deleted).

															Second, schools face a higher risk of
unconstitutionally “coerc[ing] . . . support or
participat[ion] in religion or its exercise” than other government
entities. Id., at 587 (opinion of the Court). The State
“exerts great authority and coercive power” in schools as a general
matter “through mandatory attendance requirements.” Edwards ,
482 U. S., at 584. Moreover, the State exercises that great
authority over children, who are uniquely susceptible to “subtle
coercive pressure.” Lee , 505 U. S., at 588; cf. Town
of Greece v. Galloway , 572
U.S. 565 , 590 (2014) (plurality opinion) (“[M]ature adults,”
unlike children, may not be “ ‘readily susceptible to
religious indoctrination or peer pressure’ ”). Children are
particularly vulnerable to coercion because of their “emulation of
teachers as role models” and “susceptibility to peer pressure.” Edwards , 482 U. S., at 584. Accordingly, this Court has
emphasized that “the State may not, consistent with the
Establishment Clause, place primary and secondary school children”
in the dilemma of choosing between “participating, with all that
implies, or protesting” a religious exercise in a public school. Lee , 505 U. S., at 593.

															Given the twin Establishment Clause concerns of
endorsement and coercion, it is unsurprising that the Court has
consistently held integrating prayer into public school activities
to be unconstitutional, including when student participation is not
a formal requirement or prayer is silent. See Wallace , 472 U.S.
38 (mandatory moment of silence for prayer); School Dist. of
Abington Township v. Schempp , 374
U.S. 203 (1963) (nonmandatory recitation of Bible verses and
prayer); Engel , 370 U. S., at 424 (nonmandatory
recitation of one-sentence prayer). The Court also has held that
incorporating a nondenominational general benediction into a
graduation ceremony is unconstitutional. Lee , 505 U.S.
577 . Finally, this Court has held that including prayers in
student football games is unconstitutional, even when delivered by
students rather than staff and even when students themselves
initiated the prayer. Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe , 530 U.S.
290 (2000).

															B

															Under these precedents, the Establishment
Clause violation at hand is clear. This Court has held that a
“[s]tate officia[l] direct[ing] the performance of a formal
religious exercise” as a part of the “ceremon[y]” of a school event
“conflicts with settled rules pertaining to prayer exercises for
students.” Lee , 505 U. S., at 586–587. Kennedy was on
the job as a school official “on government property” when he
incorporated a public, demonstrative prayer into
“government-sponsored school-related events” as a regularly
scheduled feature of those events. Santa Fe , 530
U. S., at 302.

															Kennedy’s tradition of a 50-yard line prayer
thus strikes at the heart of the Establishment Clause’s concerns
about endorsement. For students and community members at the game,
Coach Kennedy was the face and the voice of the District during
football games. The timing and location Kennedy selected for his
prayers were “clothed in the traditional indicia of school sporting
events.” Id., at 308. Kennedy spoke from the playing field,
which was accessible only to students and school employees, not to
the general public. Although the football game itself had ended,
the football game events had not; Kennedy himself acknowledged that
his responsibilities continued until the players went home.
Kennedy’s postgame responsibilities were what placed Kennedy on the
50-yard line in the first place; that was, after all, where he met
the opposing team to shake hands after the game. Permitting a
school coach to lead students and others he invited onto the field
in prayer at a predictable time after each game could only be
viewed as a postgame tradition occurring “with the approval of the
school administration.” Ibid. Kennedy’s prayer practice also implicated the
coercion concerns at the center of this Court’s Establishment
Clause jurisprudence. This Court has previously recognized a
heightened potential for coercion where school officials are
involved, as their “effort[s] to monitor prayer will be perceived
by the students as inducing a participation they might otherwise
reject.” Lee , 505 U. S., at 590. The reasons for
fearing this pressure are self-evident. This Court has recognized
that students face immense social pressure. Students look up to
their teachers and coaches as role models and seek their approval.
Students also depend on this approval for tangible benefits.
Players recognize that gaining the coach’s approval may pay
dividends small and large, from extra playing time to a stronger
letter of recommendation to additional support in college athletic
recruiting. In addition to these pressures to please their coaches,
this Court has recognized that players face “immense social
pressure” from their peers in the “extracurricular event that is
American high school football.” Santa Fe , 530 U. S., at
311.

															The record before the Court bears this out. The
District Court found, in the evidentiary record, that some students
reported joining Kennedy’s prayer because they felt social pressure
to follow their coach and teammates. Kennedy told the District that
he began his prayers alone and that players followed each other
over time until a majority of the team joined him, an evolution
showing coercive pressure at work.

															Kennedy does not defend his longstanding
practice of leading the team in prayer out loud on the field as
they kneeled around him. Instead, he responds, and the Court
accepts, that his highly visible and demonstrative prayer at the
last three games before his suspension did not violate the
Establishment Clause because these prayers were quiet and thus
private. This Court’s precedents, however, do not permit isolating
government actions from their context in determining whether they
violate the Establishment Clause. To the contrary, this Court has
repeatedly stated that Establishment Clause inquiries are fact
specific and require careful consideration of the origins and
practical reality of the specific practice at issue. See, e.g. , id., at 315; Lee , 505 U. S., at
597. In Santa Fe , the Court specifically addressed how
to determine whether the implementation of a new policy regarding
prayers at football games “insulates the continuation of such
prayers from constitutional scrutiny.” 530 U. S., at 315. The
Court held that “inquiry into this question not only can, but must,
include an examination of the circumstances surrounding” the change
in policy, the “long-established tradition” before the change, and
the “ ‘unique circumstances’ ” of the school in question. Ibid. This Court’s precedent thus does not permit treating
Kennedy’s “new” prayer practice as occurring on a blank slate, any
more than those in the District’s school community would have
experienced Kennedy’s changed practice (to the degree there was
one) as erasing years of prior actions by Kennedy.

															Like the policy change in Santa Fe, Kennedy’s “changed” prayers at these last three games were a clear
continuation of a “long-established tradition of sanctioning”
school official involvement in student prayers. Ibid .
Students at the three games following Kennedy’s changed practice
witnessed Kennedy kneeling at the same time and place where he had
led them in prayer for years. They witnessed their peers from
opposing teams joining Kennedy, just as they had when Kennedy was
leading joint team prayers. They witnessed members of the public
and state representatives going onto the field to support Kennedy’s
cause and pray with him. Kennedy did nothing to stop this
unauthorized access to the field, a clear dereliction of his
duties. The BHS players in fact joined the crowd around Kennedy
after he stood up from praying at the last game. That BHS students
did not join Kennedy in these last three specific prayers did not
make those events compliant with the Establishment Clause. The
coercion to do so was evident. Kennedy himself apparently
anticipated that his continued prayer practice would draw student
participation, requesting that the District agree that it would not
“interfere” with students joining him in the future. App. 71.

															Finally, Kennedy stresses that he never formally
required students to join him in his prayers. But existing
precedents do not require coercion to be explicit, particularly
when children are involved. To the contrary, this Court’s
Establishment Clause jurisprudence establishes that “ ‘the
government may no more use social pressure to enforce orthodoxy
than it may use more direct means.’ ” Santa Fe ,
530 U. S., at 312. Thus, the Court has held that the
Establishment Clause “will not permit” a school “ ‘to exact
religious conformity from a student as the price’ of joining her
classmates at a varsity football game.” Ibid. To uphold a
coach’s integration of prayer into the ceremony of a football game,
in the context of an established history of the coach inviting
student involvement in prayer, is to exact precisely this price
from students.

															C

															As the Court explains, see ante, at 15,
Kennedy did not “shed [his] constitutional rights . . .
at the schoolhouse gate” while on duty as a coach. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist. , 393 U.S.
503 , 506 (1969). Constitutional rights, however, are not
absolutes. Rights often conflict and balancing of interests is
often required to protect the separate rights at issue. See Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , 597
U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 12) (Breyer, Sotomayor,
and Kagan, JJ., dissenting) (noting that “the presence of
countervailing interests . . . is what ma[kes]” a
constitutional question “hard, and what require[s] balancing”).

															The particular tensions at issue in this case,
between the speech interests of the government and its employees
and between public institutions’ religious neutrality and private
individuals’ religious exercise, are far from novel. This Court’s
settled precedents offer guidance to assist courts, governments,
and the public in navigating these tensions. Under these
precedents, the District’s interest in avoiding an Establishment
Clause violation justified both its time and place restrictions on
Kennedy’s speech and his exercise of religion.

															First, as to Kennedy’s free speech claim,
Kennedy “accept[ed] certain limitations” on his freedom of speech
when he accepted government employment. Garcetti v. Ceballos , 547 U.S.
410 , 418 (2006). The Court has recognized that “[g]overnment
employers, like private employers, need a significant degree of
control over their employees’ words and actions” to ensure “the
efficient provision of public services.” Ibid . Case law
instructs balancing “the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in
commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the
State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public
services it performs through its employees” to determine whose
interests should prevail. Pickering v. Board of Ed. of
Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty. , 391 U.S.
563 , 568 (1968).

															As the Court of Appeals below outlined, the
District has a strong argument that Kennedy’s speech, formally
integrated into the center of a District event, was speech in his
official capacity as an employee that is not entitled to First
Amendment protections at all. See Garcetti , 547 U. S.,
at 418; 991 F. 3d, at 1014–1016 (applying Garcetti ).[ 3 ] It is
unnecessary to resolve this question, however, because, even
assuming that Kennedy’s speech was in his capacity as a private
citizen, the District’s responsibilities under the Establishment
Clause provided “adequate justification” for restricting it. Garcetti , 547 U. S., at 418.

															Similarly, Kennedy’s free exercise claim must be
considered in light of the fact that he is a school official and,
as such, his participation in religious exercise can create
Establishment Clause conflicts. Accordingly, his right to pray at
any time and in any manner he wishes while exercising his
professional duties is not absolute. See Lee , 505
U. S., at 587 (noting that a school official’s choice to
integrate a prayer is “attributable to the State”). As the Court
explains, see ante, at 13–14, the parties agree (and I
therefore assume) that for the purposes of Kennedy’s claim, the
burden is on the District to establish that its policy prohibiting
Kennedy’s public prayers was the least restrictive means of
furthering a compelling state interest. Church of Lukumi Babalu
Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah , 508 U.S.
520 , 546 (1993).

															Here, the District’s directive prohibiting
Kennedy’s demonstrative speech at the 50-yard line was narrowly
tailored to avoid an Establishment Clause violation. The District’s
suspension of Kennedy followed a long history. The last three games
proved that Kennedy did not intend to pray silently, but to thrust
the District into incorporating a religious ceremony into its
events, as he invited others to join his prayer and anticipated in
his communications with the District that students would want to
join as well. Notably, the District repeatedly sought to work with
Kennedy to develop an accommodation to permit him to engage in
religious exercise during or after his game-related
responsibilities. Kennedy, however, ultimately refused to respond
to the District’s suggestions and declined to communicate with the
District, except through media appearances. Because the District’s
valid Establishment Clause concerns satisfy strict scrutiny,
Kennedy’s free exercise claim fails as well.

															III

															Despite the overwhelming precedents
establishing that school officials leading prayer violates the
Establishment Clause, the Court today holds that Kennedy’s midfield
prayer practice did not violate the Establishment Clause. This
decision rests on an erroneous understanding of the Religion
Clauses. It also disregards the balance this Court’s cases strike
among the rights conferred by the Clauses. The Court relies on an
assortment of pluralities, concurrences, and dissents by Members of
the current majority to effect fundamental changes in this Court’s
Religion Clauses jurisprudence, all the while proclaiming that
nothing has changed at all.

															A

															This case involves three Clauses of the First
Amendment. As a threshold matter, the Court today proceeds from two
mistaken understandings of the way the protections these Clauses
embody interact.

															First, the Court describes the Free Exercise and
Free Speech Clauses as “work[ing] in tandem” to “provid[e]
overlapping protection for expressive religious activities,”
leaving religious speech “doubly protect[ed].” Ante, at 11.
This narrative noticeably (and improperly) sets the Establishment
Clause to the side. The Court is correct that certain expressive
religious activities may fall within the ambit of both the Free
Speech Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, but “the First
Amendment protects speech and religion by quite different
mechanisms.” Lee , 505 U. S., at 591. The First
Amendment protects speech “by ensuring its full expression even
when the government participates.” Ibid. Its “method for
protecting freedom of worship and freedom of conscience in
religious matters is quite the reverse,” however, based on the
understanding that “the government is not a prime participant” in
“religious debate or expression,” whereas government is the “object
of some of our most important speech.” Ibid. Thus, as this
Court has explained, while the Free Speech Clause has “close
parallels in the speech provisions of the First Amendment,” the
First Amendment’s protections for religion diverge from those for
speech because of the Establishment Clause, which provides a
“specific prohibition on forms of state intervention in religious
affairs with no precise counterpart in the speech provisions.” Ibid. Therefore, while our Constitution “counsel[s] mutual
respect and tolerance,” the Constitution’s vision of how to achieve
this end does in fact involve some “singl[ing] out” of religious
speech by the government. Ante , at 1. This is consistent
with “the lesson of history that was and is the inspiration for the
Establishment Clause, the lesson that in the hands of government
what might begin as a tolerant expression of religious views may
end in a policy to indoctrinate and coerce.” Lee , 505
U. S., at 591–592.

															Second, the Court contends that the lower courts
erred by introducing a false tension between the Free Exercise and
Establishment Clauses. See ante, at 20–21. The Court,
however, has long recognized that these two Clauses, while
“express[ing] complementary values,” “often exert conflicting
pressures.” Cutter , 544 U. S., at 719. See also Locke v. Davey , 540 U.S.
712 , 718 (2004) (describing the Clauses as “frequently in
tension”). The “absolute terms” of the two Clauses mean that they
“tend to clash” if “expanded to a logical extreme.” Walz ,
397 U. S., at 668–669.

															The Court inaccurately implies that the courts
below relied upon a rule that the Establishment Clause must always
“prevail” over the Free Exercise Clause. Ante, at 20. In
focusing almost exclusively on Kennedy’s free exercise claim,
however, and declining to recognize the conflicting rights at
issue, the Court substitutes one supposed blanket rule for another.
The proper response where tension arises between the two Clauses is
not to ignore it, which effectively silently elevates one party’s
right above others. The proper response is to identify the tension
and balance the interests based on a careful analysis of “whether
[the] particular acts in question are intended to establish or
interfere with religious beliefs and practices or have the effect
of doing so.” Walz , 397 U. S., at 669. As discussed
above, that inquiry leads to the conclusion that permitting
Kennedy’s desired religious practice at the time and place of his
choosing, without regard to the legitimate needs of his employer,
violates the Establishment Clause in the particular context at
issue here. Supra, at 16–20.

															B

															For decades, the Court has recognized that, in
determining whether a school has violated the Establishment Clause,
“one of the relevant questions is whether an objective observer,
acquainted with the text, legislative history, and implementation
of the [practice], would perceive it as a state endorsement of
prayer in public schools.” Santa Fe , 530 U. S., at
308 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court now says for the
first time that endorsement simply does not matter, and completely
repudiates the test established in Lemon , 403
U.S. 602 . Ante, at 22–24. Both of these moves are
erroneous and, despite the Court’s assurances, novel.

															Start with endorsement. The Court reserves
particular criticism for the longstanding understanding that
government action that appears to endorse religion violates the
Establishment Clause, which it describes as an “offshoot” of Lemon and paints as a “ ‘modified heckler’s veto, in
which . . . religious activity can be proscribed’ ”
based on “ ‘ “perceptions” ’ ” or
“ ‘ “discomfort.” ’ ” Ante, at 21–22
(quoting Good News Club v. Milford Central School , 533 U.S.
98 , 119 (2001)). This is a strawman. Precedent long has
recognized that endorsement concerns under the Establishment
Clause, properly understood, bear no relation to a
“ ‘heckler’s veto.’ ” Ante , as 22 . Good
News Club itself explained the difference between the two: The
endorsement inquiry considers the perspective not of just any
hypothetical or uninformed observer experiencing subjective
discomfort, but of “ ‘the reasonable observer’ ” who is
“ ‘aware of the history and context of the community and forum
in which the religious [speech takes place].’ ” 533
U. S., at 119. That is because “ ‘the endorsement inquiry
is not about the perceptions of particular individuals or saving
isolated nonadherents from . . . discomfort’ ” but
concern “ ‘with the political community writ large.’ ” Ibid. (emphasis deleted).

															Given this concern for the political community,
it is unsurprising that the Court has long prioritized endorsement
concerns in the context of public education. See, e.g., Santa Fe , 530 U. S., at 305; Wallace , 472
U. S., at 60–61; Edwards , 482 U. S., at 578, 593;
see also Lee , 505 U. S., at 618–619 (Souter, J.,
concurring) (explaining that many of the Court’s Establishment
Clause holdings in the school context are concerned not with
whether the policy in question “coerced students to participate in
prayer” but with whether it “ ‘convey[ed] a message of state
approval of prayer activities in the public schools’ ”
(quoting Wallace , 472 U. S., at 61)).[ 4 ] No subsequent decisions in other contexts,
including the cases about monuments and legislative meetings on
which the Court relies, have so much as questioned the application
of this core Establishment Clause concern in the context of public
schools. In fact, Town of Greece v. Galloway , 572 U.S.
565 , which held a prayer during a town meeting permissible,
specifically distinguished Lee because Lee considered
the Establishment Clause in the context of schools. 572 U. S.,
at 590 (plurality opinion).

															Paying heed to these precedents would not
“ ‘purge from the public sphere’ anything an observer could
reasonably infer endorses” religion. Ante, at 22. To the
contrary, the Court has recognized that “there will be instances
when religious values, religious practices, and religious persons
will have some interaction with the public schools and their
students.” Lee, 505 U. S., at 598–599. These instances,
the Court has said, are “often questions of accommodat[ing]”
religious practices to the degree possible while respecting the
Establishment Clause. Id. , at 599.[ 5 ] In short, the endorsement inquiry dictated by
precedent is a measured, practical, and administrable one, designed
to account for the competing interests present within any given
community.

															Despite all of this authority, the Court claims
that it “long ago abandoned” both the “endorsement test” and this
Court’s decision in Lemon 403
U.S. 602 . Ante, at 22. The Court chiefly cites the
plurality opinion in American Legion v. American Humanist
Assn. , 588 U. S. ___ (2019) to support this contention.
That plurality opinion, to be sure, criticized Lemon ’s
effort at establishing a “grand unified theory of the Establishment
Clause” as poorly suited to the broad “array” of diverse
establishment claims. 588 U. S ., at ___, ___ (slip op.,
at 13, 24). All the Court in American Legion ultimately
held, however, was that application of the Lemon test to
“longstanding monuments, symbols, and practices” was ill-advised
for reasons specific to those contexts. 588 U. S ., at
___ (slip op., at 16); see also id., at ___–___ (slip op.,
at 16–21) (discussing at some length why the Lemon test was
a poor fit for those circumstances). The only categorical rejection
of Lemon in American Legion appeared in separate
writings. See 588 U. S. , at ___ (slip op., at 1)
(Kavanaugh, J., concurring); id., at ___ (slip op., at 6)
(Thomas, J., concurring in judgment); id., at ___ (slip op.,
at 7) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment); see ante, at
23, n. 4.[ 6 ]

															The Court now goes much further, overruling Lemon entirely and in all contexts. It is wrong to do so. Lemon summarized “the cumulative criteria developed by the
Court over many years” of experience “draw[ing] lines” as to when
government engagement with religion violated the Establishment
Clause. 403 U. S., at 612. Lemon properly concluded
that precedent generally directed consideration of whether the
government action had a “secular legislative purpose,” whether its
“principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor
inhibits religion,” and whether in practice it “foster[s] ‘an
excessive government entanglement with religion.’ ” Id., at 612–613. It is true “that rigid application of the Lemon test does not solve every Establishment Clause
problem,” but that does not mean that the test has no value. American Legion , 588 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1)
(Kagan, J., concurring in part).

															To put it plainly, the purposes and effects of a
government action matter in evaluating whether that action violates
the Establishment Clause, as numerous precedents beyond Lemon instruct in the particular context of public schools.
See supra, at 14–16, 18. Neither the critiques of Lemon as setting out a dispositive test for all seasons nor
the fact that the Court has not referred to Lemon in all
situations support this Court’s decision to dismiss that precedent
entirely, particularly in the school context.

															C

															Upon overruling one “grand unified theory,”
the Court introduces another: It holds that courts must interpret
whether an Establishment Clause violation has occurred mainly “by
‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’ ” Ante, at 23 (quoting Town of Greece , 572 U. S.,
at 576 (internal quotation marks omitted)). Here again, the Court
professes that nothing has changed. In fact, while the Court has
long referred to historical practice as one element of the analysis
in specific Establishment Clause cases, the Court has never
announced this as a general test or exclusive focus. American
Legion, 588 U. S. , at ___–___ (Breyer, J.,
concurring) (slip op., at 2–3) (noting that the Court was
“appropriately ‘look[ing] to history for guidance’ ” but was
not “adopt[ing] a ‘history and tradition test’ ”).

															The Court reserves any meaningful explanation of
its history-and-tradition test for another day, content for now to
disguise it as established law and move on. It should not escape
notice, however, that the effects of the majority’s new rule could
be profound. The problems with elevating history and tradition over
purpose and precedent are well documented. See Dobbs , 597
U. S., at ___ (Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting)
(slip op., at 16) (explaining that the Framers “defined rights in
general terms to permit future evolution in their scope and
meaning”); New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen , 597 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2022) (Breyer, J.,
dissenting) (slip op., at 24–28) (explaining the pitfalls of a
“near-exclusive reliance on history” and offering examples of when
this Court has “misread” history in the past); Brown v. Davenport , 596 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2022) (Kagan, J.,
dissenting) (slip op., at 7–8) (noting the inaccuracies risked when
courts “play amateur historian”).

															For now, it suffices to say that the Court’s
history-and-tradition test offers essentially no guidance for
school administrators. If even judges and Justices, with full
adversarial briefing and argument tailored to precise legal issues,
regularly disagree (and err) in their amateur efforts at history,
how are school administrators, faculty, and staff supposed to
adapt? How will school administrators exercise their
responsibilities to manage school curriculum and events when the
Court appears to elevate individuals’ rights to religious exercise
above all else? Today’s opinion provides little in the way of
answers; the Court simply sets the stage for future legal changes
that will inevitably follow the Court’s choice today to upset
longstanding rules.

															D

															Finally, the Court acknowledges that the
Establishment Clause prohibits the government from coercing people
to engage in religion practice, ante , at 24–25, but its
analysis of coercion misconstrues both the record and this Court’s
precedents.

															The Court claims that the District “never raised
coercion concerns” simply because the District conceded that there
was “ ‘no evidence that students [were] directly coerced to pray with Kennedy.’ ” Ante, at 25 (emphasis
added). The Court’s suggestion that coercion must be “direc[t]” to
be cognizable under the Establishment Clause is contrary to
long-established precedent. The Court repeatedly has recognized
that indirect coercion may raise serious establishment concerns,
and that “there are heightened concerns with protecting freedom of
conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and
secondary public schools.” Lee , 505 U. S., at 592
(opinion of the Court); see also supra, at 15–16. Tellingly, none of this Court’s major cases involving school prayer
concerned school practices that required students to do any more
than listen silently to prayers, and some did not even formally
require students to listen, instead providing that attendance was
not mandatory. See Santa Fe , 530 U. S., at
296–298; Lee , 505 U. S., at 593; Wallace , 472
U. S., at 40; School Dist. of Abington Township , 374
U. S., at 205; Engel , 370 U. S., at 422.
Nevertheless, the Court concluded that the practices were coercive
as a constitutional matter.

															Today’s Court quotes the Lee Court’s
remark that enduring others’ speech is “ ‘part of learning how
to live in a pluralistic society.’ ” Ante, at 26
(quoting Lee , 505 U. S., at 590). The Lee Court,
however, expressly concluded, in the very same paragraph, that
“[t]his argument cannot prevail” in the school-prayer context
because the notion that being subject to a “brief ” prayer in
school is acceptable “overlooks a fundamental dynamic of the
Constitution”: its “specific prohibition on . . . state
intervention in religious affairs.” Id ., at 591; see also id., at 594 (“[T]he government may no more use social
pressure to enforce orthodoxy than it may use more direct
means”).[ 7 ]

															The Court also distinguishes Santa Fe because Kennedy’s prayers “were not publicly
broadcast or recited to a captive audience.” Ante, at 30.
This misses the point. In Santa Fe , a student council
chaplain delivered a prayer over the public-address system before
each varsity football game of the season. 530 U. S., at 294.
Students were not required as a general matter to attend the games,
but “cheerleaders, members of the band, and, of course, the team
members themselves” were, and the Court would have found an
“improper effect of coercing those present” even if it “regard[ed]
every high school student’s decision to attend . . . as
purely voluntary.” Id., at 311–312. Kennedy’s prayers raise
precisely the same concerns. His prayers did not need to be
broadcast. His actions spoke louder than his words. His prayers
were intentionally, visually demonstrative to an audience aware of
their history and no less captive than the audience in Santa Fe , with spectators watching and some players
perhaps engaged in a song, but all waiting to rejoin their coach
for a postgame talk. Moreover, Kennedy’s prayers had a greater
coercive potential because they were delivered not by a student,
but by their coach, who was still on active duty for postgame
events.

															In addition, despite the direct record evidence
that students felt coerced to participate in Kennedy’s prayers, the
Court nonetheless concludes that coercion was not present in any
event because “Kennedy did not seek to direct any prayers to
students or require anyone else to participate.” Ante, at
26; see also ante, at 30, n. 7 (contending that the
fact that “students might choose, unprompted, to participate” in
their coach’s on-the-field prayers does not “necessarily prove them
coercive”). But nowhere does the Court engage with the unique
coercive power of a coach’s actions on his adolescent
players.[ 8 ]

															In any event, the Court makes this assertion
only by drawing a bright line between Kennedy’s yearslong practice
of leading student prayers, which the Court does not defend, and
Kennedy’s final three prayers, which BHS students did not join, but
student peers from the other teams did. See ante , at 26
(distinguishing Kennedy’s prior practice and focusing narrowly on
“three prayers . . . in October 2015”). As discussed
above, see supra, at 18, this mode of analysis contravenes
precedent by “turn[ing] a blind eye to the context in which
[Kennedy’s practice] arose,” Santa Fe , 530 U. S.,
at 315.[ 9 ] This Court’s
precedents require a more nuanced inquiry into the realities of
coercion in the specific school context concerned than the majority
recognizes today. The question before the Court is not whether a
coach taking a knee to pray on the field would constitute an
Establishment Clause violation in any and all circumstances. It is
whether permitting Kennedy to continue a demonstrative prayer
practice at the center of the football field after years of
inappropriately leading students in prayer in the same spot, at
that same time, and in the same manner, which led students to feel
compelled to join him, violates the Establishment Clause. It
does.

															Having disregarded this context, the Court finds
Kennedy’s three-game practice distinguishable from precedent
because the prayers were “quie[t]” and the students were otherwise
“occupied.” Ante, at 26. The record contradicts this
narrative. Even on the Court’s myopic framing of the facts, at two
of the three games on which the Court focuses, players witnessed
student peers from the other team and other authority figures
surrounding Kennedy and joining him in prayer. The coercive
pressures inherent in such a situation are obvious. Moreover,
Kennedy’s actual demand to the District was that he give “verbal”
prayers specifically at the midfield position where he
traditionally led team prayers, and that students be allowed to
join him “voluntarily” and pray. App. 64, 69–71. Notably, the Court
today does not embrace this demand, but it nonetheless rejects the
District’s right to ensure that students were not pressured to
pray.

															To reiterate, the District did not argue, and
neither court below held, that “ any visible religious
conduct by a teacher or coach should be deemed . . .
impermissibly coercive on students.” Ante, at 28. Nor has
anyone contended that a coach may never visibly pray on the field.
The courts below simply recognized that Kennedy continued to
initiate prayers visible to students, while still on duty during
school events, under the exact same circumstances as his past
practice of leading student prayer. It is unprecedented for the
Court to hold that this conduct, taken as a whole, did not raise
cognizable coercion concerns. Importantly, nothing in the Court’s
opinion should be read as calling into question that Kennedy’s
conduct may have raised other concerns regarding disruption of
school events or misuse of school facilities that would have
separately justified employment action against Kennedy.

															*  *  *

															The Free Exercise Clause and Establishment
Clause are equally integral in protecting religious freedom in our
society. The first serves as “a promise from our government,” while
the second erects a “backstop that disables our government from
breaking it” and “start[ing] us down the path to the past, when
[the right to free exercise] was routinely abridged.” Trinity
Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer , 582
U. S. ___, ___ (2017) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (slip op.,
at 26).

															Today, the Court once again weakens the
backstop. 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 between church and state, eroding the protections for
religious liberty for all. Today’s decision is particularly
misguided because it elevates the religious rights of a school
official, who voluntarily accepted public employment and the limits
that public employment entails, over those of his students, who are
required to attend school and who this Court has long recognized
are particularly vulnerable and deserving of protection. In doing
so, the Court sets us further down a perilous path in forcing
States to entangle themselves with religion, with all of our rights
hanging in the balance. As much as the Court protests otherwise,
today’s decision is no victory for religious liberty. I
respectfully dissent. Notes 1 The Court recounts that
Kennedy was “willing to say his ‘prayer while the players were
walking to the locker room’ or ‘bus,’ and then catch up with his
team.” Ante, at 4 (quoting App. 280–282); see also ante, at 5. Kennedy made the quoted remarks, however, only
during his deposition in the underlying litigation, stating in
response to a question that such timing would have been “physically
possible” and “possibly” have been acceptable to him, but that he
had never “discuss[ed] with the District whether that was a
possibility for [him] to do” and had “no idea” whether his lawyers
raised it with the District. App. 280. 2 The Court describes the
events of the October 16 game as having “spurred media coverage of
Mr. Kennedy’s case.” Ante, at 5. In fact, the District Court
found that Kennedy himself generated the media coverage by
publicizing his dispute with the District in his initial Facebook
posting and in his media appearances before the October 16 game.
443 F. Supp. 3d 1223, 1230 (WD Wash. 2020). 3 The Court’s primary
argument that Kennedy’s speech is not in his official capacity is
that he was permitted “to call home, check a text, [or] socialize”
during the time period in question. Ante, at 18–19. These
truly private, informal communications bear little resemblance,
however, to what Kennedy did. Kennedy explicitly sought to make his
demonstrative prayer a permanent ritual of the postgame events, at
the physical center of those events, where he was present by virtue
of his job responsibilities, and after years of giving
prayer-filled motivational speeches to students at the same
relative time and location. In addition, Kennedy gathered public
officials and other members of the public onto the field to join
him in the prayer, contrary to school policies controlling access
to the field. Such behavior raises an entirely different risk of
depriving the employer of “control over what the employer itself
has commissioned or created” than an employee making a call home on
the sidelines, fleetingly checking email, or pausing to hug a
friend in the crowd. Garcetti , 547 U. S., at
422. 4 The Court attempts to recast Lee and Santa Fe as solely concerning coercion, ante, at 29–30, but both cases emphasized that it was
important to avoid appearances of “ ‘state endorsement of
prayer in public schools.’ ” Santa Fe , 530
U. S., at 308; see Lee , 505 U. S., at 590 (finding
that the “degree of school involvement” indicated that the “prayers
bore the imprint of the State”). 5 The notion that
integration of religious practices into the workplace may require
compromise and accommodation is not unique to the public-employer
context where Establishment Clause concerns arise. The Court’s
precedents on religious discrimination claims similarly recognize
that the employment context requires balancing employer and
employee interests, and that religious practice need not always be
accommodated. See Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist. ,
586 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 6) (Alito, J.,
statement respecting denial of certiorari) (noting that “Title
VII’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of religion does
not require an employer to make any accommodation that imposes more
than a de minimis burden”). Surely, an employee’s religious
practice that forces a school district to engage in burdensome
measures to stop spectators from rushing onto a field and knocking
people down imposes much more than a de minimis burden. 6 The Court also cites Shurtleff v. Boston , 596 U. S. ___ (2022), as
evidence that the Lemon test has been rejected. See ante, at 23. Again, while separate writings in Shurtleff criticized Lemon , the Court did not. The
opinion of the Court simply applied the longstanding rule that,
when the government does not speak for itself, it cannot exclude
speech based on the speech’s “ ‘religious viewpoint.’ ” Shurtleff , 596 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 12) (quoting Good News Club , 533 U. S., at 112). The Court further
infers Lemon ’s implicit overruling from recent decisions
that do not apply its test. See ante, at 23, n. 4. As
explained above, however, not applying a test in a given case is a
different matter from overruling it entirely and, moreover, the
Court has never before questioned the relevance of endorsement in
the school-prayer context. 7 The Court further claims
that Lee is distinguishable because it involved prayer at an
event in which the school had “ ‘in every practical sense
compelled attendance and participation in [a] religious
exercise.’ ” Ante , at 29 (quoting Lee , 505
U. S., at 598). The Court in Lee , however, recognized
expressly that attendance at the graduation ceremony was not
mandatory and that students who attended only had to remain silent
during and after the prayers. Id. , at 583, 593. 8 Puzzlingly, the Court
goes a step further and suggests that Kennedy may have been in
violation of the District policy on Religious-Related Activities
and Practices if he did not permit the players to join his prayers
because the policy prohibited staff from “discourag[ing]” student
prayer. Ante, at 4, 30, n. 7. The policy, however,
specifically referred to student prayer of the student’s “own
volition” and equally prohibited staff from “encourag[ing]” student
prayer. App. 28. 9 The Court claims that
Kennedy’s “past prayer practices” should not be seen to “taint” his
current ones by again turning to Town of Greece v. Galloway , the town assembly prayer case. Ante, at 30,
n. 7. In the passage the Court cites, Town of Greece concluded that “two remarks” by two different “guest minister[s]”
on two isolated occasions did not constitute a “pattern of prayers
that over time denigrate, proselytize, or betray an impermissible
government purpose.” 572 U. S., at 585. As Town of
Greece itself emphasizes, the school context presents
Establishment Clause concerns distinct from those raised in a town
meeting for “mature adults.” Id., at 590 (plurality
opinion). See supra, at 15. In any event, Kennedy’s
yearslong “past prayer practices” constituted an established
pattern, not an isolated occasion, and he hardly “abandoned” the
practice. Ante, at 30, n. 7. As his October 14 letter
and subsequent actions made clear, Kennedy attempted to hew as
closely to his past practice as possible, taking a knee at the same
time and place as previously, and in the same manner that initially
drew students to join him and by improperly permitting spectators
to join him on the field.

Summary: The case of Joseph Kennedy, a high school football coach who lost his job for praying at midfield after games, was brought before the Supreme Court. The Court ruled in favor of Kennedy, citing protection under both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. The Court argued that the Bremerton School District's decision to discipline Kennedy was misguided, as his prayers were private expressions made during a period when school employees were free to engage in personal activities. The ruling emphasized mutual respect and tolerance for religious and non-religious views, rather than censorship or suppression.