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Page Number: 35.0

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KENNEDY v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DIST. 

Opinion of the Court 

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 gen-
erate conflict between an individual’s rights under the Free
Exercise  and  Free  Speech  Clauses  and  its  own  Establish-
ment  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 

—————— 

7 Even if the personal prayers Mr. Kennedy sought to offer after games
are not themselves coercive, the dissent suggests that they bear an in-
delible taint of coercion by association with the school’s past prayer prac-
tices—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.