The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to permit a high school football coach to pray on the field after games is expected to reopen a vigorous and probably tense debate among parents, educators and others over how far religion can enter public school grounds, California education and legal experts said Monday.
Conservatives and some Christian leaders praised the court’s action, saying it allowed for the personal religious expression of the coach and those who voluntarily followed him, a reasonable accommodation to religious and free speech rights. But civil libertarians and many educators said allowing a coach or any other school authority figure to lead a prayer amounted to the kind of establishment of religion that the Constitution forbids.
“The court has opened the door to prayer in schools more than at any time in the last 60 years,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert and dean of the law school at U.C. Berkeley. “There will be much litigation. And it is not at all clear where the court will draw the line.”
