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CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin argued that the government was becoming more “involved with religion” after the Supreme Court decided that a public school district didn’t have the right to stop a high school coach from praying alone after football games.
In Monday’s ruling on Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court agreed that the Washington state school district had violated the First Amendment rights of former high school football coach Joe Kennedy by firing him over post-game prayers from the field.
Reacting to the breaking news on Monday, CNN’s Toobin blasted the decision as the court “allowing more state involvement with religion.”
Last week, the court ruled in favor of First and Second Amendment rights and struck down the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade. “CNN Newsroom” host Jim Sciutto suggested the court had gone rogue and “eroded” precedent.
“Is precedent dead on the court? We heard every justice when they were asked repeatedly talk about respect for precedent. Are we seeing that eroded here?” he asked the network’s legal analyst.
“Yes,” Toobin declared at once, blaming the Trump-appointed justices.
He went on to say that by arguing that Coach Kennedy shouldn’t have been fired for exercising his free speech and religious rights, the court was allowing the state to become “more involved” with religion.
“This is not like Dobbs where they are explicitly overruling a case in Roe v. Wade, but this is a case where they’re moving the law incrementally in a very clear direction, to allow more state involvement with religion. You know, it can be with regard to prayer in schools, it can be in regard to money going to religious organizations, or it can be exempting religious organizations from government mandates like in the Hobby Lobby case about contraception. All of that is part of a package, and that’s what Donald Trump promised he would deliver to the Supreme Court, and that is precisely what he did deliver to the Supreme Court,” Toobin claimed.
Toobin reacted in the same way to the court’s ruling last week upholding the rights of religious schools in Maine. He complained that the “Free Exercise Clause” in the First Amendment had trumped the “Establishment Clause.”
“There are more and more opportunities, whether it is funding textbooks, whether it is funding playgrounds, now scholarships, where it is permissible for the government to give money to religious institutions. It is a conflict between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. And under this conservative majority, the Free Exercise Clause is winning case after case,” he said on CNN.
The legal analyst similarly melted down over the Supreme Court siding against the state in another case, this time involving a restrictive concealed carry law in New York.
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