Why the Supreme Court Should Let a High-School Football Coach Pray on the Field

Last week, the Supreme Court heard the case of Joseph Kennedy, a football coach at a public high school who used to pray on the field after games. After some students voluntarily began joining him, the school district asked him to stop; the ensuing dispute eventually resulted in litigation. At the legal heart of the issue is the 2006 Garcetti v. Ceballos decision, in which the Supreme Court granted governments broad rights to control the speech of public employees. David French argues that the court ought to moderate this ruling, and let Coach Kennedy pray:

The case isn’t mainly about prayer. Rather, it’s about the extent to which the state treats public-school teachers as citizens or entirely as subjects under government control during every meaningful moment on the clock.

Combine a doctrine that deprives teachers of any freedom in their teaching with a school district that declares that virtually any public speech at school is professional and not personal, and you create a legal environment that treats teachers as pure instruments of state expression, required to spout only state-approved ideas from the moment they walk onto campus until the moment they leave.

A vision of public education that walls students off from their teachers’ personal expression doesn’t prepare them for pluralism. It does precisely the opposite. It teaches them that majorities can and should control speech, and that the remedy for exposure to offensive ideas is an appeal to state authority to quash personal expression.

This is the fruit of Garcetti in public schools. The alternative to an expansive reading of Garcetti isn’t a free-for-all, with teachers saying whatever they want to say to students, regardless of age or subject matter. But on a spectrum that ranges from “all speech is permitted” to “no speech is free,” the present case law for America’s schoolteachers is overweighted toward censorship. Coach Kennedy’s case represents an opportunity to adjust that balance.

Read more at Third Rail

More about: Freedom of Religion, Sports, Supreme Court

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023