Ed Morrissey: Gorsuch Provides a Return to Tolerance in Prayer Case

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The Supreme Court scored a major victory for both common sense and tolerance when it comes to private prayer in public places. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that a high-school football coach’s prayer on the field after a game did not amount to an endorsement of religion by the school district, reversing his termination and lower-court rulings.

“The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance,” Gorsuch wrote in Kennedy v Bremerton, “not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.”

A simple and voluntary prayer of thanksgiving after the end of a school event neither harms nor compels anyone. Firing people over such a prayer harms and intimidates many. It shouldn’t take the Supreme Court to get schools and courts to recognize common sense, but thankfully, this time Gorsuch and a majority delivered a common-sense outcome that religious and non-religious Americans can live with.

That is true tolerance.

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