Jhe Supreme Court scored another huge victory for religious freedom today, further closing the lid on the garbage on the misguided notion that government must be actively hostile to expressions of faith.

The majority of six members of the tribunal completely abandoned the 1971 Lemon vs. Kurtzman Supreme Court decision on the subject. Lemon had invented a three-part “test” for public religious expression that effectively disadvantaged religion. The so-called lemon test was itself a lemon worth eliminating.

That case involved Washington state public high school football coach Joseph Kennedy, who for years prayed silently and alone in midfield after every game. It wasn’t until the school suddenly ordered him to quit, making the act a public controversy, that players, usually from both teams, began to join Kennedy in his prayers — and then only voluntarily. .

When Kennedy refused to stop praying after games, the school fired him. He filed a complaint.

The specifics of this case aside, the larger question was whether the majority would do as suggested by six former U.S. attorneys general and reject Lemon entirely. Doing so would be an essential part of rejecting the unhistorical and factually incorrect myth that the Constitution erects an almost insurmountable “separation wall” between government and religion.

The question is not only academic. As long as the Supreme Court claims that it is only “distinguishing” a religious liberty case from a Lemon rather than overturn it, schools and other government entities, not to mention liberal lower court judges, will continue to implement flawed and anti-religious policies and rulings citing the Lemon edit as justification.

Judge Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, argued that across a host of other cases exist in which the court has found ways around Lemons precedent, “this long-abandoned courtyard Lemon.Yet, after offering a litany of reasons why Lemon was a disaster, Gorsuch evolved in a way suggesting that Lemon was already dead rather than kill him explicitly.

Those who wanted something more explicit found it, interestingly enough, in Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent. Sotomayor and his two liberal Supreme Court colleagues spent a section defending Lemon, but they have twice acknowledged that today’s ruling “nullifies Lemonand once he “completely denies” it.

Instead of Lemons three-part test invented by the court, so Gorsuch and his five colleagues offer an empirical analysis of historical practices and understandings as a way to judge whether a government entity has violated the First Amendment by becoming too involved in promoting religion . It is exactly as it should be. The original public meaning of the First Amendment, explained Gorsuch, “advocate[s] mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and repression, for religious and non-religious views. »

Today’s decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District is legally just because it correctly interprets the real meaning of the Constitution. And that real meaning is morally and ethically sound, as Gorsuch explained. Quoting a line from another court decision, Gorsuch wrote, “Learning to tolerate prayerful speeches of all kinds ‘is part of learning to live in a pluralistic society,’ a character trait essential to” a tolerant citizenship”. also noted, “Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic.”

An assistant coach’s non-coercive prayer, during a post-game interlude in which school policy otherwise affords him free time, weighs on no one. And his constitutional right to the free exercise of religion deserves respect. Out of the bitter situation of Kennedy’s wrongful job loss, the Supreme Court has just made lemonade.