The Supreme Court has been on a roll. The justices affirmed the Second Amendment right of citizens residing in New York to carry guns. They overturned Roe v. Wade, sending the regulation of abortion back to the states. The Court has now upheld the cherished right to practice our religion.

Joe Kennedy, a junior varsity head coach and varsity assistant coach at the Bremerton School District in Washington, did not think it would be a case for the Supreme Court when he started praying after games by himself. Nor did he think it was a problem when students voluntarily began praying with him after games. The school district ordered Kennedy to stop the practice when it grew into motivational speeches with religious messages. He desisted from speaking to the kids but continued praying after games on the field. Joe’s prayers cost him his job.

Image: Joe Kennedy prays. YouTube screen grab.

The reason the school district gave was that, if Joe prayed on the field, that act constituted a violation of the First Amendment separation of church and state. The Supreme Court shot down that reason by stating that Kennedy’s prayer did not violate the separation of church and state because his words were not “pursuant to a government policy,” he was not “seeking to convey a government-created message” and, because the game was over, he was not acting in the normal scope of his duties, he was not providing instruction or game strategy, and he prayed at a time when he was free to do other things such as “attend briefly to personal matters.”

As usual, the backlash from the left has been swift and couched in hysterical terms that seem more fitted to a medieval witch hunt than the Court’s upholding one of the ideals upon which the United States was founded. Joy Behar of the View was reliably deceitful about the decision, informing viewers that Colin Kaepernick could have been praying when he took a knee.

It seems inevitable that the left upholds a man who makes a spectacle of himself groveling on the ground to protest the country that made him rich and famous while attacking an obscure coach who simply wants to commune with his Creator. What did not seem inevitable was that the Supreme Court would uphold the right of that coach to pray and, as a Christian, I am thankful for their ruling.

Pandra Selivanov is the author of Future Slave, a story about a 21st century black teenager who goes back in time and becomes a slave in the old south.