High School Coach Allegedly Kicked 3 Girls Off The Team After They Would Not Say A Mormon Prayer | ThinkProgress

Wondering where Alliance Defending Freedom is? You know the group that works "tirelessly to advocate for the right of people to freely live out their faith in America and around the world." Or Liberty Counsel? The "policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom." Isn't this coach being persecuted for "his" religious beliefs? Shouldn't the Reich and its media lapdogs be up in arms?

Oh wait, wrong kind of "christian." With Romney out of the picture, Mormonism is heading back to "cult" status:

But when "the greatest proclaimer of the gospel in the last century," as one Southern Baptist called Graham, embraced Mormonism last week, he confirmed conservative evangelicals' worst fears about the 2012 election: That Romney's rise would lift his Mormon church to cultural prominence and acceptance within mainstream Christianity.

Howell Scott, senior pastor Bethel Baptist Church in Alamogordo, N.M., said the BGEA's declassification of Mormonism as a cult "will have disastrous unintended consequences."

I will be curious to see how this dispute ends.

Three public school students in Mesa, Arizona, including a team captain, were allegedly removed from their varsity softball team, in part because they did not want to start each game with a “team prayer.” According to a complaint filed in a federal court in Arizona, the three girls were “penalized for not conducting ‘team prayer’ in accordance with the directive of Joseph Goodman,” the team’s coach. Coach Goodman, allegedly acted “for himself and at the behest of certain parents that were part of the [Mormon] Church.”

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Setting aside the issue of whether Mormon students and parents in Mesa, Arizona enjoy a “heckler’s veto” that they can use to effectively shout down students that they disagree with, there is little question that the coach violated the Constitution if he actually punished students because they refused to participate in a prayer. Indeed, the coach’s alleged actions might even violate an unusually conservative vision of the Constitution. Justice Antonin Scalia has consistently argued that the wall of separation between church and state should be cut down a few sizes. Yet Scalia argued in his dissenting opinion in Lee v. Weisman that the state may not use the “threat of penalty” to “coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise.”

Punishing people who refuse to join a prayer before a softball game uses the threat of penalty to coerce them into a religious exercise. So the plaintiffs’ allegations, if proven true, may even violate Justice Scalia’s understanding of the Constitution.

High School Coach Allegedly Kicked 3 Girls Off The Team After They Would Not Say A Mormon Prayer | ThinkProgress