KENNEDY v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DIST.

 Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks. Mr. Kennedy prayed during a period when school employees were free to speak with a friend, call for a reservation at a restaurant, check email, or attend to other personal matters. He offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied. Still, the Bremerton School District disciplined him anyway. It did so because it thought anything less could lead a reasonable observer to conclude (mistakenly) that it endorsed Mr. Kennedy’s religious beliefs. That reasoning was misguided. Both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect expressions like Mr. Kennedy’s. Nor does a proper understanding of the Amendment’s Establishment Clause require the government to single out private religious speech for special disfavor. The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.

 I

 Joseph Kennedy began working as a football coach at Bremerton High School in 2008 after nearly two decades of service in the Marine Corps. Like many other football players and coaches across the country, Mr. Kennedy made it a practice to give “thanks through prayer on the playing field” at the conclusion of each game. In his prayers, Mr. Kennedy sought to express gratitude for “what the players had accomplished and for the opportunity to be part of their lives through the game of football.” Mr. Kennedy offered his prayers after the players and coaches had shaken hands, by taking a knee at the 50-yard line and praying “quiet[ly]” for “approximately 30 seconds.”

 Initially, Mr. Kennedy prayed on his own. But over time, some players asked whether they could pray alongside him. Mr. Kennedy responded by saying, “ ‘This is a free country. You can do what you want.’ ” The number of players who joined Mr. Kennedy eventually grew to include most of the team, at least after some games. Sometimes team members invited opposing players to join. Other times Mr. Kennedy still prayed alone. Eventually, Mr. Kennedy began incorporating short motivational speeches with his prayer when others were present.  Separately, the team at times engaged in pregame or postgame prayers in the locker room. It seems this practice was a “school tradition” that predated Mr. Kennedy’s tenure. Mr. Kennedy explained that he “never told any student that it was important they participate in any religious activity.” In particular, he “never pressured or encouraged any student to join” his postgame midfield prayers.

 For over seven years, no one complained to the Bremerton School District (District) about these practices. It seems the District’s superintendent first learned of them only in September 2015, after an employee from another school commented positively on the school’s practices to Bremerton’s principal. At that point, the District reacted quickly. On September 17, the superintendent sent Mr. Kennedy a letter. In it, the superintendent identified “two problematic practices” in which Mr. Kennedy had engaged. First, Mr. Kennedy had provided “inspirational talk[s]” that included “overtly religious references” likely constituting “prayer” with the students “at midfield following the completion of . . . game[s].” Second, he had led “students and coaching staff in a prayer” in the locker-room tradition that “predated [his] involvement with the program.”

 The District explained that it sought to establish “clear parameters” “going forward.”  It instructed Mr. Kennedy to avoid any motivational “talks with students” that “include[d] religious expression, including prayer,” and to avoid “suggest[ing], encourag[ing] (or discourag[ing]), or supervis[ing]” any prayers of students, which students remained free to “engage in.” Id., at 44. The District also explained that any religious activity on Mr. Kennedy’s part must be “nondemonstrative (i.e., not outwardly discernible as religious activity)” if “students are also engaged in religious conduct” in order to “avoid the perception of endorsement.” Id., at 45. In offering these directives, the District appealed to what it called a “direct tension between” the “Establishment Clause” and “a school employee’s [right to] free[ly] exercise” his religion.  To resolve that “tension,” the District explained, an employee’s free exercise rights “must yield so far as necessary to avoid school endorsement of religious activities.”

 After receiving the District’s September 17 letter, Mr. Kennedy ended the tradition, predating him, of offering locker-room prayers.  He also ended his practice of incorporating religious references or  prayer into his postgame motivational talks to his team on the field. See ibid. Mr. Kennedy further felt pressured to abandon his practice of saying his own quiet, on-field postgame prayer.  Driving home after a game, however, Mr. Kennedy felt upset that he had “broken [his] commitment to God” by not offering his own prayer, so he turned his car around and returned to the field. By that point, everyone had left the stadium, and he walked to the 50-yard line and knelt to say a brief prayer of thanks. On October 14, through counsel, Mr. Kennedy sent a letter to school officials informing them that, because of his “sincerely-held religious beliefs,” he felt “compelled” to offer a “post-game personal prayer” of thanks at midfield.  He asked the District to allow him to continue that “private religious expression” alone. Id., at 62. Consistent with the District’s policy, see id., at 48, Mr. Kennedy explained that he “neither requests, encourages, nor discourages students from participating in” these prayers. Mr. Kennedy emphasized that he sought only the opportunity to “wai[t] until the game is over and the players have left the field and then wal[k] to mid-field to say a short, private, personal prayer.” He “told everybody” that it would be acceptable to him to pray “when the kids went away from [him].”  He later clarified that this meant he was even willing to say his “prayer while the players were walking to the locker room” or “bus,” and then catch up with his team. However, Mr. Kennedy objected to the logical implication of the District’s September 17 letter, which he understood as banning him “from bowing his head” in the vicinity of students, and as requiring him to “flee the scene if students voluntarily [came] to the same area” where he was praying.  After all, District policy prohibited him from “discourag[ing]” independent student decisions to pray. 

  On October 16, shortly before the game that day, the District responded with another letter. See id., at 76. The District acknowledged that Mr. Kennedy “ha[d] complied” with the “directives” in its September 17 letter. Yet instead of accommodating Mr. Kennedy’s request to offer a brief prayer on the field while students were busy with other activities—whether heading to the locker room, boarding the bus, or perhaps singing the school fight song—the District issued an ultimatum. It forbade Mr. Kennedy from engaging in “any overt actions” that could “appea[r] to a reasonable observer to endorse . . . prayer . . . while he is on duty as a District-paid coach. The District did so because it judged that anything less would lead it to violate the Establishment Clause.

B

 After receiving this letter, Mr. Kennedy offered a brief prayer following the October 16 game. When he bowed his head at midfield after the game, “most [Bremerton] players were . . . engaged in the traditional singing of the school fight song to the audience.” Though Mr. Kennedy was alone when he began to pray, players from the other team and members of the community joined him before he finished his prayer.   This event spurred media coverage of Mr. Kennedy’s dilemma and a public response from the District. The District placed robocalls to parents to inform them that public access to the field is forbidden; it posted signs and made announcements at games saying the same thing; and it had the Bremerton Police secure the field in future games. Subsequently, the District superintendent explained in an October 20 email to the leader of a state association of school administrators that “the coach moved on from leading prayer with kids, to taking a silent prayer at the 50 yard line.” The official with whom the superintendent corresponded acknowledged that  the “use of a silent prayer changes the equation a bit.”  On October 21, the superintendent further observed to a state official that “[t]he issue is quickly changing as it has shifted from leading prayer with student athletes, to a coaches [sic] right to conduct” his own prayer “on the 50 yard line.”

 On October 23, shortly before that evening’s game, the District wrote Mr. Kennedy again. It expressed “appreciation” for his “efforts to comply” with the District’s directives, including avoiding “on-the-job prayer with players in the . . . football program, both in the locker room prior to games as well as on the field immediately following games.” The letter also admitted that, during Mr. Kennedy’s recent October 16 postgame prayer, his students were otherwise engaged and not praying with him, and that his prayer was “fleeting.” Still, the District explained that a “reasonable observer” could think government endorsement of religion had occurred when a “District employee, on the field only by virtue of his employment with the District, still on duty” engaged in “overtly religious conduct.”  The District thus made clear that the only option it would offer Mr. Kennedy was to allow him to pray after a game in a “private location” behind closed doors and “not observable to students or the public.” 

 After the October 23 game ended, Mr. Kennedy knelt at the 50-yard line, where “no one joined him,” and bowed his head for a “brief, quiet prayer.” The superintendent informed the District’s board that this prayer “moved closer to what we want,” but nevertheless remained “unconstitutional.” After the final relevant football game on October 26, Mr. Kennedy again knelt alone to offer a brief prayer as the players engaged in postgame traditionsWhile he was praying, other adults gathered around him on the field.  Later, Mr. Kennedy rejoined his players for a postgame talk, after they had finished singing the school fight song.

 Shortly after the October 26 game, the District placed Mr. Kennedy on paid administrative leave and prohibited him from “participat[ing], in any capacity, in . . . football program activities.” In a letter explaining the reasons for this disciplinary action, the superintendent criticized Mr. Kennedy for engaging in “public and demonstrative religious conduct while still on duty as an assistant coach” by offering a prayer following the games on October 16, 23, and 26. The letter did not allege that Mr. Kennedy performed these prayers with students, and it acknowledged that his prayers took place while students were engaged in unrelated postgame activities. Additionally, the letter faulted Mr. Kennedy for not being willing to pray behind closed doors.

 In an October 28 Q&A document provided to the public, the District admitted that it possessed “no evidence that students have been directly coerced to pray with Kennedy.”  The Q&A also acknowledged that Mr. Kennedy “ha[d] complied” with the District’s instruction to refrain from his “prior practices of leading players in a pre-game prayer in the locker room or leading players in a post-game prayer immediately following games.”  But the Q&A asserted that the District could not allow Mr. Kennedy to “engage in a public religious display.”  Otherwise, the District would “violat[e] the . . . Establishment Clause” because “reasonable . . . students and attendees” might perceive the “district [as] endors[ing] . . . religion.” 

 While Mr. Kennedy received “uniformly positive evaluations” every other year of his coaching career, after the 2015  season ended in November, the District gave him a poor performance evaluation. The evaluation advised against rehiring Mr. Kennedy on the grounds that he “ ‘failed to follow district policy’ ” regarding religious expression and “ ‘failed to supervise student-athletes after games.’ ” Mr. Kennedy did not return for the next season.

II

 After these events, Mr. Kennedy sued in federal court, alleging that the District’s actions violated the First Amendment’s Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses...

III

 Now before us, Mr. Kennedy renews his argument that the District’s conduct violated both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. These Clauses work in tandem. Where the Free Exercise Clause protects religious exercises, whether communicative or not, the Free Speech Clause provides overlapping protection for expressive religious activities. That the First Amendment doubly protects religious speech is no accident. It is a natural outgrowth of the framers’ distrust of government attempts to regulate religion and suppress dissent.

 Under this Court’s precedents, a plaintiff bears certain burdens to demonstrate an infringement of his rights under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses. If the plaintiff carries these burdens, the focus then shifts to the defendant to show that its actions were nonetheless justified and tailored consistent with the demands of our case law.  We begin by examining whether Mr. Kennedy has discharged his burdens, first under the Free Exercise Clause, then under the Free Speech Clause.

 Under this Court’s precedents, a plaintiff may carry the burden of proving a free exercise violation in various ways, including by showing that a government entity has burdened his sincere religious practice pursuant to a policy that is not “neutral” or “generally applicable.” Should a plaintiff make a showing like that, this Court will find a First Amendment violation unless the government can satisfy “strict scrutiny” by demonstrating its course was justified by a compelling state interest and was narrowly tailored in pursuit of that interest.

  That Mr. Kennedy has discharged his burdens is effectively undisputed. No one questions that he seeks to engage in a sincerely motivated religious exercise. The exercise in question involves, as Mr. Kennedy has put it, giving “thanks through prayer” briefly and by himself “on the playing field” at the conclusion of each game he coaches.. . . Nor does anyone question that, in forbidding Mr. Kennedy’s brief prayer, the District failed to act pursuant to a neutral and generally applicable rule. A government policy will not qualify as neutral if it is “specifically directed at . . . religious practice”  or if it provides “a mechanism for individualized exemptions.”  Failing either the neutrality or general applicability test is sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny.

 In this case, the District’s challenged policies were neither neutral nor generally applicable. By its own admission, the District sought to restrict Mr. Kennedy’s actions at least in part because of their religious character. Prohibiting a religious practice was thus the District’s unquestioned “object.” The District candidly acknowledged as much below, conceding that its policies were “not neutral” toward religion.

 The District’s challenged policies also fail the general applicability test. The District’s performance evaluation after the 2015 football season advised against rehiring Mr. Kennedy on the ground that he “failed to supervise student- athletes after games.” But, in fact, this was a bespoke requirement specifically addressed to Mr. Kennedy’s religious exercise. The District permitted other members of the coaching staff to forgo supervising students briefly after the game to do things like visit with friends or take personal phone calls.  Thus, any sort of postgame supervisory requirement was not applied in an evenhanded, across-the-board way.

 B

 When it comes to Mr. Kennedy’s free speech claim, our precedents remind us that the First Amendment’s protections extend to “teachers and students,” neither of whom “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”  Of course, none of this means the speech rights of public school employees are so boundless that they may deliver any message to anyone anytime they wish. In addition to being private citizens, teachers and coaches are also government employees paid in part to speak on the government’s behalf and convey its intended messages.

 To account for the complexity associated with the interplay between free speech rights and government employment, this Court’s decisions suggest proceeding in two steps. The first step involves a threshold inquiry into the nature of the speech at issue. If a public employee speaks “pursuant to [his or her] official duties,” this Court has said the Free Speech Clause generally will not shield the individual from an employer’s control and discipline because that kind of speech is—for constitutional purposes at least—the government’s own speech. 

 At the same time and at the other end of the spectrum, when an employee “speaks as a citizen addressing a matter of public concern,” our cases indicate that the First Amendment may be implicated and courts should proceed to a second step. At this second step, our cases suggest that courts should attempt to engage in “a delicate balancing of the competing interests surrounding the speech and its consequences.” Among other things, courts at this  second step have sometimes considered whether an employee’s speech interests are outweighed by “ ‘the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.’ ” 

 Both sides ask us to employ at least certain aspects of this Pickering–Garcetti framework to resolve Mr. Kennedy’s free speech claim. They share additional common ground too. They agree that Mr. Kennedy’s speech implicates a matter of public concern.  They also appear to accept, at least for argument’s sake, that Mr. Kennedy’s speech does not raise questions of academic freedom that may or may not involve “additional” First Amendment “interests” beyond those captured by this framework. At the first step of the Pickering–Garcetti inquiry, the parties’ disagreement thus turns out to center on one question alone: Did Mr. Kennedy offer his prayers in his capacity as a private citizen, or did they amount to government speech attributable to the District?

 Our cases offer some helpful guidance for resolving this question. In Garcetti, the Court concluded that a prosecutor’s internal memorandum to a supervisor was made “pursuant to [his] official duties,” and thus ineligible for First Amendment protection.  In reaching this conclusion, the Court relied on the fact that the prosecutor’s speech “fulfill[ed] a responsibility to advise his supervisor about how best to proceed with a pending case.” Ibid. In other words, the prosecutor’s memorandum was government speech because it was speech the government “itself ha[d] commissioned or created” and speech the employee was expected to deliver in the course of carrying out his job. 

  By contrast, in Lane a public employer sought to terminate an employee after he testified at a criminal trial about matters involving his government employment. The Court held that the employee’s speech was protected by the First Amendment. In doing so, the Court held that the fact the speech touched on matters related to public employment was not enough to render it government speech. Instead, the Court explained, the “critical question . . . is whether the speech at issue is itself ordinarily within the scope of an employee’s duties.” It is an inquiry this Court has said should be undertaken “practical[ly],” rather than with a blinkered focus on the terms of some formal and capacious written job description. To proceed otherwise would be to allow public employers to use “excessively broad job descriptions” to subvert the Constitution’s protections. 

 Applying these lessons here, it seems clear to us that Mr. Kennedy has demonstrated that his speech was private speech, not government speech. When Mr. Kennedy uttered the three prayers that resulted in his suspension, he was not engaged in speech “ordinarily within the scope” of his duties as a coach. Lane, 573 U. S., at 240. He did not speak pursuant to government policy. He was not seeking to convey a government-created message. He was not instructing players, discussing strategy, encouraging better on-field performance, or engaged in any other speech the District paid him to produce as a coach. See Part I–B, supra. Simply put: Mr. Kennedy’s prayers did not “ow[e their] existence” to Mr. Kennedy’s responsibilities as a public employee.

 The timing and circumstances of Mr. Kennedy’s prayers confirm the point. During the postgame period when these prayers occurred, coaches were free to attend briefly to personal matters—everything from checking sports scores on their phones to greeting friends and family in the stands.  We find it unlikely that Mr. Kennedy was fulfilling a responsibility imposed by his employment by praying during a period in which the District has acknowledged that its coaching staff was free to engage in all manner of private speech. That Mr. Kennedy offered his prayers when students were engaged in other activities like singing the school fight song further suggests that those prayers were not delivered as an address to the team, but instead in his capacity as a private citizen. Nor is it dispositive that Mr. Kennedy’s prayers took place “within the office” environment—here, on the field of play. Instead, what matters is whether Mr. Kennedy offered his prayers while acting within the scope of his duties as a coach. And taken together, both the substance of Mr. Kennedy’s speech and the circumstances surrounding it point to the conclusion that he did not.

 In reaching its contrary conclusion, the Ninth Circuit stressed that, as a coach, Mr. Kennedy served as a role model “clothed with the mantle of one who imparts knowledge and wisdom.” . The court emphasized that Mr. Kennedy remained on duty after games. Before us, the District presses the same arguments.  And no doubt they have a point. Teachers and coaches often serve as vital role models. But this argument commits the error of positing an “excessively broad job descriptio[n]” by treating everything teachers and coaches say in the workplace as government speech subject to government control. Garcetti,  On this understanding, a school could fire a Muslim teacher for wearing a headscarf in the classroom or prohibit a Christian aide from praying quietly over her lunch in the cafeteria. Likewise, this argument ignores the District Court’s conclusion (and the District’s concession) that Mr. Kennedy’s actual job description left time for a private moment after the game to call home, check a text, so cialize, or engage in any manner of secular activities. Others working for the District were free to engage briefly in personal speech and activity.  That Mr. Kennedy chose to use the same time to pray does not transform his speech into government speech. To hold differently would be to treat religious expression as second-class speech and eviscerate this Court’s repeated promise that teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

 Of course, acknowledging that Mr. Kennedy’s prayers represented his own private speech does not end the matter. So far, we have recognized only that Mr. Kennedy has carried his threshold burden. Under the Pickering–Garcetti framework, a second step remains where the government may seek to prove that its interests as employer outweigh even an employee’s private speech on a matter of public concern.

IV

 Whether one views the case through the lens of the Free Exercise or Free Speech Clause, at this point the burden shifts to the District. Under the Free Exercise Clause, a government entity normally must satisfy at least “strict scrutiny,” showing that its restrictions on the plaintiff ’s protected rights serve a compelling interest and are narrowly tailored to that end.  A similar standard generally obtains under the Free Speech Clause. The District, however, asks us to apply to Mr. Kennedy’s claims the  more lenient second-step Pickering–Garcetti test, or alternatively intermediate scrutiny. Ultimately, however, it does not matter which standard we apply. The District cannot sustain its burden under any of them.

 As we have seen, the District argues that its suspension of Mr. Kennedy was essential to avoid a violation of the Establishment Clause.  On its account, Mr. Kennedy’s prayers might have been protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses. But his rights were in “direct tension” with the competing demands of the Establishment Clause. To resolve that clash, the District reasoned, Mr. Kennedy’s rights had to “yield.

 But how could that be? It is true that this Court and others often refer to the “Establishment Clause,” the “Free Exercise Clause,” and the “Free Speech Clause” as separate units. But the three Clauses appear in the same sentence of the same Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.” A natural reading of that sentence would seem to suggest the Clauses have “complementary” purposes, not warring ones where one Clause is always sure to prevail  over the others.

 The District arrived at a different understanding this way. It began with the premise that the Establishment Clause is offended whenever a “reasonable observer” could conclude that the government has “endorse[d]” religion. The District then took the view that a “reasonable observer” could think it “endorsed Kennedy’s religious activity by not stopping the practice.” On the District’s account, it did not matter whether the Free Exercise Clause protected Mr. Kennedy’s prayer. It did not matter if his expression was private speech protected by the Free Speech Clause. It did not matter that the District never actually endorsed Mr. Kennedy’s prayer, no one complained that it had, and a strong public reaction only followed after the District sought to ban Mr. Kennedy’s prayer. Because a reasonable observer could (mistakenly) infer that by allowing the prayer the District endorsed Mr. Kennedy’s message, the District felt it had to act, even if that meant suppressing otherwise protected First Amendment activities. In this way, the District effectively created its own “vise between the Establishment Clause on one side and the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses on the other,” placed itself in the middle, and then chose its preferred way out of its self-imposed trap.

 To defend its approach, the District relied on Lemon and its progeny. In upholding the District’s actions, the Ninth Circuit followed the same course.  And, to be sure, in Lemon this Court attempted a “grand unified theory” for assessing Establishment Clause claims. That approach called for an examination of a law’s purposes, effects, and potential for entanglement with religion.  In time, the approach also came to involve estimations about whether a “reasonable observer” would consider the government’s challenged action an “endorsement” of religion.

 What the District and the Ninth Circuit overlooked, however, is that the “shortcomings” associated with this “ambitiou[s],” abstract, and ahistorical approach to the Establishment Clause became so “apparent” that this Court long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot. The Court has explained that these tests “invited chaos” in lower courts, led to “differing results” in materially identical cases, and created a “minefield” for legislators.  This Court has since made plain, too, that the Establishment Clause does not include anything like a “modified heckler’s veto, in which . . . religious activity can be proscribed” based on “ ‘perceptions’ ” or “ ‘discomfort.’ ” An Establishment Clause violation does not automatically follow whenever a public school or other government entity “fail[s] to censor” private religious speech. Nor does the Clause “compel the government to purge from the public sphere” anything an objective observer could reasonably infer endorses or “partakes of the religious.”

 In place of Lemon and the endorsement test, this Court has instructed that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by “ ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’ ” An analysis focused on original meaning and history, this Court has stressed, has long represented the rule rather than some “ ‘exception’ ” within the “Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence.”

B

 Perhaps sensing that the primary theory it pursued below rests on a mistaken understanding of the Establishment Clause, the District offers a backup argument in this Court. It still contends that its Establishment Clause concerns trump Mr. Kennedy’s free exercise and free speech rights. But the District now seeks to supply different reasoning for that result. Now, it says, it was justified in suppressing Mr. Kennedy’s religious activity because otherwise it would have been guilty of coercing students to pray. And, the District says, coercing worship amounts to an Establishment Clause violation on anyone’s account of the Clause’s original meaning.

 As it turns out, however, there is a pretty obvious reason why the Ninth Circuit did not adopt this theory in proceedings below: The evidence cannot sustain it. To be sure, this Court has long held that government may not, consistent with a historically sensitive understanding of the Estab lishment Clause, “make a religious observance compulsory.”  Government “may not coerce anyone to attend church,” ibid., nor may it force citizens to engage in “a formal religious exercise.”  No doubt, too, coercion along these lines was among the foremost hallmarks of religious establishments the framers sought to prohibit when they adopted the First Amendment.⁵ Members of this Court have sometimes disagreed on what exactly qualifies as impermissible coercion in light of the original meaning of the Establishment Clause. But in this case Mr. Kennedy’s private religious exercise did not come close to crossing any line one might imagine separating protected private expression from impermissible government coercion.

 Begin with the District’s own contemporaneous description of the facts. In its correspondence with Mr. Kennedy, the District never raised coercion concerns. To the contrary, the District conceded in a public 2015 document that there was “no evidence that students [were] directly coerced to pray with Kennedy.” This is consistent with Mr. Kennedy’s account too. He has repeatedly stated that he “never coerced, required, or asked any student to pray,” and that he never “told any student that it was important that they participate in any religious activity.” 

 Consider, too, the actual requests Mr. Kennedy made. The District did not discipline Mr. Kennedy for engaging in  prayer while presenting locker-room speeches to students. That tradition predated Mr. Kennedy at the school. And he willingly ended it, as the District has acknowledged. He also willingly ended his practice of postgame religious talks with his team.  The only prayer Mr. Kennedy sought to continue was the kind he had “started out doing” at the beginning of his tenure—the prayer he gave alone.  He made clear that he could pray “while the kids were doing the fight song” and “take a knee by [him]self and give thanks and continue on.” Id., at 294. Mr. Kennedy even considered it “acceptable” to say his “prayer while the players were walking to the locker room” or “bus,” and then catch up with his team. In short, Mr. Kennedy did not seek to direct any prayers to students or require anyone else to participate. His plan was to wait to pray until athletes were occupied, and he “told everybody” that’s what he wished “to do.”  It was for three prayers of this sort alone in October 2015 that the District suspended him.

 Naturally, Mr. Kennedy’s proposal to pray quietly by himself on the field would have meant some people would have seen his religious exercise. Those close at hand might have heard him too. But learning how to tolerate speech or prayer of all kinds is “part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society,” a trait of character essential to “a tolerant citizenry.” This Court has long recognized as well that “secondary school students are mature enough . . . to understand that a school does not endorse,” let alone coerce them to participate in, “speech that it merely permits on a nondiscriminatory basis.”  Of course, some will take offense to certain forms of speech or prayer they are sure to encounter in a society where those activities enjoy such robust constitutional protection. But “[o]ffense . . .  does not equate to coercion.”

 The District responds that, as a coach, Mr. Kennedy “wielded enormous authority and influence over the students,” and students might have felt compelled to pray alongside him. To support this argument, the District submits that, after Mr. Kennedy’s suspension, a few parents told District employees that their sons had “participated in the team prayers only because they did not wish to separate themselves from the team.”

This reply fails too. Not only does the District rely on hearsay to advance it. For all we can tell, the concerns the District says it heard from parents were occasioned by the locker-room prayers that predated Mr. Kennedy’s tenure or his postgame religious talks, all of which he discontinued at the District’s request. There is no indication in the record that anyone expressed any coercion concerns to the District about the quiet, postgame prayers that Mr. Kennedy asked to continue and that led to his suspension. Nor is there any record evidence that students felt pressured to participate in these prayers. To the contrary, and as we have seen, not a single Bremerton student joined Mr. Kennedy’s quiet prayers following the three October 2015 games for which he was disciplined. On October 16, those students who joined Mr. Kennedy were “ ‘from the opposing team,’ ” and thus could not have “reasonably fear[ed]” that he would decrease their “playing time” or destroy their “opportunities” if they did not “participate,”  As for the other two relevant games, “no one joined” Mr. Kennedy on October 23. And only a few members of the public participated on October 26.

 The absence of evidence of coercion in this record leaves the District to its final redoubt. Here, the District suggests that any visible religious conduct by a teacher or coach should be deemed—without more and as a matter of law—impermissibly coercive on students. In essence, the District asks us to adopt the view that the only acceptable government role models for students are those who eschew any visible religious expression. If the argument sounds familiar, it should. Really, it is just another way of repackaging the District’s earlier submission that government may script everything a teacher or coach says in the workplace.  The only added twist here is the District’s suggestion not only that it may prohibit teachers from engaging in any demonstrative religious activity, but that it must do so in order to conform to the Constitution.

 Such a rule would be a sure sign that our Establishment Clause jurisprudence had gone off the rails. In the name of protecting religious liberty, the District would have us suppress it. Rather than respect the First Amendment’s double protection for religious expression, it would have us preference secular activity. Not only could schools fire teachers for praying quietly over their lunch, for wearing a yarmulke to school, or for offering a midday prayer during a break before practice. Under the District’s rule, a school would be required to do so. It is a rule that would defy this Court’s traditional understanding that permitting private speech is  not the same thing as coercing others to participate in it.  It is a rule, too, that would undermine a long constitutional tradition under which learning how to tolerate diverse expressive activities has always been “part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society.” Lee, 505 U. S., at 590. We are aware of no historically sound understanding of the Establishment Clause that begins to “mak[e] it necessary for government to be hostile to religion” in this way.

 Our judgments on all these scores find support in this Court’s prior cases too. In Zorach, for example, challengers argued that a public school program permitting students to spend time in private religious instruction off campus was impermissibly coercive. The Court rejected that challenge because students were not required to attend religious instruction and there was no evidence that any employee had “us[ed] their office to persuade or force students” to participate in religious activity. What was clear there is even more obvious here—where there is no evidence anyone sought to persuade or force students to participate, and there is no formal school program accommodating the religious activity at issue.

 Meanwhile, this case looks very different from those in which this Court has found prayer involving public school students to be problematically coercive. In Lee, this Court held that school officials violated the Establishment Clause by “including [a] clerical membe[r]” who publicly recited prayers “as part of [an] official school graduation ceremony” because the school had “in every practical sense compelled attendance and participation in” a “religious exercise.”  In Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe, the Court held that a school district violated the Establishment Clause by broadcasting a prayer “over the public address system” before each football game.The Court observed that, while students generally were not required to attend games, attendance was required for “cheerleaders, members of the band, and, of course, the team members themselves.” None of that is true here. The prayers for which Mr. Kennedy was disciplined were not publicly broadcast or recited to a captive audience. Students were not required or expected to participate. And, in fact, none of Mr. Kennedy’s students did participate in any of the three October 2015 prayers that resulted in Mr. Kennedy’s discipline.

C

 In the end, the District’s case hinges on the need to generate conflict between an individual’s rights under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses and its own Establishment Clause duties—and then develop some explanation why one of these Clauses in the First Amendment should “ ‘trum[p]’ ” the other two. But the project falters badly. Not only does the District fail to offer a sound reason to prefer one constitutional guarantee  over another. It cannot even show that they are at odds. In truth, there is no conflict between the constitutional commands before us. There is only the “mere shadow” of a conflict, a false choice premised on a misconstruction of the Establishment Clause. And in no world may a government entity’s concerns about phantom constitutional violations justify actual violations of an individual’s First Amendment rights.

V

  Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress  religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his First Amendment claims. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is Reversed.