Public-forum rules help separate administration from discrimination. Government need not open every facility to private speakers. It may reserve a classroom for instruction, a courthouse office for official business, or an employee meeting for workplace matters. Once officials create a forum for private expression, however, they must respect the boundaries they announced. A school that allows clubs to discuss ethics after class generally may not exclude a club because it approaches ethics from a religious viewpoint. Equal access does not transform the club's speech into government speech.

Public employees require close attention to role and timing. Speech delivered as part of an employee's official duties can be controlled by the employer and may be attributed to government. Personal expression during a period open to private activity presents a different question. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Court treated a coach's brief personal prayer during a time when he was free to attend to private matters as private expression on the record before it. That holding does not prevent a school from enforcing genuinely neutral rules concerning supervision, disruption, safety, or access. It prevents religious content alone from turning private conduct into official sponsorship.

For an exam scenario, identify who selected the message, whether the person acts in an official or private capacity, what forum the government has created, and how comparable secular expression is treated. A principal-written prayer is government sponsorship. A private club's religious discussion in an open after-school forum is private expression. A rule barring every demonstration inside a working courtroom may be a neutral use restriction, while a rule admitting political and philosophical demonstrations but excluding only religious ones suggests viewpoint discrimination. The Constitution permits government to manage its institutions; it does not permit officials to confuse evenhanded management with automatic exclusion of religious speech.

Video lesson: Freedom of Religion: Crash Course Government and Politics #24