SCOTUS Rules For Ex-Coach Who Led School Prayers

ABC News reports:

The Supreme Court’s conservatives ruled on Monday for a high school football coach who was reprimanded for leading postgame prayers on the football field’s 50-yard line.

The 6-3 decision marked a win for coach Joseph Kennedy in his dispute with the Seattle-area school district that placed him on paid leave for violating a policy that bars staff from encouraging students to engage in prayer.

Starting in 2008, Kennedy began kneeling on the school football field after games where he would engage in brief prayer. Eventually, many of his players joined him, as did members of opposing teams.

Sports Illustrated reports:

Kennedy had spent those previous six weeks conducting multiple interviews that exacerbated his conflict with the school. Two weeks before the game, he had retained First Liberty, the powerful Christian conservative law firm, in his burgeoning legal battle against the district.

And he intensified the spotlight’s glare before kickoff with a pregame Facebook post, announcing a big night upcoming. In signing off, he asked for prayers.

It’s hard to read that sequence as anything other than performative, a plea for the exact kind of attention likely to add sympathetic supporters to his side. His opponents argue he got exactly what he wanted.

CBS News reports:



While Kennedy and the district both acknowledge he never required Knights players to join him in his prayers at midfield, some parents said their children felt pressured to participate out of fear they would lose out on playing time.

Kennedy’s practice of praying on the field continued for seven years without incident. But that changed in September 2015, when an opposing team’s coach told Bremerton High School’s principal that Kennedy asked his players to join him for the post-game prayer and “thought it was pretty cool” the district would allow such activity.

The district then launched an investigation into whether Kennedy was complying with the school board’s policy on religious-related activities and practices, and later issued a directive prohibiting on-duty school employees from engaging in “demonstrative religious activity” that is “readily observable to” students and the attending public.