The battle over gay rights and religious freedom has been one of the most contentious debates in recent years. The Supreme Court just gave us a big clue as to how it will decide this case, sparking controversy among legal scholars everywhere.
The “coach kennedy fired” is a story of how an unknown high school football coach landed in the center of a Supreme Court religious liberty case. The coach was fired for praying on the sideline after being told to stop.
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ESPN’s Michael A. Fletcher
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- Michael Fletcher works for ESPN’s enterprise and investigative team as a senior writer. He formerly contributed to ESPN’s The Undefeated, where he covered politics, criminal justice, and social concerns. He worked for The Washington Post for 21 years, covering topics such as the national economy, the White House, and racial relations.
BREMERTON, WASHINGTON – Joseph Kennedy, a former Bremerton High School assistant football coach, says he never intended to become a religious right icon or have his name used by politicians like as Sen. Ted Cruz and former President Donald Trump.
He just wanted to connect with young people through teaching football and with God by saying a little midfield prayer after each game, he claims.
“I’d kneel and thank God for what the boys just achieved and the chance to teach,” Kennedy told ESPN. “I wanted to spend out with my players and grow these young men.”
Despite this, the 52-year-old is no longer coaching and is embroiled in a bitter court struggle that began when he insisted on kneeling at midfield to pray after games, something he did with pupils. Bremerton school authorities dismissed him in 2015 when he refused to cease praying on the field, which they said violated the Constitution’s ban on government sponsorship of religion.
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“The coach is a terrifying combination of dread and amazement. And you want to be a part of the team. You want to be able to play. You’re not interested in the bench, are you? “The school board is represented by Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “It’s a dangerous slope when religion is used to discriminate and exclude,” she continued.
Kennedy filed suit, and his case has twisted its way from this blue-collar, military town across the Puget Sound to the United States Supreme Court over the last seven years. The case propelled Kennedy, a former Marine who unwillingly agreed to assist with the coaching of a substandard high school football team, into what legal observers view as one of the most important instances in recent years concerning the separation of religion and state.
The Supreme Court must decide whether Kennedy’s on-field prayers are protected by the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty, or if they are in violation of the First Amendment because they promote his faith. The justices will hear oral arguments on Monday and deliver a decision by the end of June.
Given the Supreme Court’s previous sensitivity to religious liberty, many legal commentators believe the court will decide in Kennedy’s favor. However, whether the judges see Kennedy’s prayers as private expressions of gratitude or public spectacles would have a significant influence on the case. Their ruling may remove legal limits on how public school teachers and other personnel may show their beliefs.
“The court might rule narrowly and say this wasn’t a personal, private prayer, and hence the school can ban it,” said Howard M. Friedman, retired professor of law at the University of Toledo. “The court might potentially go off on far larger grounds in terms of how much freedom a teacher or coach has to participate in religious activities, which would make it a much more significant issue.”
Kennedy, dressed in blue, conducted post-game prayers that featured inspiring speeches that incorporated religious overtones. Opponents claim he broke the law by promoting his faith and forcing players to participate. via AP/Meegan M. Reid/Kitsap Sun
When the school’s sports director offered him a part-time coaching position at his alma mater in 2008, he wasn’t sure he wanted to accept it. He’d never played organized football before, and he was concerned about schedule issues with his day job at the Naval Shipyard in Puget Sound.
He grew up feeling neglected by his adoptive parents and had a school disciplinary issue. He was working in a restaurant and living on his own in a little $300-a-month apartment by the time he graduated from Bremerton High School. He returned to his hometown in 2006 after serving in the military for 20 years.
He was still considering the coaching offer when he saw the Christian sports film “Facing the Giants,” in which a sad football team is elevated to the state title when the coach chooses to glorify God on the field.
Kennedy said that he was moved to tears by the film. He said, “I was bawling my eyes out.” “It was obvious that God was calling me to be a coach. That was the first time in my life that I had ever seen something like that. ‘I’m all in, God,’ I replied. After every game, I’ll give you the glory right there on the 50, where we fought our battles.’”
He agreed to help coach Bremerton High’s varsity squad, which had only won one game the previous year. He was also the junior varsity team’s head coach. He prayed alone at first, but after a few games, several of his teammates begged to join in.
“I told them, ‘This is America, you can do anything you want,’” Kennedy remarked. After a time, more players joined as well. According to school administrators, the program expanded to include an inspiring address with religious elements. Kennedy would occasionally stand in the midst of a circle of players, holding a helmet over his head, during his postgame meetings. According to Kennedy, the prayer lasted around 30 seconds, however his remarks may linger a little longer.
He said, “It was pretty short since I’m not a great prayer or preacher.” “It was a really straightforward matter. ‘Thank you, God, for these men and the chance to train them,’ I’d say.”
No one made a big deal of Kennedy’s habit for years. In fact, Kennedy said that he received many congratulations, even from those who did not share his religious beliefs.
When many people in Bremerton saw Kennedy kneeling on the field, sometimes with almost half the team around him, they had no idea what was going on.
“We often saw players and coaches congregate on the field in what seemed to be an attempt to boost their spirits,” said Paul Peterson, whose son, Aaron Bryce, was a Bremerton High football player in 2010. “I assumed they were either rejoicing in their win or licking their wounds. And we assumed that was the end of it.”
Peterson went on to say that he was not pleased when he discovered the huddle’s religious character years later. He said, “My belief is that religious teaching should be delivered by parents and taught at home.”
During the 2015 football season, the matter came to a head when an opposition coach informed Bremerton’s principle that Kennedy had asked his squad to participate in a postgame prayer. According to court documents filed by Kennedy’s attorneys, the opposition coach approved of the prayer. Despite this, Bremerton school administrators took action to put a stop to it.
Kennedy’s prayers were clearly against the rules, causing him to remark on Facebook, “I fear I just could have been fired for praying” — despite the fact that he was still employed at the time. That was enough to turn Kennedy’s spat with the school into a public spectacle. According to court documents, the school district got “thousands of emails, letters, and phone calls from all over the nation” in response to Kennedy’s pleas.
Kennedy received a letter from school administrators informing him of the district’s religious expression policy. Employees had to be objective, which meant they couldn’t even suggest or discourage students from participating in religious activities. They said that the guidelines were in place to ensure that the school district’s constitutional obligations were met.
In a September 2015 letter to Kennedy, superintendent Aaron Leavell said, “It is obvious that schools and their personnel may neither expressly prevent kids from engaging in religion activities, nor may they coerce children to engage in religious activities.” “It is also obvious that school personnel may not indirectly urge kids to participate in religious activities.”
The letter stated that if Kennedy wanted to pray after games, he ought to do it away from the kids and in a manner that was not visible to bystanders. For one time, school authorities offered to accommodate him at home games by allowing him to pray in the press box above the stadium’s bleachers or inside the school, which entailed travelling several hundred yards and climbing many flights of stairs, according to Kennedy.
For one game, Kennedy stated he halted public prayer. His attorneys argued in their Supreme Court appeal that he regretted giving in to what he regarded as “pressure to breach his vow to God” as he drove home afterward. He claimed he turned around, went to the empty stadium, and gave a quiet prayer from the 50-yard line, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Soon after, Kennedy hired an attorney, who wrote to school authorities, claiming that he was forced to begin praying at midfield after every game. Kennedy, according to school authorities, undertook a series of local media appearances to announce his decision, which drew worldwide attention. Kennedy went to middle after the following game for the traditional handshake with the other team, then knelt at the 50-yard line to pray. On the pitch, dozens of players, coaches, and members of the public cheered him on.
A Satanist organization protested outside the stadium, claiming that it, too, wanted to hold rites on the field after football games.
Kennedy was taken on leave a week later after praying on the field again, and the school administration did not rehire him for the following season. Political heavyweights and religious conservatives quickly rallied around Kennedy, transforming him into a national symbol of religious liberty.
Within weeks after his termination, Cruz, who was campaigning for president at the time, asked him to a rally. At a veterans’ meeting in 2016, then-presidential candidate Trump thanked Kennedy in the audience before calling his termination “outrageous.”
Kennedy said that he only reluctantly accepted the high-level attention, but that he didn’t have a choice. “I despised it,” he said. “It’s ridiculous to believe this was all about me and my desire for any type of recognition. I want to be a football coach.”
Kennedy’s defenders claim that his prayers were personal expressions of appreciation protected by the First Amendment. Many legal experts believe that the Supreme Court will decide in his favor. ESPN’s Victoria Will
Current and former NFL players have chimed in on both sides of KENNEDY’S LEGAL FIGHT.
Kennedy’s contention that his prayers were private, rather than the type of government-endorsed speech that would be unlawful, was backed by a brief led by Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins. It linked Kennedy’s prayers to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s on-field political demonstrations.
“No one would contend that Coach Kennedy’s behavior constituted governmental speech if he had taken a knee to condemn racism during the National Anthem rather than after time had elapsed to pray,” the brief read.
Others, however, pointed out that Kennedy’s prayers are not the same as those seen by supporters when football players suffer catastrophic injuries, or those led by students. They said that his prayers may come off as coercive to high school athletes.
In a court brief, Chris Kluwe, a former NFL punter and current high school football coach, said, “It’s deeply wrong for any coach to put high school students in the position of turning their backs on the team family if they don’t want to join the coach’s very public prayers on the 50-yard line after games.”
Opponents of Kennedy’s on-field prayers contend that religious displays by a coach at a public school separate athletes of different faiths. They claim Kennedy was inadvertently inviting his teammates to join in, which was unjust to non-Christians.
The Rev. Meghan Dowling, pastor of Bremerton United Methodist Church, stated, “Faith is a private act that we commit to as people.” “Coach Kennedy exploited his position as a school official to force kids to pray in front of their peers at a public high school. As both an ordained priest and a community member, this offends my conscience.”
Kennedy, on the other hand, claims that players decided to participate in his prayers willingly and that he did not penalize those who did not. Two athletes, he recalled, were passionately opposed to the prayers one season. “As a result, I appointed both of them leaders of my squad,” Kennedy said. “I’m looking for leaders. On the field, I don’t need a swarm of drones.”
Kennedy did not, in his opinion and those of his followers, violate the First Amendment by delivering his prayers. Instead, they say Bremerton’s school system is restricting his religious liberties in an unlawful way by prohibiting them.
Jeremy Dys, special attorney for litigation and communications at First Liberty Institute, a legal group that represents Kennedy, said, “Nobody should be dismissed for being religious.”
Kennedy is not seeking monetary damages in his lawsuit; all he wants is his coaching position back. He moved from Bremerton to Pensacola, Florida, two years ago to assist care for his sick father-in-law. He does, however, have children and grandkids in Bremerton, and if the court decides in his favor, he says he would return “as soon as a jet can carry me there.”
The Supreme Court has ruled against teacher-led prayer and Bible readings in public schools, religious invocations at graduations, and student-led prayers at public school football games throughout the years. Lower courts have routinely ruled against Kennedy since his legal struggle began.
However, many legal experts feel Kennedy has a decent chance of winning this time. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, and in recent years, its decisions have favored religious liberty above upholding the separation of church and state.
Regardless of the court’s decision, Kennedy believes the legal struggle has been beneficial. “I tell my people that you have to fight until the time runs out,” he stated. “If I did anything less, I’d be the greatest hypocrite.”
The “establishment clause” is a part of the First Amendment which states that the government cannot establish an official religion. In the case of Lee v. Weisman, a high school football coach was sued for religious freedom because he had been praying with his team on the field during games.
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