Supreme Court votes in favor of Washington football coach praying before and after games
Six years after he lost his job as a football coach of Bremerton High School for praying after games, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of former coach Joseph Kennedy.
Following years of losing in lower courts, Kennedy took his argument before the Supreme Court in April, claiming that the Bremerton School District violated his First Amendment rights by not allowing him to continue his prayers on the field.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 in favor of Kennedy on Monday, with Justice Neil Gorsuch delivering the court’s opinion with the support of Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan concurred.
Kennedy began coaching in 2008 and would participate in solitary prayer, according to previous reports, which then grew into locker room prayers before games and religious motivational talks after them.
He said that he never cared whether players decided to join in with him or not, but at least one player anonymously reported participating in the prayer, despite it being against his own beliefs, for fear of losing playing time.
The Bremerton School District asked Kennedy to stop in 2015. The former football coach continued to pray on the field by himself, inviting students who wished to participate to join him. When Kennedy continued, the school district put him on paid leave due to fears of being sued for violating students’ religious freedom rights.
“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,” Gorsuch’s opinion reads.
“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.”
Sotomayor’s dissenting argument pointed toward the Engel v. Vitale Supreme Court decision in 1962, which set the precedent that struck down prayers in public school classrooms.
“Since Engel v. Vitale, 370 U. S. 421 (1962), this Court consistently has recognized that school officials leading prayer is constitutionally impermissible,” Sotomayor’s dissent reads. “Official-led prayer strikes at the core of our constitutional protections for the religious liberty of students and their parents, as embodied in both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.”
The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from “establishing” religion in the U.S., and the Free Exercise Clause says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
The Bremerton School District said that the decision “undermines the separation required by the Constitution,” according to the Associated Press and that the district would continue to remain “a welcoming, inclusive environment for all students, their families and our staff.”
Marc Stern, chief legal officer for the American Jewish Committee, told the Tacoma News Tribune in a statement that the decision “strikes a serious blow against the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.”
“The Court’s opinion effectively invites indirect but no less real coercion of students who are attuned to hints from school officials who grade and evaluate them,” Stern’s statement said. “The Court’s see-no-evil approach to the coach’s prayer will encourage those who seek to proselytize within the public schools to do so with the Court’s blessing. That is no advance for religious liberty.”
This story was originally published June 27, 2022 at 10:58 AM.
