Washington – After watching the sports film “Facing the Giants”, Joseph Kennedy, then the new coach of the football team at Bremerton High School in Washington, was inspired to pray.
So after training his first game for the Bremerton Knights in August 2008, Kennedy went to the 50-yard line, “on the battlefield,” says the retired U.S. Marine, and knelt to offer a prayer of thanksgiving.
It started with the coach himself thanking God briefly after the final referee’s signal for keeping the players safe, for fair play and for the fierce competition. But soon enough, the number of players coming together with Kennedy after the games grew to include most of the team, although the participation was different. At least one parent said his son felt “forced to participate” for fear of losing time to play.
And very soon Kennedy’s prayers, which he himself graduated from high school in Bremerton, turned into motivational speeches with religious references.
Joe Kennedy, a former assistant football coach at Bremerton High School in Bremerton, Washington, posed for a photo on March 9, 2022, on the school’s football field. Ted S. Warren / AP
For seven years, Kennedy continued his practice of praying in the field without difficulty. But in September 2015, Bremerton County School learned what he was doing when the opposing team’s coach told the director of Bremerton High School that Kennedy had asked his players to join him for post-match prayer, saying he “thinks, that it’s pretty cool the area would allow such activity, according to court records.
This observation by the opposing coach served as a catalyst for a long battle between Kennedy and the school district, which shifted from the bars to the court when the coach lost his job after deviating from directives to stop his practice of praying on the field.
Kennedy claims to have practiced constitutionally protected religious expression, and on Monday the United States Supreme Court will consider his proposal to return to coaching and be allowed to pray in midfield after games.
“It seems so simple to me: this is a man kneeling alone on the 50-yard line, which I don’t think needs a rocket scientist or a Supreme Court judge to find out,” he told CBS News. “I didn’t want to cause waves and the thing I wanted to do was train football and thank God after the game.”
But for the defenders of the school district, Kennedy acted as a state agent who, as a public school official, violated the religious freedom of students who were under pressure to pray for play.
“When a coach uses the power of his work to be there and to have access to students at a time when they are expected to surround him and come to him, it is an abuse of power and a violation of the Constitution,” Rachel Laser said. president and chief executive of the United States for the separation of church and state, Ian Crawford told CBS News. “Religious freedom is not the right to impose your religion on others. We all need to have it, so the clause of free exercise and establishment works together to protect religious freedom for all of us. “
“Giving up is not something in my blood.”
After the Bremerton School District learned of Kennedy’s practice after the mid-field prayer game in September 2015, he launched an investigation into whether he adhered to the school board’s policy on religious activities and practices.
While acknowledging that Kennedy “did not actively encourage or require participation” in either the pre-match dress-up prayer or his “inspiring mid-field conversation” after matches, the county said in a letter dated September 17, 2015, that the actions are likely to violate the First Amendment clause and expose the area to a “significant risk of liability”.
“Bremerton High School is legitimately at risk of approving or favoring one set of religious views over others, and that’s not what the Constitution promises,” Laser said. “Religious freedom, these 16 words of our first amendment to our constitution are a shield that protects religious freedom for all of us, not just religious freedom for some of us.”
The district told Kennedy that his conversations with students should remain entirely secular, and that his future religious activities, including prayer, should not interfere with his official duties, should be separated from any student activity, and may not be participation by students.
At the request of the district, Kennedy temporarily stopped praying on the field after matches. But a month later, in mid-October 2015, he informed the county through a lawyer that he would resume prayer after the 50-yard line match after requesting religious accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination. based on religion.
“No reasonable observer could conclude that a football coach who waits until the match is over and the players leave the field and then goes to the middle of the field to say a short, personal, personal prayer speaks on behalf of the state.” he lawyer said in a letter to the Bremerton school district. “On the contrary, Coach Kennedy deals with private religious expression that the state cannot violate.”
So, after the final referee signal in the Bremen game on October 16, 2015, Kennedy shook hands with the opposing team, waited for the players to sing their battle song, then knelt on the 50-yard line, bowed his head and, to joined by players from both teams, media and the public, prayed.
He did so again for the next two games, after which the district left Kennedy on paid administrative leave from his position as assistant coach for violating his directives. During an ex-post evaluation of Kennedy’s performance, the Bremerton Athletic Director recommended that he not be hired again for next season, citing non-compliance with district policy and failure to supervise student athletes after matches.
Kennedy chose not to re-apply for his coaching position at Bremerton High School and in August 2016 filed a lawsuit against the Bremerton School District in the Federal District Court in Tacoma, Washington, arguing that it violated his constitutional rights to freedom of speech and exercise. .
Former Bermerton High School football coach Joseph Kennedy (First Liberty Institute)
U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton ruled against Kennedy, finding that “while public schools do not have unrestricted discretion to restrict an employee’s religious speech, they have the ability to prevent a coach from praying at the center of the football field immediately after matches.”
Kennedy appealed to the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals, which upheld the district court’s decision. He then appealed to the Supreme Court, and in 2019 the Supreme Court refused to hear his case.
In a statement by Judge Samuel Alito, joined by Judges Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Cavanaugh, the four judges said it was premature for the Supreme Court to hear Kennedy’s case at the time, but warned that the 9th District “understood freedom” on the word “teachers’ rights in public schools is worrying and may justify reconsideration in the future.”
“What is perhaps most troubling about the opinion of the 9th circuit is the language, which can be understood as meaning that the coach’s obligation to serve as a good role model requires the coach to refrain from any manifestation of religious faith – even when the coach is clearly not obliged, “wrote Alito.
After additional proceedings, Kennedy again suffered losses in the lower courts. A panel of three 9th District judges ruled in March 2021 that the school district’s efforts to prevent Kennedy from praying did not violate his constitutional rights, and his post-match speech was a civil servant’s speech.
“This is a personal and personal exercise of faith, as Kennedy is trying to express,” Judge Milan Smith Jr. wrote of the unanimous panel. “The question was – in every sense of the word – a demonstration, and since Kennedy asked for it to take place immediately after the last judge’s signal, it was a demonstration, definitely aimed at students and the audience.”
The full 9th District refused to reconsider the case, and Kennedy again appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in September. The Supreme Court agreed in January to hear the dispute.
“I have been a Marine for 20 years. Supporting and defending the Constitution means a lot to me. Giving up is not something in my blood, it is not in my nature,” Kennedy said of his long legal battle to get his job back. “I can look in the mirror, look at my team over the years, look up and look them in the eye and say hey, I fought a good fight, I didn’t give up.
Kennedy’s legal battle with the school district will face the Supreme Court, which has shifted to the right since 2019, when judges first rejected his request to hear his case. Now with a conservative majority of 6-3, the Supreme Court has recently become more sympathetic to religious rights.
“The state doesn’t have every gram of your free expression. They can’t censor you from everything you do,” Jeremy Dyce, a special adviser to First Liberty, which represents Kennedy, told CBS News. “The founding clause does not mean that you have to censor and repel every religious demonstration.
The cherry blossom near the Supreme Court on Monday, March 28, 2022 Bloomberg
“Brave for some and offended for others”
In letters to the Supreme Court, the district’s lawyers claim that he acted within his powers to …
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