A former Washington state public high school football coach who lost his job after praying with his players at the end of games is asking …
A former Washington state public high school football coach who lost his job after praying with his players at the end of games is asking the Supreme Court to affirm his right to kneel at the events. In a writ of certiorari filed with the High Court earlier this week, attorneys for former Bremerton School District (BSD) football coach Joe Kennedy told the Justices that Kennedy lost his job because of his praying and that two lower federal courts erred in not upholding his First Amendment rights. “Petitioner Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a football coach at a public high school because he knelt and said a quiet prayer by himself at midfield after the game ended,” the writ said. “After considering an interlocutory petition in which Kennedy sought review of the lower courts’ refusal to grant him a preliminary injunction, four members of this Court observed that ‘the Ninth Circuit’s understanding of the free speech rights of public school teachers is troubling and may justify review in the future,’ but concluded that [the Supreme Court] should stay its hand until the lower courts definitively determined the reason for Kennedy’s termination. “The statement also noted that Kennedy had a then-unaddressed claim under the Free Exercise Clause. On remand, the lower courts found—and the school district ultimately agreed—that Kennedy lost his job solely because of his religious expression. Yet the Ninth Circuit nevertheless ruled against him again. “The court not only doubled down on its ‘troubling’ free-speech reasoning, which transforms virtually all speech by public-school employees into government speech lacking any First Amendment protection, but reached the remarkable conclusion that, even if Kennedy’s prayer was private expression protected by the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses (which it undoubtedly was), the Establishment Clause nevertheless required its suppression.
