Joseph Kennedy likes to think of himself as a “big brother” of sorts to the many students he has mentored over the years as a …
Joseph Kennedy likes to think of himself as a “big brother” of sorts to the many students he has mentored over the years as a high school football coach. “I remember the hundreds of times I told my players not quit no matter the challenge,” he told Fox News this week. But the former Washington state resident is now in perhaps the biggest fight of his life, one that has taken him all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a religious liberty dispute over the limits of exercising one’s faith in public. The nine justices will hear oral arguments Monday on whether the local school district properly suspended Kennedy from his job at Bremerton High School, after he refused to stop praying on the field at the end of games. A central question: Is a public school employee who says he is praying by himself while at school and visible to students engaging in “government speech” that lacks any First Amendment protection. “The whole idea of just because I’m working there, I have no rights anymore as an American?” Kennedy said. “When do I stop representing the school district? And that’s what we’re kind of asking, just a simple thing: Can I pray after a football game?” The school district argues that the act was anything but a private moment of reflection, and that it continually involved public prayers with students, some of whom felt pressured to join in the display. “No child attending public school should have to pray to play school sports,” said Americans United for Separation of Church and State president Rachel Laser, the group representing the school district. “No student should ever be made to feel excluded– whether it’s in the classroom or on the football field– because they don’t share the religious beliefs of their coaches, teachers or fellow students.” Kennedy is an 18-year Marine veteran, who also worked at the local naval shipyard in Bremerton, about 20 miles west of Seattle across the Puget Sound. But high school football is his passion. Returning to his alma mater in 2008, Kennedy started as an assistant varsity coach. “The prayer after the football game — that was just myself, I would just take a knee at the 50-yard line after football game,” Kennedy told Fox News’ chief legal correspondent Shannon Bream. “After a few months, the kids would say: Coach, what are you doing out there? And I just said I was thanking God for what you did. They asked if they could join. And I said: it’s America, a free country, you do what you want to do. And that’s how that kind of started.” What began as a 15-30 second Christian blessing “quietly and alone” evolved into something more over time. Players and coaches from his and opposing teams would join him in prayer on the field. After about seven years, several parents began complaining, including one whose son was an atheist and believed he would not get as much playing time if he failed to join in the post-game prayer. Another parent, Paul Peterson, whose son played on the team in 2010, said the sight of the coach on the field surrounded by kneeling teammates became a “spectacle,” that put pressure on other students to follow.
