WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a high school football coach has the constitutional right to pray on the 50-yard line after his team’s matches.
The vote was 6 to 3, with the three liberal members of the court opposing it.
The case contrasts the rights of civil servants to freedom of speech and the free exercise of their faith against the prohibition of the Constitution on state approval of religion and the ability of state employers to regulate speech in the workplace. The decision was tense with decades of Supreme Court precedents banning pressure on students to engage in religious activities.
The case concerns Joseph Kennedy, an assistant coach at a public high school in Bremerton, Washington, near Seattle. For eight years, Mr. Kennedy routinely offered prayers after games, and students often joined him. He also led and participated in prayers in the locker room, a practice he later abandoned and did not defend in the Supreme Court.
In 2015, after an opponent’s coach told Mr. Kennedy’s school principal that he thought it was “very cool” that Mr. Kennedy was allowed to pray on the field, the school board instructed Mr. Kennedy should not pray if this interferes with his duties or the students involved. The two sides disagreed on whether Mr Kennedy complied.
A school official recommended that the coach’s contract not be renewed for the 2016 season, and Mr Kennedy did not re-apply for the post.
The two sides offered radically different accounts of what happened in recent months to Mr Kennedy, complicating the Supreme Court’s task. Mr Kennedy said he was only trying to offer a short, quiet and solitary prayer, a little different from saying grace before a meal in the school cafeteria. The school board responded that the public nature of his prayers and his position as a leader and role model meant that students felt compelled to participate, regardless of their religion and whether or not they wanted to.
For the past 60 years, the Supreme Court has rejected prayer in public schools, at least when it was officially required or part of an official ceremony such as graduating from high school. As early as 2000, a court ruled that organized prayers led by students at high school football matches violated the First Amendment’s ban on the government’s establishment of religion.
“Praying before the game has the wrong effect of forcing those present to take part in an act of religious worship,” Judge John Paul Stevens wrote of the majority.
Mr Kennedy’s lawyers said these school prayer precedents were not appropriate because they involved government speech. The main issue in Mr Kennedy’s case, they said, was whether civil servants were renouncing their own rights to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion in the workplace.
The school district, his lawyers replied, has the right to ask Mr. Kennedy to stop praying, as he did. “Whether or not Kennedy’s very public speech was official, the district can regulate it,” the school district’s Supreme Court summary said. “His prayer practice snatched control of the county’s own events from the county, interfered with students’ religious freedom, and put the area at significant risk of litigation.”
The school district noted that a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the Ninth District of San Francisco had criticized what he called a “fraudulent story” created by Mr. Kennedy’s lawyers.
Mr. Kennedy has never been punished for making silent, private prayers, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote last year. Instead, the referee wrote of one match, Mr Kennedy “prayed aloud in the middle of the football pitch” just after it ended, “surrounded by players, members of the opposing team, parents, a local politician and members of the news media on television. cameras recording the event, all of which were notified of Kennedy’s planned actions through local news and social media.
When the Supreme Court declined to hear an earlier appeal in the case in 2019, four judges expressed concerns about how Mr. Kennedy was treated.
“The Ninth District’s understanding of teachers’ freedom of speech in public schools is worrying and may justify a review in the future,” Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote at the time, adding that judges should wait for more information on “important unresolved issues.” Judges Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Cavanaugh and Clarence Thomas joined him.
After further proceedings, the Ninth District again ruled on the school board. This time, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Kennedy case against Bremen County School, 21-418.
Add Comment