Supreme Court sides with high school coach over 50-yard-line prayers

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of a Washington state football coach who was suspended over his on-field prayers following games.

The justices’ decision, largely breaking 6-3 along the court’s usual ideological lines, found that the school system infringed on the coach’s religious freedom and freedom of speech rights by seeking to block him from engaging in public prayers on the field while flanked by student athletes after games.

The religious liberty case was filed by Joseph Kennedy, a high school assistant football coach who was placed on administrative leave by Bremerton School District in 2015 after refusing to stop kneeling to pray audibly at the 50 yard line after his team’s games.

Kennedy and religious freedom advocates argued the coach was exercising his First Amendment right to pray. But the school district told the justices that Kennedy’s actions were coercive, and players’ parents complained their children on the team felt compelled to participate.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, the bulk of which garnered the support of all the court’s Republican appointees.

“Both the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect expressions like Mr. Kennedy’s. Nor does a proper understanding of the Amendment’s Establishment Clause require the government to single out pri-

vate religious speech for special disfavor,” Gorsuch wrote. “The Constitution

and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, included several photos of the Kennedy’s on-field prayers and called the decision “misguided.”

“It elevates the religious rights of a school official, who voluntarily accepted public employment and the limits that public employment entails, over those of his students, who are required to attend school and who this Court has long recognized are particularly vulnerable and deserving of protection,” Sotomayor wrote.

During oral arguments, the court’s conservative justices sounded concerned over the school district's intrusion on Kennedy’s religious practice. The other justices focused their attention on the potential for coercion. They questioned if Kennedy’s prayers infringed on the religious rights of public school students and even parents’ ability to dictate their children’s religious practice.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who raised concerns at those arguments about coaches or other authority figures using their power to pressure students to join religious or other unrelated activities, declined to sign on to the portion of Gorsuch’s opinion that said the coach’s actions didn’t amount to coercion. Kavanaugh joined the bottom-line ruling against the school system in the case, but did not write separately to elaborate on his views.

This was the second time the case has been appealed to the high court. Justices denied Kennedy’s initial petition in 2019 because he was unable to prove that his prayer ritual was the basis for the school’s decision to suspend him.