HS Football Coach Who Lost His Job for Post-Game Prayers Responds to SCOTUS Decision Vindicating Him

The Supreme Court ruled earlier today that a school district was wrong for firing a football coach who refused to stop praying on the field after the game was over.

Via our good friends at the Western Journal:

In a groundbreaking decision on Monday, the court ruled in favor of a former high school football coach who prayed in public after games — and lost his job over it.

The 6-3 decision was unambiguous:

“The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal,” the ruling stated, “the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”

Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

The case revolved around Joseph Kennedy, a former high school football coach in the Bremerton School District in Washington state, the Legal Information Institute of Cornell reported.

Kennedy had a practice of praying after school games at the 50-yard line, and students would sometimes join him.

The school asked him to stop in order to prevent the school from a lawsuit due to a violation of the Establishment Clause. The school argued that Kennedy’s decision to pray violated the Constitution’s prohibition against government endorsement of religion.

However, Kennedy refused to stop praying, which resulted in many students and parents from the community rallying around him.

Bremerton public school officials then removed him from his job in 2015, ESPN reported.

Kennedy then sued the school district arguing it violated his First Amendment right of free exercise of religion and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

A district court ruled in favor of the school district, but Kennedy appealed and the case got passed up the chain, and eventually landed in the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has been on a roll the past few days and this is welcome news.

Almost immediately after the decision was announced Coach Kennedy announced that he would seek his old job back:

While this is an outstanding victory for Coach Kennedy and for religious freedom if I were the coach the last thing I’d want to do is go back to work at the school that fired me for praying.

Bet there are a lot of schools that would be excited to have a coach like Coach Kennedy at their school.

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