Supreme Court Seems Poised to Hand Victory to Coach Fired for Praying at the 50-Yard Line – Opinion

The case of  Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. It is a crucial case because it places the right to free exercise of religion in direct opposition to the modernist and atheistic proposal that “separation of church and state” is basically anything the state says it is.

Joseph Kennedy is the central figure of this case. He’s a former football coach at Bremerton High School in Seattle, WA. This extended blockquote comes from the indispensable, left-leaning SCOTUSBlog.com.

Kennedy served as part-time school coach from 2008 through 2015. This was on a contract for one year. After each match, Kennedy used to pray alone. However, some of his players asked him to invite them to the same place.

In September 2015, the school district learned that Kennedy was praying on the field when a coach from an opposing team told the Bremerton principal about Kennedy’s prayers. After that phone conversation, the athletic director reached out to Kennedy to voice his disappointment at Kennedy’s decision of praying on the field during a game. After his conversation with the athletic director, Kennedy posted on Facebook that he thought he might have “just been fired for praying.”

Kennedy received a reply to the letter regarding prayers on Sept. 17. The school district also got in touch with Kennedy via telephone. The letter reiterated that student prayers should be “entirely and genuinely student-initiated,” and it stressed that Kennedy should not do anything that could be seen as an endorsement of those prayers. Kennedy could still give motivational speeches but these should only be secular, according to the letter. If Kennedy prayed, the letter noted, it should “not interfere with job responsibilities” and should be separate from players.

In the wake of the Sept. 17 letter from the school district, Kennedy temporarily stopped praying on the field after games – although on one occasion he did return to the stadium to pray after leaving to drive home.

On Oct. 14, Kennedy – who had by then retained a lawyer – told the school district that he intended to resume his practice of praying by saying a private, post-game prayer at the 50-yard line. Kennedy held a short, quiet prayer at midfield two days later after the game. He was joined by players from both sides and media. School district describes the chaos that occurred following Oct. 16, when reporters, spectators, and others pushed Kennedy’s marching band down in their attempts to reach Kennedy at the midfield. The Bremerton head coach, Nate Gillam, was the target of profanity, and he feared he might “be shot from the crowd.”

Kennedy received another letter from the school district on Oct. 23. That letter told him that his actions at the Oct. 16 game had violated the district’s policy, and it offered other options for him to pray after games – for example, privately, or after the crowd had left. Kennedy continued to pray following the Oct. 23rd and 26th games, but was then placed on administrative leave by his school district.

When the season ended, Gillam – who himself resigned after 11 years at Bremerton – recommended that Kennedy’s contract not be renewed for the following season. Kennedy didn’t apply for a job in 2016 and did not even submit an application. Instead, he went to federal district court, where he argued that the school district’s actions violated his rights under the free speech and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment. The district court declined to give him back his job while the litigation continued, reasoning that his prayers were not protected by the First Amendment because he was acting as a “public employee.” After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld that ruling, Kennedy went to the Supreme Court in 2018, asking the justices to intervene.

This issue is complex and can cause confusion. Kennedy continued to fight the Bremerton school administrators in the media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDvb4v0Cq1M

All of these issues were brought to an end yesterday at the US Supreme Court. This is how Vox.com’s legal cocker spaniel, Ian Millhiser, frames it: The religious right had a great day in the Supreme Court. Milhiser gets very excited when the US Constitution is upheld in a Supreme Court case. I imagine him leaving tiny puddles all around Vox’s offices. His subtitle? The justices may take a big bite out of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, or they might take a simply enormous bite out of itThis could be correct.

It seemed that Kennedy was the issue at hand.  Lemon v. KurtzmanThis is precedent.

Justice Samuel Alito was dubious about whether all of the facts that Katskee cited mattered to the court’s analysis. Although he admitted that the case was complex, Alito said it boils down to an Employment Discrimination case. And in such cases, he told Katskee, courts look at the reasoning – here, the school district’s professed desire to avoid violating the establishment clause – behind the employer’s actions. If the employer’s actions were unlawful (and Alito seemed to suggest that the school district’s conduct had been), he explained, then the employee wins.

Katskee reminded Alito of the “enormous pile of evidence that the school district acted on other concerns” when it suspended Kennedy – for example, it was worried about student safety and the possibility that spectators would storm the field.

Alito, however, was not convinced, and asked somewhat incredulously, whether the school district claims that even though an employer provides an unlawful reason for its conduct, it still has legal standing because it could have offered legal reasons.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared also skeptical. The school district’s “sole reason” for taking action against Kennedy, he noted, was to avoid violating the establishment clause by endorsing religion. However, the Supreme Court hadn’t applied the law. Lemon test – the three-part test, named after the court’s 1971 decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, for establishment clause cases – “in two decades,” Kavanaugh observed. And Kennedy’s case seems to go beyond Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, the court’s 2000 decision holding that student-led, student-initiated prayer over a loudspeaker at football games violates the establishment clause, Kavanaugh told Katskee. “I don’t see why the Court shouldn’t say,” Kavanaugh said later, that it won’t extend Santa Fee beyond prayers in the locker rooms or huddles.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also raised questions about the school district’s reliance on the Lemon test. Katskee was asked by Katskee, what should the justices do? Should they have asked Katskee if they think the schools district and courts should have focused more on coercion than endorsing the religion of the children.

At that point, the school district’s attorney requested the Supreme Court send the case back to lower courts so the school district could come up with some other reason to fire Kennedy.

Kavanaugh’s implicit coercion argument was the strongest against Kennedy.

I guess the problem at the heart of it is you’re not going to know. The coach is probably not going to say anything like “The reason I’m starting you is that you knelt at the 50-yard line.” You’re never going to know. And that leads to the suspicions by parents—I think, I’m just playing out what the other side is saying here—the suspicion by parents that the reason Johnny’s starting and you’re not is [because]He participated in the prayer circle. I don’t think you can get around that. That’s a real thing out there. That’s going to be a real thing in situations like this. I don’t know how to deal with that, frankly.

There were three strong votes to repeal Lemon v. Kurtzman (anti-religion precedents) at the end. Lee v. Weisman. Kavanaugh is a certain yes even though he keeps musing on coercion. Amy Coney Barrett did not ask any commitment questions but it is clear that she supports Kennedy. Roberts seemed disturbed by Kennedy’s publicity efforts, but, as far as I know, being an advocate for your cause isn’t illegal.

Roberts will likely vote for the majority, to avoid a 5-4 decision. Alito cannot write an opinion that takes fire to the antireligious animus progressives’ attempts to infuse our jurisprudence.

A Coach Kennedy victory would mark the end of another case, which was heard in session last session. See The Left Goes Nuts: Supreme Court Seems To Signal that Their Monopoly on Propagandizing kids Is At an End). This will likely prohibit state discrimination towards religious schools.

While the question of religion in public schools can be a delicate one, our jurisprudence is far beyond the limit of prohibiting proselytizing. It has allowed the teaching of anti-Christianity or atheism and prohibited the opposing views. We are safer erring on one side or the other if young women and men fear discrimination due to not praying and young men fear discrimination because they don’t choose pronouns.