Justices set to hear ex-coach’s prayer case

BREMERTON, Wash. — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of former football coach Joseph Kennedy today, after lower courts in Washington rejected his argument that the school board violated his First Amendment rights by banning prayers after games.

The court’s decision, expected by June, could revise earlier understandings about when prayer is permitted in public schools, the rights of government employees and what counts as pressuring students to participate in religious activities.

The former assistant was employed at a high school in Bremerton but after the school board told him to stop mixing football and faith on the field, he left the job and sued them, unsuccessfully, in lower courts.

Kennedy said he sought only to offer a brief, silent and solitary prayer little different from saying grace before a meal in the school cafeteria. From the school board’s perspective, the public nature of his prayers and his status as a leader and role model meant students felt forced to participate, whatever their religion and whether they wanted to or not.

The community appeared to be largely sympathetic to Kennedy, who is gregarious, playful and popular. But the school board’s Supreme Court brief suggested some residents opposed to prayer on the football field may have hesitated to speak out given the strong feelings the issue has produced.

“District administrators received threats and hate mail,” the brief said. “Strangers confronted and screamed obscenities at the head coach, who feared for his safety.”

Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represents the school board, said, “What we’re focused on is the religious freedom of students.”

“Going to the 50-yard line directly after the game when you’re the coach, with the students assuming they’re supposed to gather with the coach, and praying at that time puts pressure on kids to join,” she said.

Kennedy acknowledged that, as time went on, students did join him.

“I started out praying by myself,” he said. “I guarantee it was no longer than 10 seconds.”

When athletes asked to participate, he said he told them that America was a free country.

“It was,” he added, “never any kind of thing where it was a mandatory thing.”

Asked whether some athletes might have felt compelled to join in, he said, “I coached for about eight years, and there were about 60 kids on the team each year. “I challenged every news reporter and said, ‘find somebody.’”

Even residents of Bremerton who disagreed with Kennedy about his prayers said he was deeply engaged in his duties, serving as a surrogate father to many troubled teenagers.

“I have nothing but respect for coach Kennedy,” said Paul Peterson, who worked with Kennedy for years at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. “There have been countless young men who have stood up and said what a great influence coach Kennedy was. But on this specific thing — and I’ve told this to Joe — I feel he’s misdirected.”

Asked about Kennedy’s challenge to find a student who had been coerced into praying, Peterson said it was not the first time he had heard the question.

“He said the same thing to me,” Peterson said. “I said it may not have been explicit coercion, but there was an implicit coercion. When the coach goes out to the 50-yard line, he has something to say.”

Over the past 60 years, the Supreme Court has rejected prayer in public schools, at least when it was officially required or part of a formal ceremony like a high school graduation. As recently as 2000, the court ruled that organized prayers led by students at high school football games violated the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion.

Kennedy’s lawyers said those school prayer precedents were not relevant because they involved government speech. Rather, they said, the core question in Kennedy’s case is whether government employees give up their rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion at the workplace.

The school district, its lawyers responded, was entitled to require Kennedy to stop praying as he had. “Regardless of whether Kennedy’s very public speech was official, the district could regulate it,” the school district’s Supreme Court brief said. “His prayer practice wrested control from the district over the district’s own events, interfered with students’ religious freedom and subjected the district to substantial litigation risks.”

Even a modest Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy’s favor, saying that his private, solitary prayer was protected even if it took place in public and at least tacitly invited students to participate, would represent a change in the court’s approach to the role religion may play in public schools.