SUPREME COURT SLATED TO HEAR COACH’S PRAYER CASE

Washington man says school district violated his rights

Joseph Kennedy, who used to be an assistant coach for a high school football team outside Seattle, pointed to the spot on the 50-yard line where he would take a knee and offer prayers after games.

He was wearing a Bremerton Knights jacket and squinting in the drizzling morning rain, and he repeated a promise he had made to God when he became a coach.

“I will give you the glory after every game, win or lose,” he said, adding that the setting mattered: “It just made sense to do it on the field of battle.”

Coaching was his calling, he said. But after the school board in Bremerton told him to stop mixing football and faith on the field, he left the job and sued, with lower courts rejecting his argument that the board had violated his First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case Monday, and there is good reason to think that its newly expanded conservative majority will not only rule in Kennedy’s favor but also make a major statement about the role religion may play in public life.

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.

Over the last 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.

The two sides offer starkly different accounts of what happened and what is at stake. To hear Kennedy tell it, 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 stature as a leader and role model meant that students felt forced to participate, whatever their religion and whether they wanted to or not.

The sweep of the Supreme Court’s decision may turn on which side’s characterization of the facts it accepts. But even a modest 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 sea change in the court’s approach to the role religion may play in public schools.