The case dates to 2015, when Joseph Kennedy, an assistant football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington, offered private prayer after games and often was joined by players and coaches of both teams. An opposing coach complained, and Kennedy’s contract was not renewed.
It was one of a handful of cases the court accepted Friday as it fills out its docket for the current term. Barring an emergency, the court hears oral arguments through April, and then attempts to finish opinions in the argued cases by the end of June.Not on Friday’s list was a challenge to the admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
After a complaint from an opposing coach in 2015, Kennedy and school officials battled over accommodations of his religious exercise. He served on a year-to-year contract, and did not return to the school.He has lost twice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, although the case split the judges.Kennedy is represented by the religious legal group First Liberty Institute, and Bremerton by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“No teacher or coach should lose their job for simply expressing their faith while in public,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and chief executive of First Liberty. “By taking this important case, the Supreme Court can protect the right of every American to engage in private religious expression, including praying in public, without fear of punishment.”Rachel Laser, president and chief executive of Americans United, said Kennedy and his lawyers have repeatedly misrepresented the facts.
“This case is not about a school employee praying silently during a private religious devotion,” Laser said in a statement. “Rather, this case is about protecting impressionable students who felt pressured by their coach to participate repeatedly in public prayer, and a public school district that did right by its students and families.”The case reached the Supreme Court in 2019, when justices declined to get involved, saying there was more for lower courts to decide.
But four justices made clear that they were interested in the issue and that they were suspicious of the Ninth Circuit’s early rulings. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the Ninth Circuit’s language could “be understood to mean that a coach’s duty to serve as a good role model requires the coach to refrain from any manifestation of religious faith — even when the coach is plainly not on duty. I hope that this is not the message that the Ninth Circuit meant to convey.
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