Former assistant football coach Joe Kennedy at Bremerton High School in Bremerton, Wash., March 9, 2022.
Photo:
Ted S. Warren/Associated Press
Historians assessing the Supreme Court under Chief Justice
John Roberts
might need to write a whole book on its remarkable string of rulings defending religious liberty in the face of rising secularism. Another one came Monday in a 6-3 case upholding a high-school football coach’s right to pray privately on the field after games.
The school in Washington state punished Coach Joseph Kennedy “for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance,” as Justice
Neil Gorsuch
writes for the majority in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. “The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.” Can we get an Amen?
As Justice Gorsuch tells the facts, Mr. Kennedy at first prayed on his own, though eventually players began joining him. “For over seven years, no one complained,” he writes. Then a well-meaning visitor “commented positively on the school’s practices to Bremerton’s principal.” The battle began. When the school district asked Mr. Kennedy to quit involving students in prayers, he complied.
But the school also asked him to desist from “overt” religious activity while on duty. Following three games, he prayed at midfield anyway, as his team did other activities, such as singing the fight song. The court record calls his prayers on those days “fleeting,” “brief,” and “quiet.” The result was that he lost his job.
The school argued Mr. Kennedy was on duty, so the prayers were state speech and breached the Constitution’s pledge of no government “establishment of religion.” One legal test, rooted in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), is whether a “reasonable observer” might see some religious conduct and think (however erroneously) that it had a government endorsement.
The Court has…
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