Court decides in favour of a coach who was sacked for praying at post-game ceremonies

The Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of a football coach fired for praying while kneeling on the field after games. He argued that his practice is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“The Constitution and the best of our traditions advise mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for both religious and non-religious positions,” said Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion. The decision was issued with the vote of the six conservative judges and the dissent of the three liberal justices, the same trend as last Friday, when the historic Roe v. Wade, the precedent that established the constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

The case made the magistrates of the Court balance the religious freedom and expression of teachers and coaches with the rights of students not to feel pressured to participate in religious practices. Months ago, coach Joe Kennedy, who took his case to court until it reached the highest court in the country, argued that he never cared if the students accompanied him in his prayers and that he did not ask them to do so either. Judge Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent assured that the decision “takes us further, on a dangerous path by forcing states to become entangled with religion.” Along with her, judges Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan voted against it.

Freedom of religion or belief is a fundamental human right

The result may be the strengthening of the acceptability of certain religious practices in public schools. The decision is the latest in favor of expansive interpretations of the right to religious freedom, such as the one that established that the state of Maine could not exclude religious schools from a program that offered tuition assistance to private schools.

The decision of the Supreme Court in favor of the coach does not seem a surprise. In 2019 he had rejected the case when it was in an early phase. The four conservative justices then called the school district’s decision against them “problematic” because of how they understood “teachers’ freedom of expression.”

The case resolved on Monday involved Joseph Kennedy, a Christian and former coach at Bremerton High School in Washington. Kennedy began working as a coach at Bremerton in 2008. He originally prayed alone at the 50-yard line at the end of games. But the students began to join him and he began to give them a short speech with religious references. He did it that way for years, even in the locker room. The school district found out in 2015 and asked him to stop praying with students.

The coach stopped doing it with the students but continued to pray by himself in a couple of subsequent games, leaving the players free to join or not. Concerned about the violation of religious freedoms, the school asked her to stop practicing for him while he was on duty as a coach. They tried to find a solution so that Kennedy could pray alone before the game, but when the teacher kept kneeling to pray on the field, the school put him on paid vacation, and then his contract was not renewed.