According to court filings, a former public high school football coach in Washington state who was fired for leading prayers on the field after games will be reinstated by the spring of next year.
Attorneys for Joseph Kennedy and lawyers for the Bremerton School District filed a joint stipulation in Washington state district court on Tuesday, stating that Kennedy is to be reappointed to his previous position as assistant coach of the Bremerton High School football team on or before March 15, 2023.
Jeremy Dys, Kennedy’s lawyer, affirmed to ABC News that the coach will resume to Bremerton, Washington, from Florida later this year to continue his part-time job with the team. He is scheduled to return to the field for the fall 2023 football season.
A school district spokesperson said there are “aspects where there are still questions” between the parties about how Kennedy’s post-game prayers will be assisted in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling.
In June, the United States Supreme Court sided with Kennedy, ruling 6-3 that the coach was safeguarded by the Constitution when he knelt and prayed aloud at the 50-yard-line following a game, sometimes with his players.
Lower courts have routinely ruled with the Bremerton School District in the case for years. According to legal experts, the Supreme Court’s decision on behalf of Kennedy could soon broaden the freedom of government workers nationwide to express their faith more freely while on the job.
This is a universal right. It makes no difference whether one belongs to this or that religion or has no faith at all, Kennedy stated this in an interview earlier this year. In America, everyone has the same rights.
The First Amendment guarantees free speech and religious freedom, but it also bans the government from establishing religion. Prior to the decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court had long held that public school-sponsored prayer, even if voluntary, violated the Establishment Clause.
Kennedy and his counsel at the Texas-based First Liberty Institute filed a lawsuit against the Bremerton School District after he was terminated seven years ago for midfield prayers and his contract was not extended. He asserted that the prayers were quick, private expressions of faith, while the school system claimed that student involvement violated constitutional restrictions against government personnel promoting religion.
For more than seven years, Kennedy had consistently prayed on the field after games, eliciting different amounts of involvement from kids. He claimed that the process typically lasted less than a minute.
It was his pact with God that after every game, win or lose, he’d do it out there on the field of battle, he explained.
The school district did not notify the coach of constitutional issues until 2015. The school district claimed in a statement at the time that Kennedy’s prayers breached constitutionally-required requirements that he avoid participating in overt, public religious displays on the football field while on duty.
The school district stated that it “has a basic commitment to defend the rights of all of its pupils, albeit no players had protested about the prayer sessions, according to the statement.
It is highly possible that athletes have participated in these events throughout the years, the school district stated, since to do otherwise would entail potentially alienating themselves from their team, and maybe their coaches.
