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Seems like a grandstanding, "Hey, look at me!" ploy.

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with his players - The school provided for him, but he lied about it.

ties? aren’t they providing a venue to spread what you apparently think is a violent attack on the constitution?

he shouldn't be doing it. I will side with the school. It has nothing to do with being liberal or conservative.
A family's faith is theirs to be guided not Mr. football coach's.

If I had a son and he played for a public Highschool football team and his coach said he had to pray at the end of game
(or at any other time while in his charge) with the team I would definitely make a fuss. It's not up to Mr. football coach
to work on someone's faith. Just the football.

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Who says schools are working on kids gender identity?

Provide a link to that

Wildly wildly inappropriate.

I also provided a link that CRT is taught in our school district and you and Quest ignored that too. Just because you think it isn't happening in the country doesn't mean it isn't. It's a fact.

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Republicans are scum.

a piece of spoiled crap like the rest of his family.

and after games.

Does the school have jurisdiction only on school grounds or is it with all activities associated with the school - during school hours up to and including School team sports at school and wherever they travel?
Do they have jurisdiction over teachers and coaches if they are wearing school colors off the school grounds in the name of the school? If the students wish to conduct their own prayer group without a teacher or coach leading them, does this fall under the establishment clause? Is the prayer group mandatory and if not, will students suffer negative consequences should they not want to participate? Are they being pressured into joining the prayer group?

I can’t see why or how the school is violating the rights of the coach. If he wishes to hold a prayer group, do so on your own time in your own space away from school.

On a personal note, religious proselytizing is never okay in a public school. Coach, Kennedy should be warned once then fired if there is a second offense.
His rights are not being violated - he’s perfectly free to practice his beliefs at home or away from school. He’s free to engage with others who wish to create a religious confab and discuss all aspects of his religion just not on school property or school time. If he taught at a (I assume catholic is his religion) Catholic school, prayer would be part of a student's experience. At a public school, not so much.

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Paul Clement's Reply Brief (12/21/21 re cert petition) is terrific (one of America's best appellate lawyers). It helps the coach that the prayers occurred after the game. Copying from the Reply brief, this is the key argument in favor of the coach:

Nor did Kennedy lose his right to pray because others chose to join him on the field and engage in their own personal expressions of faith after the district suppressed Kennedy’s religious exercise. That was of course their constitutional right, not any form of government speech. See, e.g., Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969). That showing of solidarity was also an entirely predictable consequence of the district’s suppression of Kennedy’s private religious speech. Intolerance of private religious speech is neither popular nor constitutional. The sensible and lawful course for the government is neutrality, not hostility to private religious expression.

Of course the government may discipline “a geometry teacher” who “converted her classes into partisan political rallies” or a “court clerk who sang showtunes to litigants.” Those are obvious examples of non-germane speech occurring “within the scope of an employee’s duties.” Lane, 573 U.S. at 240. A public employer need no more tolerate such speech than it need tolerate a football coach who used timeouts to talk trigonometry or the infield-fly rule rather than gridiron strategy. Here, by contrast, Kennedy’s prayer did not occur within the scope of his duties; he sought to pray only after games concluded, after the customary handshake with the opposing team, and after students were separately engaged in other postgame activities like singing the fight song. The district cannot convert that private religious expression into its own speech by pretending that Kennedy claimed a right to do something else entirely.

back to center.

JimB, your questions are somewhat interesting but overall, way too overbroad for a court to take up. The idea is to make rulings as narrow as possible. The ninth circuit has a tendency to broaden the spectrum so as to cover their sometimes liberal bend. As petitioner was suing within the Free Speech and Establishment Claus, he had standing to be in federal court and as Conor so succinctly put it, "no good deed goes unmitigated." Here are the questions presented:

The questions presented are:
1. Whether a public-school employee who says a brief, quiet prayer by himself while at
school and visible to students is engaged in government speech that lacks any First
Amendment protection.
2. Whether, assuming that such religious expression is private and protected by the Free
Speech and Free Exercise Clauses, the Establishment Clause nevertheless compels public
schools to prohibit it.

Also, anyone can sue and in this case the petitioner (plaintiff) already has sued and lost in the lower court but now seeks an appeal of that finding.



Btw, Conor, thanks for citing the briefs so that I and others didn't have to search.

Unfortunately, I likely won’t have time to catch it until later in the week.

concluded...plus the assumption that each student could use his own expression of faith (e.g. kneel on a prayer rug while facing east)...then I'd be inclined to side with the coach.

It starts with:

Kennedy tells a breathless tale of authoritarian government forbidding private religious expression, insisting that unless the Court applies his preferred legal test, religious practice will be quashed across the country. But his argument relies on creative remodeling of both the facts and the law. Hypothetical constructs are no basis for adopting sweeping new constitutional rules. And when what actually occurred is considered under this Court’s settled precedents, the commonsense result is that the Bremerton School District was well within its legitimate authority when it regulated its employee’s very public speech.

After the District learned that Kennedy regularly prayed to and with the football team, it did not fire him. Instead, it instructed him on what constitutes appropriate speech for a public-school employee, and it made clear (as it did up to the end) that his religious practice would be accommodated. That appeared to resolve the matter: For a month, Kennedy prayed privately while the team was otherwise occupied, and the District let him be—a fact that he neglects to mention.

But because no good deed goes unlitigated, Kennedy’s counsel sent a letter to the District castigating its guidance and accommodation efforts as unconstitutional and demanding that Kennedy be permitted to continue his previous prayer practice. Kennedy then announced to the press that he would indeed be continuing his prayers as before. He spurned all accommodation attempts, and his counsel worked overtime to turn the community against the District, while insisting that Kennedy be allowed to continue his midfield prayer with students.

The public responded. District administrators received threats and hate mail. Strangers confronted and screamed obscenities at the head coach, who feared for his safety. Kennedy supporters and members of the press rushed the field, knocking over students. And at Kennedy’s final game, he invited a state legislator to join his prayer and address the team. Even then, the District still tried to work with Kennedy to find a suitable solution.

Ignoring these facts, Kennedy frames his prayers as personal and private. But his contemporaneous words tell the real story: He repeatedly demanded to “continue” his prayer practice, declaring that he was “helping these kids be better people.” And his counsel explained to the district court: “The young men on the team are looking up to the coach. * * * That’s precisely why Coach Kennedy wants to do what he does.”

Public-school coaches can and do help students “be better people.” But spiritual guidance should come from students’ families and houses of worship, not the government. Under this Court’s long-standing jurisprudence, the District’s interests in protecting students from religious coercion and in preventing employees from commandeering government events outweigh Kennedy’s interest in praying with the students on the 50-yard line.

Kennedy disregards that settled law, insisting that when a government employer responds to its employee’s public religious speech at work—even when that speech causes difficult and dangerous situations—the employer is acting because of religion, so strict scrutiny should apply. 3 The Court should reject that novel proposition. Kennedy’s proffered rule would introduce untold confusion for all government employers, who would have to decide in real time, as circumstances evolve on the ground, the precise moment when an employee’s speech suddenly ceases to be government speech and becomes absolutely protected private speech. That approach cannot be squared with the law, the practical realities of government employment, or common sense.

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tacitly acknowledging what he had been doing was inappropriate, yet after that period, he went back to his prior behavior, gathering the kids together on the field of play to 'help them be better people'...per his own beliefs...that's not right.

Maybe the coach should become a minister or priest, or start a non-profit half-way house for kids who have problems...but if he still wants to work in a government job, he needs to conform. As mentioned there are plenty of other resources for the kids...most especially, their parents and houses of worship...he can pray alone and set a good example, but not 'induce' those kids to follow his personal beliefs. I'm sure he's a good guy who cares for those kids, but he clearly doesn't understand the "Big Picture"...this is, btw, why another "Kennedy" had to go very public with his conviction that there would be NO INFLUENCE on his Presidency from the Roman Catholic Church....how quickly we forget.

me disqualified for the remainder of the season?

sports ministry, so there's no issue there...not government funded...Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Atheists are unlikely to be involved in their organization...no harm, no foul.

ment is that should not be allowed.

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The briefs filed on 3/25/22 by school district and 2/23/22 and 4/15/22 by Coach Kennedy tell you what will be argued to the Court.

Link: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/21-418.html