After the U.S. Supreme Court sent his case back to a lower court last year, a federal judge ruled this week that a school district in Washington state was within its right to prohibit high school football coach Joe Kennedy from kneeling in prayer on the 50-yard-line after games.
Federal Judge Ronald Leighton granted Bremerton School District’s motion for summary judgment in Kennedy’s case on Thursday.
Kennedy was suspended from his role as head coach of the Bremerton High School football team in 2015 after he refused to stop praying on the field after games, something he had done since 2008.
Kennedy sued in 2016 on grounds that his right to religious expression as a school employee had been violated by the school district.
However, his request for an injunction was denied by Leighton in 2016. Kennedy also suffered defeat when his case was heard by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2017.
Last January, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Even though conservative justices led by Samuel Alito thought there could be serious constitutional issues in Kennedy’s free speech claim, they concurred with the refusal because there were unanswered factual questions surrounding the school district’s reasoning for banning the prayer.
According to the Kitsap Sun, Leighton argued this week that the school district has a right to restrict religious expression if it feels the expression creates an illusion of government endorsing religion.
Under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, governments are prohibited from establishing an official religion.
“Although the court is sympathetic to Kennedy’s desire to follow his beliefs, the former right must give way to the latter in this case,” Leighton wrote.
The nonprofit legal group representing Kennedy, the First Liberty Institute, vowed to again appeal to Leighton’s ruling to the Ninth Circuit.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Samuel Smith
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