The Bremerton High School football coach who won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said school employees had a right to practice “private personal prayer” on the field has resigned after one game.
Assistant football coach Joe Kennedy submitted the resignation letter to the Bremerton School District this week, the district confirmed on its website. The resignation is pending board approval at Thursday’s regularly scheduled meeting. District spokesperson Karen Bevers told Crosscut that the district would not make any additional statements.
Kennedy confirmed his resignation in a prepared statement on his website:
“I believe I can best continue to advocate for constitutional freedom and religious liberty by working from outside the school system so that is what I will do. I will continue to work to help people understand and embrace the historic ruling at the heart of our case. As a result of our case, we all have more freedom, not less. That should be celebrated and not disrespected,” said Kennedy.
Last year the Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy’s favor and ordered the district to offer him a football coaching job for this season.
His lawsuit gained national prominence as it progressed through the court system as a potentially precedent-setting religious-freedom case, which also was expected to show the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s first year with a strongly conservative majority.
The court ruled that Bremerton School District administrators violated Kennedy’s rights when they asked him to stop praying with players on the 50-yard line after games, which Kennedy said he had done regularly since he started coaching at the high school.
The controversy stirred up a media circus during the 2015 season. During one game, members of the public rushed the field to pray alongside Kennedy. At another, a group of Bremerton High School students invited Satanists to pray on the field.
When the district suspended Kennedy with pay in 2015, district administrators said in an announcement at the time that his actions possibly violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which states that the government will not favor one religion over another. The following season, Kennedy did not apply to continue his football contract with Bremerton High School, though his lawyers maintained that this was the same as being fired.
Kennedy, who moved to Florida several years ago to help his wife’s family through medical issues, told right-wing personality Glenn Beck last year that he intended to return to Bremerton High School.
“I'm a man of principle, I guess. And that's my hometown. My kids … live right by the school. All my family's there, all my friends.”
Kennedy returned to the Bremerton Knights last month in the run-up to the football season, and was included in off-season communications. The Knights’ season opener was a home game against an out-of-conference high school team, the Mount Douglas Rams from Victoria, B.C., five days before he submitted his resignation.