“Former Washington state high school assistant football coach Joe Kennedy, who was fired in 2015 for praying on the field after games, will be reinstated at the school in March 2023. Following a years-long legal battle with the Bremerton School District, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy’s favor with a 6-3 decision in late June. On Tuesday, attorneys from both parties filed a joint stipulation in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington stating that Kennedy will be reinstated to his former position by March 15, 2023. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the football coach was within his constitutional right to pray on the field after the games. ‘Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment,’ Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. ‘And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,’ he continued. ‘The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.’”
“Fired Football Coach Joe Kennedy to Be Reinstated,” Christian Headlines, Oct. 28, 2022
