{"id":1529278,"date":"2022-06-27T11:50:31","date_gmt":"2022-06-27T15:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1529278"},"modified":"2022-06-27T11:50:45","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T15:50:45","slug":"praying-football-coach-wins-victory-at-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/praying-football-coach-wins-victory-at-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Praying Football Coach Wins Victory At Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpraying-football-coach-wins-victory-at-supreme-court%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1529278&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of a high school football coach in Washington whose employer fired him in 2015 for kneeling in prayer on the 50-yard line after games.<\/p>\n<p>The Court ruled in the case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that the coach\u2019s rights to the First Amendment\u2019s free speech and Free Exercise clauses were violated by the Bremerton School District in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/21pdf\/21-418_i425.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">majority opinion<\/a> authored by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch.<\/p>\n<p>The Court took up the case in April after former high school coach <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2015\/10\/27\/praying-football-coach-gets-reinforcements-congressional-prayer-caucus-leaders-intervene\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Joseph Kennedy<\/a> sued in federal court, alleging that the Bremerton School District violated his First Amendment rights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal; the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression,\u201d Gorsuch wrote.<\/p>\n<p>The opinion of the Court ruled the school district \u201cmistakenly\u201d believed that by allowing for Kennedy\u2019s religious practices and observances, that would lead them to endorsing his religious beliefs, the majority opinion noted. The Court deemed the termination of the coach\u2019s employment unconstitutional as the Constitution establishes \u201cmutual respect and tolerance\u201d for both religious and secular beliefs and customs.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Here is the opinion from Neil Gorsuch in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/O263t1QPyw\">https:\/\/t.co\/O263t1QPyw<\/a>. Sonia Sotomayor dissents, joined by Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SCOTUSblog\/status\/1541422073230286851?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 27, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Gorsuch additionally noted that Kennedy did not engage his students in prayer but rather practiced a religious observance individually, leading to the conclusion that the District intentionally prohibited a religious practice. The ruling argued that a teacher or faculty\u2019s constitutional protections are not stripped on school grounds, given that in this case, the faculty are government employees and are \u201cpaid in part to speak on the government\u2019s behalf,\u201d the ruling said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRespect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic,\u201d the ruling said. \u201cHere, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.\u201d <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2015\/10\/26\/praying-football-coach-will-sue-washington-school-district-for-refusing-to-let-him-pray\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(RELATED: Praying\u00a0 Football Coach Will Sue Washington School District For Refusing To Let Him Pray)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh joined Gorsuch in filing the majority opinion. Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan filed a dissenting opinion.<\/p>\n<p>In April, the conservative justices initially <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/04\/25\/supreme-court-joe-kennedy-football-religious-freedom-first-amendment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">argued<\/a> that Kennedy had not violated the First Amendment because he was not speaking on behalf of the government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is perhaps most troubling about the Ninth Circuit\u2019s opinion is language that can be understood to mean that a coach\u2019s duty to serve as a good role model requires the coach to refrain from any manifestation of religious faith \u2014 even when the coach is plainly not on duty,\u201d Justice Samuel Alito <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/18pdf\/18-12_d18e.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote<\/a>\u00a0when the court initially denied the case certiorari in 2019.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat if the coach, instead of taking a knee for a prayer, took a knee during the national anthem because of moral opposition to racism,\u201d Justice Clarence\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/03\/31\/clarence-ginni-thomas-recusal-paoletta-severino-dhillon\/\">Thomas<\/a>\u00a0asked.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/prayer-shouldnt-be-a-firing-offense-joe-kennedy-supreme-court-football-coach-religion-11650818024\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kennedy,<\/a> who had begun working at the school district in 2008, had been initially reprimanded by the school for his private prayers on the field and was then fired for violating his employer\u2019s demands to stop. He first <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2017\/06\/12\/a-school-district-fired-this-coach-for-praying-now-hes-fighting-back\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">filed<\/a> suit in 2016 with the First Liberty Institute as his legal counsel, then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit, who both sided with the school district.<\/p>\n<p>The Court recently <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/06\/21\/supreme-court-school-vouchers-religious-schools\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">struck down<\/a> a Maine policy that excluded religious schools from a private school tuition assistance program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of a high school football coach in Washington whose employer fired him in 2015 for kneeling in prayer on the 50-yard line after<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":198,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1529278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1529278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1529278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1529278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1529278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}