The school argued the coach violated the Constitution and its prohibitions on prayer in schools.
A high school in Washington wrongly punished a football coach after he prayed on the field, the Supreme Court
Monday, potentially paving the way for fewer restrictions on how public school employees can express their religion while on the job despite Constitutional restrictions on religion in schools.... [+]The court sided 6-3 with Joseph Kennedy, a former high school football coach in Washington who was punished after praying on the football field during games, which the school said violated the separation of church and state.
Kennedy argued that the school district unlawfully violated his First Amendment rights to free exercise and free speech, which the Supreme Court agreed with. In a ruling that split along ideological lines, the justices ruled that Kennedy was not “acting within the scope of his duties as a coach” because he was praying after the game ended and wasn’t doing any of his job duties, and thus his prayers were First Amendment-protected speech.
The school district argued that any religious speech by school officials could be “impermissibly coercive on students”—and student athletes said they felt pressured to join in the prayers—but the justices ruled that requiring school officials to have no religious expression whatsoever “would undermine a long constitutional tradition in which learning how to tolerate diverse expressive activities has always been ‘part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society.
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