Former Bremerton, Wash., High School football coach Joseph A. Kennedy addresses the media outside the U.S. Supreme Court after April 25 oral arguments in his case. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether prayers at the 50-yard line by former high school football coach Joseph A. Kennedy were protected by the free speech and free exercise of religion clauses of the First Amendment. At issue is whether the Bremerton, Wash., school district could regulate the coach’s religious expression because he was on the job or his prayers might appear to be endorsed by the district or coerce students to participate. Education Week covered the April 25 arguments here , but there’s still plenty to unpack from more than an hour and a half of back and forth in the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District . The justices seemed to agree that the facts are complicated There is a long chronology of events, especially involving games in the fall of 2015 when Kennedy took a knee at the 50-yard line right after the game. There are factual disputes about exactly what occurred at some of these games, as well as over the Bremerton school district’s sometimes-shifting rationales for […]
