Coach Fired For Praying At Football Game Gets Old Job Back, $2 Million Settlement

“…Joseph Kennedy, a high school assistant football coach fired eight years ago for praying on the field with students, returned to his old position and will receive a $1.78 million settlement.

Board members of the Bremerton School District in Washington voted last week to approve the settlement, which will cover attorney fees incurred by Kennedy in the landmark legal battle that reached the Supreme Court last year. Justices ruled that the public high school violated the First Amendment by placing Kennedy on administrative leave in response to his prayer.

Kennedy, a veteran of the Marine Corps, started a tradition of kneeling and praying after football games after he was employed by the school district in 2008. Some students later volunteered to join their coach; a school administrator raised the issue with Kennedy in 2015 after an opposing team complained, leading to Kennedy’s placement on administrative leave.

“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “Here, 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.”…”