Supreme Court studies Nassau otb crusaders and ball breakers
High-School Football Coach Takes Case for Prayer to Supreme Court
If successful, the case could help reset the line between church and state
Former football coach Joe Kennedy, shown last month, began praying at the center of the football field more than a decade ago.
PHOTO: TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
WASHINGTON—On Monday, the Supreme Court will turn to the question of prayer in public school, with the religious rights of a high-school football coach clashing with the district’s obligation to avoid endorsement of any particular creed.
The case, coming before a conservative majority that in previous decisions has given priority to private religious exercise over secular government interests, could help reset the line between church and state.
The conflict traces back more than a decade, to a weekend when Joe Kennedy, recently out of the Marines and newly committed to Jesus, was contemplating a job offer to coach high-school football in his hometown, Bremerton, Wash.
“I was sitting there in the middle of the night, watching TV, and this movie comes on, ‘Facing the Giants,’” Mr. Kennedy, 52 years old, said. “I’ve never experienced when God just came down and, wow, but it was an answer to, ‘Should I coach or not?’”
Joe Kennedy, center in blue, kneels and prays after a game in 2015.
PHOTO: LINDSEY WASSON/THE SEATTLE TIMES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The 2006 film concerns a high-school football coach with a losing record who turns things around by inspiring his players to praise God regardless of the game’s results, rather than focusing solely on winning.
“And just like in the movie, I said, ‘God, I’m in; I understand that you’re calling me to do this,’” said Mr. Kennedy, who this month was visiting Washington, D.C. on a press tour arranged by his counsel, the religious advocacy group First Liberty Institute of Plano, Texas. “And I’m going to give you the glory after every game, right there on the battlefield, win or lose.”
As coach of the junior varsity team and an assistant coach for the varsity squad, Mr. Kennedy went on to kneel to pray at the center of the field following each game. But there was a legally significant difference between the cinematic coach and Mr. Kennedy: the film’s Shiloh Christian Academy, where the fictitious Coach Grant Taylor works, is a private religious school. Bremerton High, whence Mr. Kennedy graduated in 1988, is a public institution.
Mr. Kennedy said he never explicitly told his players to pray with him, or favored those who did. Some players, from Bremerton and occasionally the opposing team, began to join his postgame devotionals on the field. The Bremerton principal later testified that a parent complained that his son, although an atheist, “felt compelled to participate” in Mr. Kennedy’s ritual because “he felt he wouldn’t get to play as much if he didn’t participate.”
According to a court declaration Mr. Kennedy filed, he would say things such as, “Lord, I lift these guys up for what they just did on the field. They battled for 48 minutes and even though they came here as rivals, they can leave here as friends. It doesn’t matter what our beliefs are—we believe in our team and we believe in each other.”
Under Bremerton School District policy, students may “engage in private, non-disruptive prayer at any time not in conflict with learning activities.” School staff, the policy says, “shall neither encourage nor discourage a student from engaging in non-disruptive oral or silent prayer or any other form of devotional activity.”
In 2015, after being advised of Mr. Kennedy’s ritual by an opposing team’s staff member, the district superintendent, Aaron Leavell, concluded the practice could expose the school to a lawsuit for officially endorsing religion. The First Amendment’s religion provisions, the free-exercise and establishment clauses, protect the “free exercise” of an individual’s creed while prohibiting government from an official “establishment of religion.”
Aaron Leavell, Bremerton School District superintendent, hearing arguments in the case in 2017.
PHOTO: MICHAELA ROMAN/KITSAP SUN/USA TODAY NETWORK
In a letter, Dr. Leavell told Mr. Kennedy he was “free to engage in religious activity, including prayer,” but it “must be physically separate from any student activity, and students may not be allowed to join such activity,” and be “not outwardly discernible as religious activity.” Although the district offered Mr. Kennedy the chance to pray inside school buildings, it precluded kneeling in prayer on the 50-yard line.
Dr. Leavell declined an interview request.
Mr. Kennedy publicized his cause in the news media and continued performing his postgame rituals. That led to a suspension and a recommendation from the athletic director not to renew the coach’s annual contract for failing to follow policy. Mr. Kennedy didn’t reapply for a coaching position in the 2016 season. That year, he filed suit in federal court, alleging violations of his First Amendment rights.
Federal district and appellate courts sided with the superintendent.
In Bremerton, “students and families practice, among other beliefs, Judaism, Islam, the Baha’i faith, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism,” Judge Milan Smith wrote in a March 2021 decision for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The district “would have violated the Establishment Clause by allowing Kennedy to pray at the conclusion of football games, in the center of the field, with students who felt pressured to join him,” the opinion said. “He was not engaging in private prayer, but was instead engaging in public speech of an overtly religious nature while performing his job duties,” and “spurned” the district’s efforts to find an accommodation.
The Supreme Court has taken a narrower view of the Establishment Clause than the Ninth Circuit, and religious conservatives are hopeful the justices will see the case as a way to clarify the constitutional standard for lower courts.
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Where does the church/state dividing line fall on the football field? Should a school employee be allowed to pray on public grounds? Join the conversation below.
The case has drawn wide attention, with more than 50 friend of court briefs filed to bolster the opposing arguments. Mr. Kennedy’s supporters include Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other Republican lawmakers, represented by Donald McGahn,
Former professional football players have lined up on both sides, as have religious groups, and education leaders, from Betsy DeVos, education secretary in the Trump administration, supporting the coach, and the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, siding with the superintendent.
Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin+1@wsj.com
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