OPINION:
Freedom of speech, assembly, press and religion are the bedrocks of a free and vibrant society. The daily news around the globe reminds us that freedom is a precious commodity that must be protected for every generation. Unfortunately, in America, we are seeing an egregious assault on one of these key freedoms that have attracted so many immigrants to our shores. Religious freedom, despite being a constitutional freedom guaranteed for all Americans and laid out in our Bill of Rights, is being challenged with enormous stakes.
The 50-yard line of a high school football field is becoming the centerpiece of the struggle to preserve this core freedom for all Americans. The quiet, unassuming hero of this struggle is Joe Kennedy, a Marine Corps veteran and former high school football coach who was summarily fired from the job he loved for the “outrageous” act of taking a knee in quiet prayer after his games.
When Mr. Kennedy ended his active-duty career with the Marine Corps, he returned to his childhood home of Bremerton, Washington. Mr. Kennedy had never played football, nor had he coached, but the school’s athletic director saw him running one day in the Navy town wearing a Bremerton Knights shirt and wrestling shoes. He figured Kennedy might have an interest in coaching.
As Mr. Kennedy wrestled with the idea of coaching high school football, he stumbled upon the movie “Facing the Giants” where the protagonist develops a heartfelt conviction to pray at the 50-yard line, whether his team wins or loses. Mr. Kennedy was inspired to make the same commitment: He would coach, and, whether the Bremerton Knights won or lost, he would be at the 50-yard line by himself on a knee in silent prayer.
Soon, players began asking to join Mr. Kennedy, the head coach of the junior varsity team and the assistant head coach of the varsity team, in his silent postgame prayer. “It’s a free country,” he would tell them. And, for the next several years, players chose to join Mr. Kennedy at the 50-yard line.
When the school told Mr. Kennedy he had to stop praying with the players, he listened to the administration and immediately stopped — his commitment to God started as a private matter. Coach Kennedy returned to taking a knee by himself in a quiet 15-30 seconds of prayer at the 50-yard line.
The superintendent of Bremerton School District, Aaron Leavell, acknowledged Mr. Kennedy complied with the school. A week before the district suspended Mr. Kennedy for praying by himself at the 50-yard line, he wrote to Randy Dorn, Washington’s state superintendent of Public Instruction. “The issue is quickly changing as it has shifted from leading prayer with student athletes,” Mr. Leavell explained, “to a coaches [sic] right to conduct a personal, private prayer … on the 50 yard line.”
A week later, Bremerton suspended Mr. Kennedy for taking knee by himself at the 50-yard line in quiet prayer. In a Q&A the school district released on their website, it acknowledged that Mr. Kennedy had complied with the district’s demands and an investigation by the school indicated, “There is indeed no evidence that students have been directly coerced to pray with Kennedy.”
About a month later, on Nov. 15, 2015, Bremerton gave Mr. Kennedy his first ever negative evaluation, making sure to add at the end: “Do Not Rehire.”
That was the end of Mr. Kennedy’s career in coaching. On April 25, the Supreme Court of the United States will consider Mr. Kennedy’s case. If his termination is upheld, then teachers who pray over their lunch in the cafeteria or wear a yarmulke or hijab in the classroom could also lose their jobs.
Virginia recently filed a friend-of-the-court brief at the U.S. Supreme Court because no one should be fired for exercising their freedom of speech and religion.
As a two-time Super Bowl Champion, dubbed “The Ageless Wonder” for playing football for most of his life, and as the newly elected attorney general of Virginia, whose family lived only one generation ago under Fidel Castro’s dictatorship which brutally punished those who attempted to practice religious freedom — we thought we should speak up and provide a voice for Mr. Kennedy.
For the American people, the stakes are higher than any election, championship or Super Bowl. In this country, everyone should enjoy the right to practice any faith they want, or have no faith at all.
The freedoms of religion and speech are the first freedoms in the Bill of Rights for a reason and are fundamental to our nation. Mr. Kennedy’s First Amendment rights were violated when the school district punished him for exercising this constitutional freedom and by doing so, they are promoting the radical and dangerous view that faith and public service cannot coexist.
In the late 1960s, the Supreme Court noted that “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights when they pass through the schoolhouse gate.”
That promise of the First Amendment — extended then to students protesting the Vietnam War — should also apply to all public-school employees, including the ones coaching on the football field.
• Darrell Green is a Hall of Fame cornerback who played football for the Washington Redskins from 1983 to 2002. Jason Miyares grew up an enormous Darrell Green fan but ended up being elected the first Hispanic and Cuban American elected attorney general of Virginia.
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