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Football coach Joe Kennedy ended his comeback at Bremerton High School in Washington state on Wednesday, citing family concerns and a lack of support from school district officials following his Supreme Court victory last year.
Mr. Kennedy resigned from his part-time coaching job after having returned to the school for one game last Friday following a seven-year legal battle over his right to “take a knee” and offer up a postgame prayer at midfield that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
The coach told The Washington Times on Wednesday that the stress of caring for an ailing, out-of-state family member and the Bremerton School District’s treatment of him had convinced him it was time to leave.
“My father-in-law had test results this past week, which do not look good. He’s been ailing for years,” Mr. Kennedy said from Pensacola, Florida. “We did not need to get this kind of news at this time,” he said.
“It is apparent that the reinstatement ordered by the Supreme Court will not be fully followed after a series of actions meant to diminish my role and single me out in what I can only believe is retaliation by the school district,” he said in a letter to the school’s head coach, Paul Theriault.
“I don’t want to seem like sour grapes or anything like that. I’m sure they’re not going to be sad that I’m gone,” Mr. Kennedy added. “It’s just sad because these people are my friends. And, you know, we’ve been friends for decades and it’s just sad that it came to all of this.”
One of Mr. Kennedy’s attorneys, Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, who successfully argued his case at the Supreme Court, said the district had “done everything they can to make [Mr. Kennedy] feel unwelcome.”
Mr. Sasser said First Liberty would “investigate the situation to determine whether further legal action is necessary.”
In a statement, Rachel Laser, president and chief executive officer of Americans United for Separation of Church and State — which argued the school district’s case at the high court — said officials did accommodate Mr. Kennedy on his return.
“The Bremerton School District has gone above and beyond to respect employees’ religious freedom while also protecting students’ religious freedom and the community’s safety and right to enjoy school-sponsored events,” Ms. Laser said.
She said the Kennedy case represented the efforts of “a shadow network of religious extremists … using this case to advance a Christian Nationalist agenda to infuse Christianity into our public schools.”
Mr. Kennedy said his legal challenge against the school district centered on whether he was “allowed to pray after a football game” and whether he could do that as a coach.
“It’s just really sad that we didn’t take that as a learning lesson for the school district and, to embrace that and teach our kids, ‘Hey, this is what this [First Amendment] means. This is a landmark thing, and this is your right as an American.’”
He said his Supreme Court fight was not intended to promote one faith over any other.
“This is a fight over the constitutional rights of all Americans and religious liberty, and that’s not just Christians,” Mr. Kennedy said. “That goes for Jews. It goes for Buddhists. It goes for Muslims — you pick a faith, and they are protected equally. Nobody is special, and Christians aren’t any more special than anybody else.”
The former Marine, who is releasing a book about his civil liberties fight next month and has a movie in pre-production, said he will continue to speak out for individual freedoms.
“I will fight for anybody’s rights,” he said. “ I did it for 20 years as a Marine and I don’t see why I would ever stop as long as I have breath in my lungs.”
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