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Supreme Court Won't Hear Case of WA Football Coach Fired Over Public Prayers [View all]
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/22/supreme-court-wont-hear-case-of-wa-football-coach-fired-over-public-prayers/
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Supreme Court Wont Hear Case of WA Football Coach Fired Over Public Prayers
By Hemant Mehta, January 22, 2019
The Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from a public school football coach who wouldnt stop praying on the field and was subsequently fired. The case is over. Church/state separation won over fake religious freedom.
The case involved Joe Kennedy, the former assistant football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington. He continued praying publicly despite several warnings that he was violating the law. In December of 2015, the District said they wouldnt be renewing his contract, which led to him filing a federal lawsuit against them in August of 2016. A federal district court judge refused to overturn the Districts decision. So Kennedys lawyers from First Liberty appealed the decision, and in August of 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him too.
So Kennedy tried again, asking the entire Ninth Circuit to give his case another look. They declined last January. In June, his lawyers threw the Hail Mary pass, asking the Supreme Court to reconsider his appeal.
Today, the Supreme Court declined to take up his case thank goodness but four of the conservative justices (everyone except Chief Justice John Roberts) issued an explanation of why they werent taking up this case.
In short, they felt there were too many important unresolved factual questions that would make it difficult if not impossible to decide the case.
Their main concern hinges on the question of whether his firing violated his free speech rights.
The district said they fired him over the prayers because (1) he wasnt supervising his players at the time and (2) reasonable observers might think his prayers represented school-sponsored religion. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the conservatives that the first concern would be a legitimate one for the district, and Kennedy had no proof he was off-duty at those times:
[Kennedys] free speech claim would have far greater weight if petitioner was likely to be able to establish either that he was not really on duty at the time in question or that he was on duty only in the sense that his workday had not ended and that his prayer took place at a time when it would have been permissible for him to engage briefly in other private conduct, say, calling home or making a reservation for dinner at a local restaurant.
Unfortunately, the District Courts brief, informal oral decision did not make any clear finding about what petitioner was likely to be able to prove.
Alito added that the four justices would gladly have overturned the earlier ruling if the facts supported Kennedy, but those facts just arent there. Literally, theyre not there. Its not that the facts go against him. So they have nothing to point to in order to say the district was wrong.
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