Mon Apr 25, 2022 – 9:00 pm EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — The Supreme Court on Monday heard the case of former coach Joe Kennedy, who was fired by Washington’s Bremerton School District in 2015 after he silently prayed on a school field after a football game.
What appeared to be sympathetic statements during the two-hour hearing by justices of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority indicate the court may side with Kennedy in its decision, anticipated by the end of June.
Paul D. Clement, Kennedy’s lawyer, opened the session with a constitutional defense of the coach’s prayer, explaining, “When Coach Kennedy took a knee midfield after games to say a prayer of thanks, his expression was entirely his own. That private religious expression is doubly protected by the free exercise and free speech clauses.”
Clement told the Court he believes the decision “not only violated the First Amendment” but “ignored a veritable wall” of Supreme Court “precedents that make clear that a school does not endorse private religious speech just because it fails to censor it.”
While Kennedy was eventually joined in prayer by students, and he had begun making religious references in motivational speeches to his players,
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