The mysterious case of the missing high school sports coach
Joe Kennedy insisted there was nothing more important to him than getting back to his student athletes
(Kennedy took his case to the Supreme Court and won. Photo credit: Facebook)
Let’s start with an admission. A part-time high school American football coach is not really missing.
Except that he’s missing from the sports department at Bremerton High School, west of Seattle.
If you’ve never heard of Joe Kennedy, that’s fine.
A decade or so ago, the Marine Corps veteran and born-again Christian was a part-time coach at the high school, whose much-loved sports team is called The Knights.
He became famous when pictures of him praying with his students on the 50-yard line went viral.
The school, seeking to follow a tradition that has largely kept organised religion out of state schools, asked him to stop doing so. When he did not - claiming his own constitutional rights were being infringed - his contract was not renewed.
Pretty quickly, the coach become a hero for religious conservatives, who claimed the First Amendment of the constitution guaranteed him the right to behave as he did.
That’s the one that deals with “the freedom of speech”.
His opponents said his actions were wrong, not least because students - some of who might not be Christian - could feel forced to join in his prayers because of the coach’s influential role. Don’t pray, some parents worried, and you might not play.
[Images of Kennedy praying with his students went viral. Photo credit: Facebook]
They also pointed out that same First Amendment prohibited the government from making any “law respecting an establishment of religion”.
His legal struggle with the school district, supported by wealthy Christian donors and activist groups, dragged on for seven years, until the conservative majority Supreme Court in 2022 ruled in his favour.
“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic – whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head,” wrote Justice Neal Gorsuch, who authored the 6-3 majority opinion.
The court’s ruling was one of several landmark decisions that reverberated across the country last summer. It came just three days after the court upheld a Mississippi law banning most abortions, and in doing so, overturned Roe v Wade, the l973 ruling that millions of women had relied upon for 50 years to legally access abortion.
But having insisted he wanted nothing more than to get his job back and return The Knights, the coach quit after just one game and returned to Florida, where he has been based after his 2015 de facto dismissal.
(He did not return for the 2022 season, as his contract was still being negotiated by his lawyers.)
The Bremerton School District says it has received the coach’s letter of resignation.
“The district received Mr Kennedy's resignation on Wednesday September 6, and it was approved by the board at their regularly scheduled meeting on September 7,” it says.
“The district does not comment on personnel matters, so we will not be issuing any further statements.”
In his letter, Kennedy claims that since his brief return to his job as a coach, he had encountered “actions meant to diminish my role and single me out in what I can only believe is retaliation by the school district. Therefore, I am tendering my immediate resignation.
“Bremerton's football coaches, players, and parents have been such a blessing. I feel it is in everyone's best interest I step back from coaching.”
It is unclear who will take over his coaching duties.
Lots of people are not surprised by this.
When I visited Bremerton last year, taking the fabulous green-and-white Washington State Department of Transportation car ferry that takes 60 minutes from Seattle across the Puget Sound, there were plenty who thought the coach’s backers were simply looking for a showdown at at the court.
[A conservative majority US Supreme Court sided with Kennedy. Photo credit: Wikicommons]
They said it was not dissimilar to the way anti-abortion activists pushed Mississippi health officer Thomas Dobbs’s case against the state’s sole provider in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organisation, that led to the scrapping of Roe.
The organisation that defended the school district in its legal battle, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has long argued Kennedy had no interest in returning to coaching
“That Kennedy doesn’t want to coach at Bremerton School District isn’t a surprise,” says the group’s CEO Rachel Laser. “It’s just one more example of why the Supreme Court should not have taken this case in the first place.”
Kennedy’s legal team insisted he did want to return to school.
Hiram Sasser, a senior lawyer at First Liberty Institute, a group that has fought First Amendment cases across the country, claims “the school had done everything they can to make him feel unwelcome”.
He says, “We are going to investigate the situation to determine whether further legal action is necessary.”
When I asked what the school had done to make him feel unwelcome, the group said it was looking into the claims. Kennedy has also not responded to inquires about what alleged incidents at the school he considered to be acts of “retaliation”.
Kennedy does not appear to be too upset by developments, and looks set to continue developing his career as “religious freedom” celebrity.
During his presidential run in 2016, Donald Trump called Kennedy onto the stage at a rally. Kennedy also met Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Next month, Salem Books, a publishing house that specialises in religious and conservative titles, is set to publish Kennedy’s ghost-written memoir, Average Joe: The Coach Joe Kennedy Story. Reports suggest a film may even be in the works.
“As I have demonstrated, we must make a stand for what we believe in. In my case, I made a stand to take a knee,” Kennedy says.
“I encourage all Americans to make their own stand for freedom and our right to express our faith as we see fit. I appreciate the people of Bremerton, the coaches, staff and especially the students and wish them all well. Bremerton will always be home.”