The post Coach Joe Kennedy Will Return to Football Field After Winning 7-Year Legal Battle Over Prayer appeared first on The Daily Signal.
After a 7-year legal battle that ended with a victory at the Supreme Court, Joe Kennedy will be back on the field coaching football and taking a knee in prayer on Sept. 1.
“I have been looking forward to this since the 2015 season,” Kennedy told The Daily Signal Tuesday. “I am praying for a fantastic fall for our Knights!”
In 2015, Kennedy lost his job as an assistant football coach for the Bremerton High School Knights, about 30 miles west of Seattle, after taking a knee in prayer after games.
From the time he began coaching in 2008, Kennedy said, he made a covenant with God that he would thank him in prayer at the 50-yard line at the end of every game. No student or parent filed a formal complaint about the practice.
When the Bremerton School District learned of Kennedy’s prayer routine, it told him he could no longer pray after games, even by himself, but Kennedy kept the covenant he made with God, a decision that cost him his job.
The football coach decided to fight back and filed a lawsuit. The Supreme Court heard arguments in Kennedy’s case and ruled in his favor in June, 2022.
From the start of the legal battle, Kennedy said all he was asking the court for was a chance to return to the field as a coach and be allowed to thank God afterward. Now, Kennedy will have that opportunity.
“All coach [Kennedy] ever wanted was to be able to kneel in prayer after football games,” Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel, the nonprofit legal organization that represented Kennedy, told The Daily Signal. “We’re thrilled he will be able to do so again,” Sasser said, adding that Kennedy’s “victory at the Supreme Court is important to all Americans.”
On Sept. 1, Kennedy is inviting all Americans to join him and take a knee in prayer to celebrate a national night of prayer.
Kennedy’s story of faith and determination captured the attention of the nation and compelled the football coach to write a book sharing his story, and to explain why he chose to spend years in and out of courtrooms for the right to take a knee in silent prayer after games. On Oct. 24, his book “Average Joe: The Coach Joe Kennedy Story” will be available for purchase.
“Those prayers I prayed on the fifty-yard line after the Bremerton High School football games were never for attention, and certainly never to proselytize impressionable minors,” Kennedy writes in the book. “As a twenty-year Marine Corps veteran who fought in the First Gulf War, I simply took issue with my constitutional rights being assaulted—the rights I had risked my life to support and defend against when I took my Oath of Enlistment.”
Little known stories about Kennedy’s troubled youth and his service in the Marine Corps are also detailed in the forthcoming book.
A movie about Kennedy’s life, also called “Average Joe,” is currently in production with GND Media Group, the production company behind “God’s Not Dead.” The film’s release date has not been announced.
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