A Washington state high school football coach who was terminated for post-game prayers with students vowed to “bring God back” when he returns to the field Friday night after a 7-year legal fight that reached the highest court last year.
Joe Kennedy lost his job as an assistant football coach in his hometown of Bremerton, Washington, for taking a knee and praying on the field after games, a “ritual” he told the Washington Examiner began in 2008 and lasted until 2015 when school officials told him to cease his silent prayers. But before the Friday night lights flicker off at the Bremerton High School Memorial Stadium, Kennedy plans to pray once again.
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“I’m here, we’re going to have our first game Friday, and I get to bring God break back into the schools that has been absent for 50 years,” Kennedy said Thursday, adding he will be kneeling and praying at the 50-yard line, “that same ritual I’ve had since the very beginning.”
Kennedy, 54, was first relieved of his duties as an assistant football coach in 2015 after school officials were informed that other students were joining his post-game prayers. He sued, alleging that the Bremerton School District fired him in violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of religion, beginning an extended legal battle with the district that culminated with the June 27, 2022, Supreme Court decision in his favor.
Although he said he felt “a bit rusty” after his long-awaited return to the field, Kennedy’s comeback fulfills his yearslong goal to stand up against the district’s threatening disapproval, despite saying officials there still aren’t “really happy” about his return.
“They wish this would all go away — they keep calling me the ‘eight-year-distraction,'” Kennedy said, adding that he’s received an outpouring of support from the local community, students, and his fellow coaching staff.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who penned the 6-3 majority opinion reached by the high court’s Republican-appointed majority, wrote that a “government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance.”
“And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,” Gorsuch added.
Kennedy said he’s grateful for his counsel at First Liberty Institute, the nonprofit legal group that represented him in court, but remains shocked that his dispute landed his story in major headlines across the country, noting he initially thought “everything could be worked out within a week of when this first started.”
His legal saga compelled him to write and release a book outlining his journey starting from the end of his career as a 20-year Marine Corps veteran who fought in the Gulf War, to his time as a praying coach, and the court battle that reached the highest court twice. The justices denied the case certiorari in 2019, saying lower courts that ruled against him had more to decide.
Kennedy’s book, Average Joe: The Coach Joe Kennedy Story, is due on Oct. 24, and a movie about his life, also called Average Joe, is in production by GND Media Group, the producer behind God’s Not Dead movie series.
“It’s really telling my life,” Kennedy said, noting he had a troubled upbringing and wanted to create an “inspirational” book. “It’s from my eyes and really tells people exactly what I’ve been through basically from birth — An unwanted pregnancy, being homeless, in and out of group homes, foster homes, and boys’ homes.”
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As for whether his next chapter back as a coach will last another eight years, Kennedy said he’s leaving the field open once he’s completed this season’s goal.
“I asked to be a coach again and to be able to pray. Well, I’m a coach again. Now I just have to take that knee on the 50-yard line, and I’ll feel like I’ve completed it,” Kennedy said.
