Joseph Kennedy, who was an assistant football coach at the high school, never wanted to become a symbol of the religious right or a political figure.
He wanted to connect with young people by coaching football and by saying a prayer after each game.
Kennedy said that he would take a knee and thank God for the opportunity to be a coach.
The 52 year-old is out of coaching and in the midst of a raging legal battle after he insisted on taking a knee at the beginning of a game to pray with students. He was fired from his job as a public school teacher in 2015 after he refused to stop his on-field prayers.
The coach is a mixture of fear and awe. You want to work with the coach. You want to play. Rachel Laser is the president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is representing the school board. She said that it was a slippery slope to use religion to discriminate and exclude.
Over the past seven years, Kennedy's case has traveled from this blue-collar, military town across the Puget Sound to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case thrust Kennedy, a former Marine who only reluctantly signed on to help coach a mediocre high school football team, into what legal analysts see as potentially one of the most consequential cases in recent years testing the separation of church and state.
The First Amendment guarantees of religious liberty, and the Supreme Court will have to decide if Kennedy's prayers are protected by that or if they violate the First Amendment by promoting his religion. The justices will issue an opinion by late June.
Legal observers say it is likely that the Supreme Court will rule in Kennedy's favor. The case will have a bigger impact on whether the justices view Kennedy's prayers as public or private. Legal restrictions on how teachers and other staff can express their faith in public schools could be loosened by their decision.
Howard M. Friedman is a professor at the University of Toledo's College of Law.
Kennedy was not sure if he wanted to take the part-time coaching job at his alma mater. He was worried about scheduling conflicts with his job at the naval shipyard, and he had never played organized football.
He developed a discipline problem in school because he felt neglected by his adoptive parents. He was working in a restaurant and living on his own when he got out of high school. He returned to his hometown after 20 years in the military.
He was still considering the coaching offer when he saw the movie "Facing the Giants", a Christian sports drama in which a football team is lifted to the state championship after the coach praises God.
Kennedy said the film made him cry. I've never experienced that kind of effect before. I said that I was all in. After every game on the 50 where we fought our battles, I will give you the glory.
He was an assistant coach for the varsity team at Bremerton High, which had only won one game the previous season. He was the head coach of the junior squad. Some of his players asked to join in after a few games.
Kennedy told them that America is a free country and that they can do whatever they want. Visiting players joined after a while. School officials said that the activity evolved to include an inspiring talk. Kennedy stood in the middle of a group of players holding helmets above his head during his post-game sessions. Kennedy said the prayer lasted about 30 seconds.
He said it was quick because he is not a great prayer or preacher. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to coach these guys.
For a long time, no one made an issue of Kennedy's ritual. Kennedy said he got a lot of praise from people who did not share his religious beliefs.
Many people in Bremerton didn't realize what was happening when they saw Kennedy kneel on the field.
The father of a football player said he thought the players and coaches were celebrating a victory. We thought it was all going on.
When he learned the religious nature of the huddle, he was not happy.
The issue came to a head during the football season after the opposing coach told the principal that Kennedy had invited his team to join a post-game prayer. The opposing coach approved of the prayer, according to Kennedy's lawyers. The school officials stopped it.
Kennedy posted on Facebook that he might have been fired for praying, although at that point he was still employed. Kennedy&s fight with the school became a cause because of that. Thousands of emails, letters and phone calls from around the country were received by the school district.
Kennedy was sent a letter by school officials notifying him of the school district's policy on religious expression. Employees had to be neutral, meaning they couldn't encourage or discourage students from engaging in religious activity. They noted that the rules were meant to comply with the school district's constitutional responsibility.
In the public schools context, it is clear that schools and their employees may not directly prohibit students from participating in religious activities, nor may they require students to participate in religious activities.
If Kennedy wanted to continue praying after games, he needed to separate himself from the students and not be seen by onlookers. At one point, Kennedy said, school officials offered to accommodate him at home games by allowing him to pray in the press box above the stadium's bleachers, or inside the school, which required walking several hundred yards and up several flights of steps.
Kennedy stopped the public prayer for a game. His lawyers said in their Supreme Court petition that he regretted giving in to the pressure to break his commitment to God. He said he turned his car around and returned to the empty stadium, where he delivered a silent prayer from the 50-yard line.
Kennedy retained a lawyer who sent a letter to school officials saying he was compelled to pray after every game. Kennedy did a number of local media interviews to get the word out about his decision. Kennedy knelt at the 50-yard line to pray after the next game, after he shook the opposing team's hand. Dozens of players, coaches and members of the public joined him on the field.
A Satanist group protested outside the field, saying it wanted to conduct ceremonies on the field after football games.
Kennedy was placed on leave after praying on the field again, and the school district did not rehire him for the following season. Political figures and religious conservatives came together to help transform Kennedy into a national figure of religious liberty.
Within weeks of his firing, Cruz invited him to a rally. Trump acknowledged Kennedy in the crowd at a veterans gathering before calling his firing "outrageous."
Kennedy felt like he had no choice but to accept the attention, but he grudgingly embraced it. I want to be a football coach.
Current and former football players have weighed in on the Kennedy legal fight.
The brief was written by Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins and supported Kennedy's argument that his prayers were private and not the kind of government-endorsed speech that would be unconstitutional. It compared Kennedy's prayers to the political protests of Colin Kapernick.
If Coach Kennedy had taken a knee to protest racism during the National Anthem rather than taking a knee to pray after time expired, no one would suggest that his act was governmental speech, according to the brief.
Kennedy's prayers are not like those fans see when football players are injured, or when students lead them. They said his prayers could be seen as coercive to impressionable high school players.
It is wrong for a coach to put high school students in the position of turning their backs on the team family if they don't want to join the coach's prayers after a game.
Opponents of Kennedy's on-field prayers argue that displays of religion by a coach at a public school isolated players who do not share the same faith. Kennedy was giving an implicit invitation for his players to join in, which was unfair to non-Christians.
The pastor of a Methodist church said that faith is a private act that we commit to as individuals. That goes against my conscience as a pastor and also a community member.
Kennedy did not punish those who did not join his prayers. Kennedy said that two players objected to the prayers and he made them captains. I don't need a bunch of drones.
Kennedy did not violate the First Amendment by praying. They believe that the school system in Bremerton restricts his religious rights by banning them.
Jeremy Dys, special counsel for litigation and communications at First Liberty Institute, said that nobody should be fired for being religious.
Kennedy wants his coaching job back, so he does not seek monetary damages in his suit. He moved to Florida to care for his ailing father-in-law. If the court rules in his favor, he would return to his hometown of Bremerton as soon as a plane could take him there.
The high court has ruled against teacher-led prayer and Bible readings in public school classrooms, religious invocations at graduations, and student-led prayers at public school football games. Lower courts have consistently ruled against Kennedy.
Kennedy has a good chance to win this time, according to legal observers. In recent years, the Supreme Court has tended to protect religious liberty over maintaining the separation of church and state.
The legal battle has been worthwhile, Kennedy said.
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