When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that Bremerton assistant football coach Joseph Kennedy had the right to pray on the field, it wasn’t widely understood then that the court had also ordered the school district to give him his job back....Former U.S. solicitor general Paul Clements, who argued Kennedy's case at the Supreme Court, repeatedly asserted at the Court that Kennedy had been fired. Justice Samuel Alito also said repeatedly that Kenney had been fired. This wasn't true.
“As soon as the school district says ‘Hey, come back,’ I am there, first flight,” [Kennedy] said.
So the school district has been flummoxed about what’s happened since.
... as the Bremerton Knights were prepping for the season in August, Kennedy was up in Alaska, meeting with former Vice President Mike Pence and evangelist Franklin Graham. On the eve of the first game, which the Knights won, Kennedy was in Milwaukee being presented with an engraved .22-caliber rifle at an American Legion convention.
The weekend of the second game, which the Knights also won, Kennedy appeared with former President Donald Trump at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey. He saw Trump get a religious award from a group called the American Cornerstone Institute.
Coming up this month, Kennedy’s scheduled to give a talk as part of a lectureship series at a Christian university in Arkansas.
“Place a PR/Publicity Request,” invites his personal website, where he’s known as Coach Joe.
In 2015, he was put on paid leave near the end of the season after holding a series of prayer sessions on the field with students and state legislators. He still got paid for his full assistant coach contract, about $5,000. High school assistants often work on yearly deals, and Kennedy, at odds with the head coach and aggrieved by what had happened, never reapplied to work the 2016 season.The case didn't end with a humble football coach returning to ply his humble trade and humbly praying on the 50-yard line surrounded by players, some of whom felt coerced to pray. We were told that Kennedy felt called by God to spread the Word that way -- but somehow God doesn't want him to do that anymore, apparently. Why did God abandon His flock on the high-school gridirons of Washington State?
“He was not terminated,” Bevers said. The head coach at the time had moved on, as did most of the coaching staff.
Because this wasn't about spreading the Word to those kids. It was about beating the libs. It's always about beating the libs.
We're the enemy. We're the devil. Defeating us is the point, more than any ostensible goal. Kennedy and his lawyers beat us, so mission accomplished. Always remember this.
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