The Supreme Court of the United States recently rules 6-3 in favor of Joseph Kennedy, a former Washington state high school football assistant coach who lost his job over midfield prayers he held with his team after games, in a decision that many pundits argue could have broad implications for coaches and teachers across the country and chips away at the separation of church and state. The court’s majority found the First Amendment protected Kennedy’s religious views. “Basically, you have two questions,” Daniel Conkle, a professor of law emeritus and adjunct professor of religious studies at Indiana University, tells the Indianapolis Star. “One, is the teacher or the coach acting as a teacher or coach or are they acting in their private capacity? Even the dissenters in this case, would concede that a teacher who quietly says grace in the lunchroom, before having lunch, would be engaged in private religious activity. If a teacher sitting at her own desk is reading the Bible, I think that would clearly count as private religious exercise. And two, at what point does the coach’s conduct change from being the coach in his official capacity to being in a private capacity? It’s really fuzzy. The bottom line here is that the Supreme Court has significantly muddied the waters.”
