Joseph Kennedy, a highschool assistant soccer coach fired eight years in the past for praying on the sector with college students, returned to his previous place and can obtain a $1.78 million settlement.
Board members of the Bremerton College District in Washington voted final week to approve the settlement, which can cowl legal professional charges incurred by Kennedy within the landmark authorized battle that reached the Supreme Court docket final 12 months. Justices dominated that the general public highschool violated the First Modification by putting Kennedy on administrative depart in response to his prayer.
Kennedy, a veteran of the Marine Corps, began a convention of kneeling and praying after soccer video games after he was employed by the varsity district in 2008. Some college students later volunteered to hitch their coach; a college administrator raised the difficulty with Kennedy in 2015 after an opposing crew complained, resulting in Kennedy’s placement on administrative depart.
“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote within the majority opinion. “Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”
Bremerton College District vowed to adjust to the Supreme Court docket resolution however stated in an announcement that officers “offered repeatedly” to accommodate Kennedy’s want to hope “as long as he was not delivering prayers to students or coercing students to join him.” Board members added that they “look forward to moving past the distraction” of the authorized battle.
Kennedy was reinstated to his place final week; courtroom paperwork stated that Bremerton College District “shall not interfere with or prohibit Kennedy from offering a prayer” per the choice from the Supreme Court docket and can’t “retaliate against or take any future adverse employment action against Kennedy” for conduct in alignment with the order.
The affirmation from the Supreme Court docket final summer season was the most recent of a number of favorable rulings for spiritual liberty in the US lately. Justices issued one other landmark opinion within the fall of 2020 in response to a lawsuit filed by Roman Catholic and Jewish organizations in New York difficult restrictive public well being mandates with restricted spiritual providers.
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“Government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis. At a minimum, that Amendment prohibits government officials from treating religious exercises worse than comparable secular activities, unless they are pursuing a compelling interest and using the least restrictive means available,” Gorsuch wrote. “It is time, past time, to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques.”
Officers in California agreed after one other Supreme Court docket opinion to settle lawsuits from Grace Group Church for a mixed $800,000. “We know that there is no circumstance that can cause the church to close,” Pastor John MacArthur stated in a letter to the authorities. “The church is not only a building but is the bride of Christ and exists to proclaim the truth.”
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