Coach-led Prayer at Football Games

LEGAL BRIEF

To the list of duties assigned to school administrators overseeing athletic events, add another: addressing whether coaches can pray with students before or after games.

Last summer, in Kennedy v. Bremerton, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that a Washington state school district violated an assistant football coach’s rights to free exercise and free speech when he was put on leave after he refused to stop praying on the 50-yard line immediately after games. The district worried observers would think the district endorsed the practice, but the court disagreed. Instead, the ruling called this a quiet, personal religious observance and applied “historical practices and a faithful understanding of the Constitution.”

What does that mean? No one knows. So what should school leaders consider when an employee’s personal religious practice could appear to be a school-sponsored establishment of religion?