Joe Kennedy’s second tenure as an assistant football coach at Bremerton High School (BHS) in Washington State was short lived, as he has offered his letter of resignation from his position.
Last year, the Supreme Court had ruled that BHS wrongly terminated Kennedy from his position in 2015 after the school discovered he was praying on the football field after games. Kennedy won a settlement with the school in March and was reinstated to his position that same month, but things had taken a drastically negative turn since his return.
Kennedy said in his resignation letter that it became “apparent” that his “reinstatement ordered by the Supreme Court will not be fully followed after a series of actions meant to diminish my role and single me out in what I can only believe is retaliation by the school district.” He was able to help coach one game, but that seems to be all he will do for the immediate future.
What those actions were specifically remains unclear, but it prompted a strong response from his legal team that helped him through his seven-year fight to have his First Amendment rights protected.
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“We have come to learn of serious allegations of retaliation against coach Kennedy by the Bremerton School District,” Hiram Sasser, executive counsel at First Liberty Institute (FLI), said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “They’ve done everything they can to make him feel unwelcome.”
Sasser said the FLI was “going to investigate the situation to determine whether further legal action is necessary.”
If you looked up the definition of “petty” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of BHS right next to it. Unwilling to graciously accept the fact they were wrong, the school is actively ostracizing Kennedy even after the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
Some people just don’t know when they’ve been beat. We don’t know if Kennedy will continue to pursue legal action against BHS, but if he does, hopefully justice can be served once again.
