After winning a U.S. Supreme Court case to get his coaching job back and igniting a firestorm over praying in public schools, Joe Kennedy resigned only one game into Bremerton High School's football season.
Kennedy, already back in Pensacola, Fla., where he and his wife have lived for three years, said he emailed his resignation at 4 a.m. Wednesday due to a family health situation and what he described as a deteriorating situation at the Bremerton School District.
"I'm done," he said.
Kennedy's resignation is pending School Board approval at a regularly scheduled meeting Thursday, according to a district spokesperson who declined further comment.
His decision was not exactly a surprise.
Kennedy strongly hinted before Friday's game that he might not stick around for his part-time assistant coaching gig. He said the game, which Bremerton won, was a "fine bow" on top of the Supreme Court victory that cleared the way not only for his return after an eight-year absence but for him to pray on the field. He said he couldn't think further ahead than that.
In a resignation letter obtained by The Seattle Times, Kennedy said, "It is apparent that the 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 gave no indication of such feelings in an interview last week and declined to go into details Wednesday. "I knew it wasn't going to be a picnic and it wasn't," he said, adding that his "role and responsibilities" at Friday's game were "not what I signed up for."
Kennedy also said he got bad news last week related to his father-in-law's health, and flew back to Florida with his wife to look after him.
But Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented the district, said Kennedy's fleeting stay in Bremerton was predictable. The organization argued before the Supreme Court that his case was moot because Kennedy no longer lived in the city.
"For years, Kennedy and his lawyers have said all he wanted was his job back. We were skeptical. And now, here we are, right where we warned the Supreme Court we would be," Laser said in a statement.
But the case was never just about Kennedy returning to a role that paid him, at the time, roughly $3,000 a season. (His stipend upon coming back in August was $5,304.)
It was about whether and how religion can be practiced in schools and other government entities — a flashpoint in today's polarized culture wars. Kennedy's supporters and detractors weighed in across the country, and the district received a flood of hateful emails from the former group.
Kennedy's critics have portrayed him as a Christian nationalist extremist, though he and his supporters say he's standing up for the rights of Jews and Muslims too.
He said he almost got a divorce over his prolonged fight with the district, where his wife worked as a human resources supervisor. She initially opposed his legal battle, but came around, according to Kennedy, who said he continued fighting because "the Constitution and the First Amendment mean so much to me."
He cast his quandary as being forced "to choose between my faith and my job."
It all began in 2015 when the district learned Kennedy was praying with students on the field and in the locker room. He had been doing so for years, but now that the district knew, it directed him against overt, on-duty activity that could be taken as an endorsement of religion, for fear of violating the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits establishing a state religion.
He then claimed he wanted only a "short, private, personal prayer," but his religious display on the field had by then turned into a national media circus and cause célèbre. The district warned again about violating the establishment clause.
Kennedy said the district made clear on his evaluation that year that he wouldn't be rehired and, according to the district, he didn't reapply for the 2016 season.
A divided Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Kennedy had a right to pray under free speech and exercise clauses as long as he wasn't coercing others to join him.
After the ruling, the district wrote a policy that allows coaches to pray while not actively supervising players if the coaches keep their distance from students when the prayers begin. After that, students can join if they choose.
"I can't tell them to or not to," Kennedy acknowledged last week. "If they want to join, cool. If they don't, cool."
No students did so at Friday's game against the Mount Douglas Rams, from Victoria, B.C. A larger-than-normal crowd suggested Kennedy's supporters showed up, but none stormed the field to join him in prayer, as happened at a 2015 homecoming game. A scattering of applause accompanied the coach's kneeling at the 50-yard line.
Kennedy quit his full-time job at the Bremerton shipyard before moving to Florida. With his newfound celebrity, he has a promotional website, a book coming out in October and a movie about his life in the works. He speaks to political and religious groups, and says politicians including Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, Florida's governor, have courted him for his endorsement.
Kennedy said he's weighing other options, prepared to jump in to support those fighting for religious liberty.
"I could walk away knowing that I got to resign as a Bremerton Knights football coach — and it was on my terms and nobody else's," he said.
Even with Kennedy off the field, his case will likely continue to be debated. Lawyers say the Supreme Court ruling clarifies the right of public employees to religious expression on the job but leaves murky the question of what constitutes coercion, particularly for those supervising young people.
