The Supreme Court won't hear the appeal of a Washington state high school football coach whose refusal to stop praying on the field after games lost him his job, NBC News reported.
Joseph Kennedy was fired as an assistant coach at Bremerton High School in 2015, something President Donald Trump called "very, very sad and outrageous" at a campaign event the next year.
School district officials told Kennedy that his longstanding practice of praying after games violated a policy prohibiting school staff from encouraging or discouraging students engaging in religious activity. Kennedy persisted and was placed on leave, then wasn't re-hired the next season.
Kennedy sued over the restriction of his rights to free expression and religious freedom, lost in lower federal courts and insisted in his appeal that his religious beliefs "require him to give thanks through prayer at the end of each game."
