Conservatives have a new hero in their culture war over public schooling. His name is Joseph Kennedy, a former public high school football coach who lost his job in 2015 after refusing his employer’s demand that he stop engaging in on-field prayer following games—which the school district deemed a violation of the separation of church and state.
At least one parent complained that their child (who identifies as an atheist) was being coerced into participating in the post-game team prayers—lest they be perceived as disrespecting the coach and, resultantly, see less playing time. And while Coach Kennedy eventually stopped leading his team in prayers, he still made a show of praying on field himself after games. Then he was fired.
It’s ironic that at a time when the right is suddenly so committed to “parental involvement” in public schooling they’ve taken up as a folk hero a public school employee who could be reasonably seen as “indoctrinating” unwilling students through coercive measures.
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But Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District is now before the Supreme Court, and the 6-3 conservative majority seems likely to rule in favor of the coach—though to what degree remains uncertain.
In both the political and cultural wars in America, public schools have long been on the frontlines. Leaders on both sides of the political aisle have often used the “what about the children” mantra to draw attention one way or another to social ills that they believed could cause long term harm. Without an educated citizenry democracy doesn’t truly function—which makes the current actions being taken by the Republican Party and conservatives in places like Florida, Texas, and Virginia all the more alarming.
Sixty years ago in Engel vs. Vitale, a case that brought prayer in schools to the national spotlight, the Supreme Court weighed the actions of the Board of Education of Union Free School District 9 in New Hyde Park, New York—which had directed a principal to begin each day with a particular prayer in the presence of a teacher. The court determined that the state may not coerce or pressure students to pray in a particular way or adhere to a particular faith. Justice Hugo Black wrote in the decision’s opinion: “One of the greatest dangers to the freedom of the individual to worship in his own way… lay in the Government’s placing its official stamp of approval upon one particular kind of prayer or one particular form of religious services.”
At a time when Republicans are pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin rode into office on a “critical race theory” panic—the Kennedy case seems to fall perfectly in line with the Republicans’ white evangelical agenda, and the ultimate erasure of any measure of diversity. It’s Christian fundamentalism presented as “parental choice.”
While the court may not completely gut Engle v. Vitale, what the Kennedy case presents is a gateway into how the radical right begins to weaponize public education in an overt attempt to solidify white Christian authority, a favorite red-meat issue for their rabid and increasingly volatile base.
Republicans have been waiting for the prime opportunity to rebalance what they believe to be the rightful hierarchy in this country—which enables white comfort and ease above all else.
None of the moves being made by the Republican Party are happening by accident. They have always been aware of what Democrats refused to focus on—the judiciary. Once Donald Trump became president, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s dreamscape was actualized with the appointment of more federal judges in his four-year term than President Barack Obama had in all of his eight years in office.
Think about that for a moment.
Federal judges have been the key to every bend the arc towards justice has made. To cite one obvious example, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared the segregation of schools not only to be economically disadvantageous, but undemocratic.
But Republicans blocked so many of Obama’s judicial nominees (including Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, who was denied his rightful confirmation hearings by McConnell, and the seat ultimately went to Trump nominee, Neil Gorsuch), that conservatives are now in position to reverse the arc of history and subvert the will of the people.
This is why every single election matters—from local school boards to President of the United States. And Democrats need to make it plain that in each of these contests, Republicans are looking to turn back the clock to a time when people of color, LGBTQ people, and even atheists were denied their full rights as citizens.
If we don’t fight for our rights, hardcore social conservatives will simply take them—and a Republican-stacked Supreme Court will let them.
