Opinion ID: 4198317
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Factual determination of Kennedy’s job

Text: responsibilities. Kennedy’s job did not merely require him to supervise students in the locker room, at practice, and before and after games. Nor was it limited to treating injuries and instructing players about techniques related to football. Rather, in addition to these duties, BSD “entrusted” Kennedy “to be a coach, mentor and role model for the student athletes.” Kennedy further agreed to “exhibit sportsmanlike conduct at all times,” and acknowledged that, as a football coach, he was “constantly being observed by others.” The District also required Kennedy to “communicate effectively” with parents, “maintain positive media relations,” and “[o]bey all the Rules of Conduct before players and the public as expected of a Head Coach,” including the requirement to “use proper conduct before the public and players at all times.” Consistent with his duty to serve as a role model to students, Kennedy’s contract required that, “[a]bove all” else, Kennedy would endeavor not only “to create good athletes,” but also “good human beings.” Kennedy’s job, in other words, involved modeling good behavior while acting in an official capacity in the presence of students and spectators. Kennedy’s amici agree. According to former professional football players Steve Largent and Chad Hennings, for instance, a football coach “serve[s] as a personal example.” That is what the District hired Kennedy to do, when he was in the presence of students and parents: communicate a positive message through the example set by his own conduct. Any person 26 KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. who has attended a high school sporting event likely knows that this is true. To illustrate, when a referee makes a bad call, it is a coach’s job to respond maturely. In doing so, he provides an example to players and spectators. Likewise, when a parent hassles a coach after a game seeking more playing time for her child, a calm reaction by the coach teaches the player about appropriate conduct. By acknowledging that he was “constantly being observed by others,” Kennedy plainly understood that demonstrative communication fell within the compass of his professional obligations. And tellingly, Kennedy’s insistence that his demonstrative speech occur in view of students and parents suggests that Kennedy prayed pursuant to his responsibility to serve as a role model and moral exemplar. Were that not evident enough from Kennedy’s rejection of BSD’s accommodations, Kennedy’s off-field conduct bolsters the inference. In particular, his media appearances and prayer in the BHS bleachers (while wearing BHS apparel and surrounded by others) signal his intent to send a message to students and parents about appropriate behavior and what he values as a coach. Practically speaking, Kennedy’s job as a football coach was also akin to being a teacher. See Grossman v. S. Shore Pub. Sch. Dist., 507 F.3d 1097, 1100 (7th Cir. 2007) (“Staff that interact with students play a role similar to teachers.”). “While at the high school” he was “not just any ordinary citizen.” Peloza v. Capistrano Unified Sch. Dist., 37 F.3d 517, 522 (9th Cir. 1994). He was “one of those especially respected persons chosen to teach” on the field, in the locker room, and at the stadium. Id. He was “clothed with the mantle of one who imparts knowledge and wisdom.” Id. Like others in this position, “expression” was Kennedy’s “stock in trade.” Johnson, 658 F.3d at 967. Kennedy’s expressions also carried weight—as the district court said, KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. 27 “the coach is more important to the athlete than the principal.” See also Br. of Americans United for Separation of Church and State et al. as Amici Curiae Supporting Appellee at 7‒8 [hereinafter AUSCS Br.] (former BHS player states that Kennedy was a “parental figure” to the team). As a high school football coach, it was also Kennedy’s duty to use his words and expressions to “instill[] values in the team.” Borden v. Sch. Dist. of Tp. of E. Brunswick, 523 F.3d 153, 173 n.15 (3rd Cir. 2008). As amici observe, “many mothers look to the coaches of their son’s football team as the last best hope to show their son[s] what it means to become a man—a real man[.]” AUSCS Br. at 7 (quoting John Harbaugh, Why Football Matters, Balt. Ravens (Apr. 22, 2015), http://tinyurl.com/kn5fdhh). The record reflects that Kennedy pursued that task. For example, Kennedy gave motivational speeches to students and spectators after the games. Moreover, BHS players did not pray on their own in Kennedy’s absence. Rather, the District observed players praying on the field only at the games where Kennedy personally elected to do so. Finally, just as Johnson’s job responsibilities included “speaking to his class in his classroom during class hours,” Kennedy’s included speaking demonstratively to spectators at the stadium after the game through his conduct. Johnson, 658 F.3d at 967. Kennedy’s demonstrative speech thus occurred “while performing a function” that fit “squarely within the scope of his position.” Id. After all, Kennedy spoke at a school event, on school property, wearing BHSlogoed attire, while on duty as a supervisor, and in the most prominent position on the field, where he knew it was inevitable that students, parents, fans, and occasionally the media, would observe his behavior. 28 KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. In sum, Kennedy’s job was multi-faceted, but among other things it entailed both teaching and serving as a role model and moral exemplar. When acting in an official capacity in the presence of students and spectators, Kennedy was also responsible for communicating the District’s perspective on appropriate behavior through the example set by his own conduct. 2. The constitutional significance of Kennedy’s job duties. Mindful of those facts, by kneeling and praying on the fifty-yard line immediately after games while in view of students and parents, Kennedy was sending a message about what he values as a coach, what the District considers appropriate behavior, and what students should believe, or how they ought to behave. Because such demonstrative communication fell well within the scope of Kennedy’s professional obligations, the constitutional significance of Kennedy’s job responsibilities is plain—he spoke as a public employee, not as a private citizen, and his speech was therefore unprotected. Each of the guideposts we have established in this context suggests that Kennedy spoke as a public employee. First, “teachers necessarily act as teachers for purposes of a Pickering inquiry when [1] at school or a school function, [2] in the general presence of students, [3] in a capacity one might reasonably view as official.” Johnson, 658 F.3d at 968. Kennedy’s conduct easily meets all three of these conditions. Next, as Johnson and Coomes instruct, if Kennedy’s “speech ‘owes its existence’ to his position as a teacher, then [Kennedy] spoke as a public employee, not as a citizen, and our inquiry is at an end.” Id. at 966 (quoting Garcetti, KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. 29 547 U.S. at 421–22). Here, an ordinary citizen could not have prayed on the fifty-yard line immediately after games, as Kennedy did, because Kennedy had special access to the field by virtue of his position as a coach. The record demonstrates as much. Representatives of a Satanist religion arrived at the stadium “to conduct ceremonies on the field after [a] [BHS] football game[.]” They were forced to abandon this effort after they learned that the field was not an open forum. Thus, the precise speech at issue—kneeling and praying on the fifty-yard line immediately after games while in view of students and parents—could not physically have been engaged in by Kennedy if he were not a coach. Kennedy’s speech therefore occurred only because of his position with the District. 8 Lastly, given that “expression,” as in Johnson, was Kennedy’s “stock in trade,” the commodity he sold to his employer for a salary, id. at 967 (internal quotation mark and alteration omitted), it is similarly non-dispositive of “the 8 Two additional points warrant comment. First, contrary to Kennedy’s assertions, the forum is relevant because the on-field location is a required component of Kennedy’s speech, and one that is central to the message he conveys. Indeed, Kennedy insists that his sincerely held religious beliefs do not permit him to pray anywhere other than on the field where the game was just played. The accommodations he refused signal further temporal and circumstantial requirements concerning his speech (i.e., that it must be delivered immediately after the game, while in view of spectators). These features confirm that the relevant conduct—Kennedy’s demonstrative speech to students and spectators— owes its existence to Kennedy’s position with the District. Second, Kennedy’s demonstrative message to students only carries instructive force due to his position as a coach. Surely, if an ordinary citizen walked onto the field and prayed on the fifty-yard line, the speech would not communicate the same message because the citizen would not be clothed with Kennedy’s authority. See Johnson, 658 F.3d at 968; EvansMarshall v. Bd. of Educ., 624 F.3d 332, 340 (6th Cir. 2010). 30 KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. question of whether [Kennedy] spoke as a citizen or as an employee” that the religious content of Kennedy’s message was not part of his “curriculum,” id. at 967 n.13. Coaches, like teachers, do not cease acting as coaches “each time the bell rings or the conversation moves beyond the narrow topic of curricular instruction.” Id. at 967–68. In any event, Kennedy’s prayer celebrates sportsmanship, so the content of Kennedy’s speech arguably falls within Kennedy’s curriculum. See ER 251 (job description requiring Kennedy to “exhibit sportsmanlike conduct at all times”). True, Kennedy spoke in contravention of his supervisor’s orders, see Dahlia, 735 F.3d at 1075, but that lone consideration is not enough to transform employee speech into citizen speech. If it was, there would be no need for the Garcetti analysis because every First Amendment retaliation case in the employment context involves some degree of employer disagreement with the expressive conduct. All told, by kneeling and praying on the fifty-yard line immediately after games, Kennedy was fulfilling his professional responsibility to communicate demonstratively to students and spectators. Yet, he “took advantage of his position to press his particular views upon the impressionable and captive minds before him.” Johnson, 658 F.3d at 968 (internal quotation marks omitted). In addition, he “did not act as an ordinary citizen when ‘espousing God as opposed to no God’” under the bright lights of the BHS football stadium. Id. at 967. Because his demonstrative speech fell within the scope of his typical job responsibilities, he spoke as a public employee, and the District was permitted to order Kennedy not to speak in the manner that he did. See id. at 967‒70; Tucker v. State of Cal. Dep’t of Educ., 97 F.3d 1204, 1213 (9th Cir. 1996) (“A KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. 31 teacher appears to speak for the state when he or she teaches; therefore, the department may permissibly restrict such religious advocacy.”); Peloza, 37 F.3d at 522 (permitting District to restrict biology teacher’s ability “to discuss his religious beliefs with students during school time on school grounds”). Other circuits agree. In Borden, the Third Circuit concluded that a coach spoke “pursuant to his official duties as a coach”—and thus as a public employee—when he bowed his head and took a knee with his team while they prayed in the locker room prior to football games. 523 F.3d at 171 n.13. The coach “concede[d] that the silent acts of bowing his head and taking a knee [were] tools that he use[d] to teach his players respect and good moral character.” Id. at 172. He therefore was fulfilling his responsibilities as a teacher, as Kennedy is here. In Evans-Marshall v. Board of Education, 624 F.3d 332 (6th Cir. 2010), the Sixth Circuit explained that “[w]hen a teacher teaches, the school system . . . hires that speech.” Id. at 340 (internal quotation mark omitted). As a consequence, “it can surely regulate the content of what is or is not expressed,” because a teacher is not “the employee and employer.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). For example, “[w]hen Pickering sent a letter to the local newspaper criticizing the school board,” the court noted, “he said something that any citizen has a right to say, and he did it on his own time and in his own name, not on the school’s time or in its name.” Id. By contrast, when a teacher teaches—as Kennedy did through the example of his own conduct while acting in his capacity as an assistant coach— “[he] d[oes] something [he] was hired (and paid) to do, something [he] could not have done but for the Board’s decision to hire [him] as a public school teacher.” Id. 32 KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. The Seventh Circuit employed the same reasoning in Mayer v. Monroe County Community School Corporation, 474 F.3d 477 (7th Cir. 2006). It found “that teachers hire out their own speech and must provide the service for which employers are willing to pay.” Id. at 479. It thus held that a teacher spoke as an employee, not as a citizen, when she opined on the Iraq war at a “current-events session, conducted during class hours, [that] was part of her official duties.” Id. Similarly, Kennedy spoke on the field, at a time when he was on call, and in a manner that was well within his job description. Like the teacher in Mayer, he therefore spoke as a public employee. Finally, in Doe v. Duncanville Independent School District, 70 F.3d 402 (5th Cir. 1995), the Fifth Circuit barred school employees from participating in or supervising student-initiated prayers that took place after basketball practice. Id. at 406. It reasoned that “[t]he challenged prayers take place during school-controlled, curriculumrelated activities that members of the basketball team are required to attend,” and “[d]uring these activities[,] [District] coaches and other school employees are present as representatives of the school and their actions are representative of [District] policies.” Id. Applying that reasoning, if a coach speaks as an employee by standing in the vicinity of student prayer and supervising the students immediately after a basketball practice, there can be little question that Kennedy spoke as an employee when he likewise performed a task that the District hired and paid him to perform: demonstrative communication with students and spectators immediately after football games. 3. Kennedy’s counterarguments are not convincing. Kennedy insists the district court invented “a bright-line temporal test that strips First Amendment protections from KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. 33 ‘on the job’ public employees.” That is incorrect. The district court said “[t]here is no bright-line test . . . on this issue,” and decided the second Eng factor by asking whether Kennedy spoke as a public employee or private citizen “under the totality of the circumstances.” More importantly, the court did not articulate a temporal dichotomy that reserves First Amendment rights only for “off-duty” employees. To illustrate, Kennedy can pray in his office while he is on duty drawing up plays, pray non- demonstratively when on duty supervising students, or pray in “a private location within the school building, athletic facility, or press box” before and after games, as BHS offered. He can also write letters to a local newspaper while on duty as a coach, see Pickering, 391 U.S. at 572‒74, or privately discuss politics or religion with his colleagues in the teacher’s lounge, see Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378, 388‒92 (1987); Tucker, 97 F.3d at 1213. What he cannot do is claim the First Amendment’s protections for private-citizen speech when he kneels and prays on the fiftyyard line immediately after games in school logoed-attire in view of students and parents. Cf. Berry v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 447 F.3d 642, 651‒52 (9th Cir. 2006) (upholding a restriction prohibiting a government employee from discussing religion with his clients in his government cubicle in the course of providing them assistance, while explaining that the employee could still read his Bible “whenever he does not have a client with him in his cubicle”). Next, Kennedy observes that “[t]he critical question under Garcetti is whether the speech at issue is itself ordinarily within the scope of an employee’s duties.” Lane, 134 S. Ct. at 2379. He argues that prayer—“the speech at issue”—did not “relate[] to” his job, and certainly did not 34 KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. constitute “coaching.” 9 But again, where, as here, a teacher speaks at a school event in the presence of students in a capacity one might reasonably view as official, we have rejected the proposition that a teacher speaks as a citizen simply because the content of his speech veers beyond the topic of curricular instruction, and instead relates to religion. Johnson, 658 F.3d at 967‒68; see also Grossman, 507 F.3d at 1100 (“The First Amendment is not a teacher license for uncontrolled expression at variance with established curricular content.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Mayer, 474 F.3d at 480 (concluding teacher spoke as employee even though she “had not been hired to buttonhole cosmetology students in the corridors and hand out tracts proclaiming that homosexuality is a mortal sin”). Kennedy also does not dispute that his demonstrative speech taught students about what he viewed as appropriate conduct. Nor can he dispute that many players responded as if prayer were part of the school-sponsored curriculum—they prayed on the field only when Kennedy elected to do so. Finally, Kennedy insists it is irrelevant that he had access to the field only by virtue of his position because Lane establishes that the critical question is whether his speech was within the ordinary scope of his duties. For the reasons explained above, Kennedy’s speech was within the ordinary scope of his duties. In any event, Kennedy overlooks Coomes, which affirmed that if a plaintiff’s speech “owes its 9 Kennedy elsewhere acknowledges that whether a public employee speaks “as a citizen” does not turn on the content of the speech. Kennedy may then be arguing that the act of praying itself is not related to his job. That argument fails because demonstratively speaking to students and spectators after games through the example set by his own conduct is within the scope of Kennedy’s job responsibilities. KENNEDY V. BREMERTON SCH. DIST. 35 existence to [his] position as a teacher, then [he] spoke as a public employee, not as a citizen, and our inquiry is at an end.” 10 816 F.3d at 1260 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). In sum, when Kennedy kneeled and prayed on the fiftyyard line immediately after games while in view of students and parents, he spoke as a public employee, not as a private citizen, and his speech therefore was constitutionally unprotected. 11