The Praying Football Coach Has Finally Stopped Pretending

This is not to say that Kennedy was obligated to work as a high school football coach forever after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Indeed, it is to his credit that he even went back to coach a single game at all. It would have been much simpler to take the victory and move on. But refusing to coach another game would have deprived this entire charade of the fig leaf it so desperately needed.

Almost everyone in this story got what they wanted in the end. Kennedy, who clearly wanted a greater degree of public prominence than he had before, now has a much more lucrative life ahead on the conservative media circuit. Kennedy’s lawyers, who championed his cause all the way to a Supreme Court victory, were awarded $1.7 million in legal fees paid to them by the school district. The conservative justices, who had long sought to overturn Lemon and refashion the establishment clause in their own image, got the opportunity to do so. Even the district won in a roundabout way: Kennedy clearly won’t be holding any more disruptive prayers at midfield after football games.

The loser in this case is everyone else. One of the most important limits on the Supreme Court’s power is that, under the Constitution, it can only hear actual “cases and controversies.” The justices can’t just wake up one morning and say X is constitutional and Y is not. They can’t issue advisory opinions based on what they think might happen or should happen. Someone has to bring them a real case with real stakes and real adversaries. Kennedy’s case shows how easily that check on their power can be obliterated if the justices want it to disappear, and how much they can reshape American law once it’s gone. All it takes is a story that is, both literally and figuratively, too good to be true.