In a 6 to 3 vote, the US Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of a high school coach who was fired in 2015 for praying on the football field.

Not only that, but the Court ordered that Joe Kennedy be returned to his position of an assistant football coach at Bremerton School District in Washington State by March 2023.

After each game, Kenney would pray on the field and at times players would voluntarily join him. None of the players were forced to participate.

“I had some kids that wanted to join, and they asked, and, of course, it’s a free country,” Kennedy said.

Even though the school had ordered him to quit praying at the end of the game, Kennedy continued to do so, leading to his eventual firing.

Kenney took the district to court arguing that it had violated his Freedom of Religion guaranteed under the First Amendment.

The Blaze provides more details on the Supreme Court decision:

“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic — whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. “Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech.”

READ: ‘Back on the Field’: High School Football Coached Fired for Praying Gets Reinstated