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For eight years, Joseph Kennedy routinely offered prayers after games, with students often joining him.
© Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesFor eight years, Joseph Kennedy routinely offered prayers after games, with students often joining him.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.

The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent.

The case pitted the rights of government workers to free speech and the free exercise of their faith against the Constitution’s prohibition of government endorsement of religion and the ability of public employers to regulate speech in the workplace. The decision was in tension with decades of Supreme Court precedents that forbade pressuring students to participate in religious activities.