Private school’s pre-game loudspeaker prayer lawsuit answered by appeals court

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A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Florida High School Athletic Association did not violate the First Amendment when it refused to let two private religious schools use a PA system to hold a pregame prayer during a 2015 high school championship football game.

In a 52-page opinion, a three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the association didn’t violate the schools’ freedom of expression and free exercise of religion claims against it.

The panel noted passage of a 2023 Florida law allowing pregame messages at sporting events that can include religious messages. That rendered moot a request by Cambridge Christian, which filed the lawsuit, to an injunction against future denials of prayer requests, the court said.

Cambridge and the other team in the game, University Christian, had asked the FHSAA for permission to pray over the loudspeaker at the stadium. The association declined the request for two reasons: the venue, the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, was a publicly financed facility; and the association is a state actor, making it unable to grant permission for a communal prayer. 

The panel concluded it would be reasonable for the public to assume that a prayer from an announcer under these circumstances was government-endorsed speech. Yet association-sponsored championship games are meant to be neutral, as was the public address announcer, who was not hired by the schools.

Cambridge Christian prays on the PA system before home games but defers to the home team when playing away games, the court said. The teams held a pregame prayer before the 2015 championship game, although not through the PA system. 

Cambridge Christian, located in Tampa, sought damages, a declaratory judgement, an injunction against future restrictions on pregame prayer, plus attorney’s fees.

The 2023 law, HB 225, allows pregame messages to be read at state championship sporting events as long as they are under two minutes long and are not derogatory. The athletic association adopted policies to allow brief remarks, religious or otherwise, with a disclaimer that the remarks are not endorsed by the FHSAA. 

“The law and corresponding policy effectively ‘repeal’ the FHSAA’s earlier prayer restriction, making it clear that the allegedly wrongful conduct — a ban of all pregame prayer over the PA system at a state championship football game — cannot reasonably be expected to recur,” the court said.

The 2012 state championship game between University Christian and Dade Christian included a pregame prayer on the PA system, but court documents indicate that was the only record of a pregame message from a school representative on the PA system before a championship football game. 

Hearing again

This was the second time the Eleventh Circuit heard the case. The first time, the court overruled a federal trial judge who refused to dismiss the case on the theory that Cambridge Christian deserved a trial on its complaint.

Later, the trial court threw out the school’s free-speech and free-exercise of religion claims, reasoning that as a government-sponsored body the association had to refrain by appearing to endorse an expression of religion.

The Eleventh Circuit panel backed the trial judge this time, writing, “Because we agree with the district court that the speech at issue is government speech, we affirm the grant of summary judgment to the FHSAA on both the free speech and free exercise claims.”

“Because the pregame PA announcements are government speech, that speech does not violate the Free Speech Clause,” wrote Judge Ed Carnes, appointed by former President George W. Bush.

Joining him were judges Britt Grant, appointed by former President Donald Trump, and Gerald Bard Tjoflat, appointed to the Fifth Circuit before creation of the Eleventh Circuit by former President Gerald Ford.