(LifeSiteNews) – A Florida private religious school is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case to allow prayer on school loudspeakers before sporting events and resolve a battle that has been ongoing for years.
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, in 2015, the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) had forbidden Cambridge Christian School (CCS) from using the public address system at the Citrus Bowl to pray before the start of a football game against University Christian School.
In February 2017, a federal district judge sided with the FHSAA. First Liberty Institute appealed to the 11th Circuit, arguing that the First Amendment protects the rights of students and teachers at a private Christian school to pray before a football game, especially when both teams are Christian and have a tradition of prayer before games.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit sided with CCS in November 2019, but “three years later the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida issued a decision affirming the FHSAA rule prohibiting the two Christian schools from praying over the loudspeaker,” First Liberty explained. “But, following a subsequent appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in September of 2024, a three-judge panel affirmed the lower court’s decision, as did the “en banc” (full panel) of the Eleventh Circuit in February of 2025.”
Now, the school is asking the nation’s highest court to settle the matter, The Washington Times reported. If at least four justices agree, the Court will take the case, with arguments beginning next fall at the earliest.
“If the decision stands, it will be virtually impossible to overcome government-speech defenses, and the government will again be empowered ‘to single out private religious speech for special disfavor,’” CCS argues in its petition.
Left-wing activists have long opposed benign expressions of religiosity on public grounds and with public resources, calling them impermissible violations of the “separation of church and state.” But the phrase comes not from the Declaration of Independence or U.S. Constitution, but from a letter by Thomas Jefferson supporting religious liberty.
Though not actual law, when taken literally the phrase is an accurate shorthand for one of the practical effects of the First Amendment: recognizing that the church and the state are two distinct entities and neither may control the affairs of the other. Today, however, left-wing activists claim that it means religious ideas and values cannot in any way inform, influence, or be recognized by government and that any expression of faith on government time, on government land, or with government resources is illegal, no matter how benign or voluntary. That interpretation is without basis in the words or actions of America’s Founding Fathers, who saw religion as vital to America’s success and worthy of being recognized in public education.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Joseph Kennedy, a high school football coach who was fired by Washington’s Bremerton School District in 2015 after he silently prayed on a school field after a football game, finding that Kennedy’s prayers constituted private speech rather than government speech associated with his official duties, and therefore his punishment was a violation of the First Amendment. The CCS case will determine whether a similar right will be recognized for private religious schools.
