The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Tampa’s Cambridge Christian School, ending a nine-year legal fight over its attempt to offer a prayer over a stadium loudspeaker before a 2015 state championship football game.
The decision lets stand a ruling last year by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a victory for the Florida High School Athletic Association, which denied the prayer request. Teams prayed on the field before and after the game, but the prayers were not broadcast to spectators.
Cambridge Christian called the appeals court ruling “egregiously wrong” and warned of broader consequences if left standing. “If the Eleventh Circuit’s boundless version of government speech stands, state actors will be able to claim that virtually all private speech and religious exercise in a government setting lacks First Amendment protection,” the school’s attorneys wrote.
The association said the appeals court correctly applied a 2022 Supreme Court framework and pointed to a 2023 state law allowing “brief opening remarks” — which could include prayers — before championship events.
“The problem CCS brought this case to address has thus been solved in the constitutionally preferred way — not through a uniform national policy handed down by a politically insulated court, but through a local policy crafted by a responsive legislature and an energetic executive,” the association said.
U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell initially dismissed the lawsuit in 2017. The appeals court overturned that decision in 2019, and Honeywell again ruled for the association in 2022, prompting the latest appeal.
