Court Rejects Pregame Prayer Lawsuit

By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida

A federal appeals court Tuesday said the Florida High School Athletic Association did not violate First Amendment rights when it blocked a Tampa Christian school from offering a prayer over a stadium loudspeaker before a 2015 high-school football championship game.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2022 ruling by U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell in the lawsuit filed by Cambridge Christian School.

Amid the long-running case, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature in 2023 approved a law that required allowing high schools to offer “brief opening remarks” — which could include prayers — before championship events. The appeals court said that made moot parts of the lawsuit but that it needed to rule on the First Amendment issues because Cambridge Christian sought “nominal damages.”

The panel, in a 52-page opinion, concluded that announcements over the loudspeaker at the 2015 game were “government speech.” as they were scripted and controlled by the Florida High School Athletic Association. It said blocking a prayer over the public-address system did not violate free-speech rights.

“At the 2015 football finals, the only person who made announcements over the PA system at any point during the game was the PA announcer,” said the opinion, written by Judge Ed Carnes and joined by Judges Gerald Tjoflat and Britt Grant. “His announcements were entirely scripted (except for a halftime announcement about the game’s statistical leaders which, of course, couldn’t be scripted in advance). Every word of that script was put there by an FHSAA employee.”

The court also rejected arguments that the association’s stance violated the right to free exercise of religion.

“Because we conclude that the FHSAA was regulating its own expression when it restricted pregame speech over the PA system at the 2015 football championships, Cambridge Christian’s free exercise claims fail,” the opinion said.

The case stems from the 2015 championship game at Orlando’s Camping World Stadium between Cambridge Christian and Jacksonville’s University Christian School. While the FHSAA, a non-profit governing body for high-school sports, denied the use of the loudspeaker, the teams prayed on the field before and after the game, Tuesday’s opinion said. Those prayers could not be heard by people in the stands.

Honeywell initially dismissed the case in 2017, but the Atlanta-based appeals court in 2019 overturned the dismissal and sent the case back to Honeywell for further consideration. That led to her 2022 judgment in favor of the association, which prompted another appeal by Cambridge Christian.

As the FHSAA defended its decision in court, the Florida Department of Education filed a brief supporting the school in the appeal. The Republican-controlled Legislature followed last year by approving the law to allow schools to give opening remarks before championship games.

“Such remarks may not be longer than 2 minutes per participating school,” part of the law said. “The athletic association may not control, monitor, or review the content of the opening remarks and may not control the school’s choice of speaker.”

While the appeals court ruled Tuesday on the First Amendment issues, it said Cambridge Christian did not have legal standing to pursue other parts of the case, including an injunction to prevent the FHSAA from repeating its 2015 prayer ban.

The court noted, in part, that Cambridge Christian had not returned to the championship game since 2015.

“Hope springs eternal but standing cannot be built on hope,” the opinion said. “With all due respect to the Cambridge Christian Fighting Lancers, there’s nothing to suggest that the team’s participation in a future football state championship is imminent or even likely.”

Also, it said the 2023 state law made issues such as an injunction moot.

“The new law and policy unambiguously allow for brief opening remarks over the PA system at state championship events,” the opinion said. “The only content restriction on those remarks is that they may not be derogatory, rude, or threatening, and they can be no longer than two minutes in length. There are no specific restrictions applicable only to prayer. 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.”