Jacksonville, FL—Today, First Liberty Institute and the law firms Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, Winston and Strawn, LLP, and Jones Day argued before a federal appeals court that the Florida High School Athletic Association denied their client, Cambridge Christian School, the Constitutional right to pray over the loudspeaker at the beginning of the state championship football game between two Christian Schools.
“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,” said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute. “By banning the pre-game prayer over the loudspeaker, the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) sent a message to these students that prayer is wrong and something you should be ashamed of. That is dangerous and unconstitutional.”
Jesse Panuccio, of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, said, “For seven years, the FHSAA has defended its unconstitutional prayer ban on the mistaken theory that permitting two Christian schools to pray over the religion would violate the Establishment Clause. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment means that the government can tolerate religion without endorsing it.”
In 2015, the Florida High School Athletic Association forbade First Liberty Institute client Cambridge Christian School from praying over the loudspeaker at the Citrus Bowl ahead of the state championship football game. The FHSAA stated that because the stadium was city-owned and the FHSAA was a government actor, it would violate the Constitution to allow two private Christian schools to pray over the stadium loudspeaker for less than a minute. In November 2019, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Cambridge Christian School’s argument that its free speech and free exercise rights were violated had merit and should proceed. But in 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida issued a judgment in FHSAA’s favor. In August 2022, Cambridge Christian again appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.
SOURCE First Liberty Institute
