Evangelical Christian School plays against Cambridge Christian School in 2018.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court is not ready to tackle the tricky combination of faith and football games again.

The court on Nov. 17 rejected an appeal from a Christian high school that was blocked from leading a communal prayer before a state championship football game, a case that could have further expanded religious expressions in public places.

In 2022, the conservative court backed a high school football coach’s right to offer prayers on the field after games despite objections from the school district that students felt compelled to take part.

But on Nov. 17, the court let stand a lower court’s ruling that pregame programs over the loudspeaker at a state-run event are a form of “government speech,” and the school doesn’t have a constitutional right to direct that speech.

Florida already changed the law

The court’s decision not to get involved doesn’t have a practical effect on Cambridge Christian School, which sued the Florida High School Athletic Association in 2015 after its request to pray over the loudspeaker was denied.

Since then, Florida passed legislation requiring the athletic association to allow schools to make opening remarks at games it oversees, and the FHSAA has said that includes communal prayers.

“The political branches have remedied the problem (Cambridge Christian School) brought this lawsuit to address without the need for judicial intervention,” lawyers for the state athletic association told the court.

Still, the school had argued the Supreme Court needed to step in to prevent the “government speech” defense from being used in other situations.

“One way state actors suppress religious speech is by claiming private speech as their own,” lawyers for Cambridge Christian told the court.

School's appeal was backed by football coach from 2022 decision

Its appeal was backed by several religious rights groups and by Joseph Kennedy, the high school football coach at the center of the court’s 2022 decision about leading prayers on the field.

Kennedy said the clear lesson from his case is that “government entities may not single out religious expression for exclusion simply because it is religious.”

The dispute began when Cambridge Christian and another Christian school made it to the 2015 state championship.

The state athletic association denied their request to use the public address system to pray as part of the pregame announcements. Instead, the association suggested the schools gather as teams to pray before the kickoff, which they did.

When Cambridge Christian later sued, both the district court and the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the school.

The appeals court said spectators at the game would reasonably believe the state had endorsed the prayer.

Previous ruling about prayers at school games an issue

The appeals court relied in part on a 2000 Supreme Court ruling, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, striking down the district’s policy of allowing student-led prayers at football games over the public address system.

The athletic association told the court it fully supports overturning that decision, but taking the Florida case is not the right way to do so because the Santa Fe ruling wasn’t the sole basis for the appeals court’s decision.

And before the justices could revisit the 2000 decision, they would need to decide if Cambridge Christian still has a legal claim since Florida schools can now lead communal prayers before games.

“Put simply,” the association said, “religious freedom is well protected in Florida and will continue to be protected regardless of the outcome of this purely retrospective lawsuit.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court not ready to tackle prayers at football games again

Reporting by Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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