SCOTUS refuses to intervene in suit over prayer at football game

On November 17, 2025, without explanation, the Supreme Court denied an appeal in Cambridge Christian School v. Florida High School Athletic Association. At issue was the refusal of state athletic association officials to allow representatives of the two Christian high schools playing in their league’s state football championship to offer a joint pregame prayer over a public stadium’s loudspeaker.

The Supreme Court’s unwillingness to intervene in Cambridge Christian is surprising in light of its recent string of religion-friendly decisions.

After reviewing Cambridge Christian’s facts and judicial history, this column reflects on what it may mean for religious freedom in the U.S.

Cambridge Christian School v. Florida High School Athletic Association

Controversy emerged in 2015 when officials of the Florida High School Athletic Association disallowed a request from representatives of two Christian schools to use a state-owned stadium’s public address system to pray before their championship football game. On September 3, 2024, the Eleventh Circuit unanimously affirmed an order upholding the Association’s policy banning the use of the loudspeaker for prayer.

The Eleventh Circuit maintained that because the prayer was a form of government speech, officials did not violate the schools’ First Amendment Free Speech or Free Exercise Clause rights. The court partially grounded its rationale in the only Supreme Court case on prayer at a high school football game, Doe v. Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe. In Santa Fe, the Justices affirmed that prayers before games in Texas “over the school’s public address system, by a speaker representing the student body, under the supervision of school faculty, and pursuant to a school policy” violated the Establishment Clause. The Court invalidated the practice because it thought that “an objective Santa Fe High School student will unquestionably perceive the inevitable pregame prayer as stamped with her school’s seal of approval.”

In its rationale, the Eleventh Circuit interpreted the proposed invocation as government speech because association officials, rather than school representatives, selected the public address announcer to recite the prayer. The court remarked that “because the PA system ‘has traditionally communicated messages on behalf of the government’ during the pregame period of football championship games, the history factor weighs in favor of the conclusion that this is government speech.”

The court also considered if the prayer endorsed religion or “whether the kind of speech at issue is ‘often closely identified in the public mind with the government.’” Here, the panel essentially applied what was known as the endorsement test from Lynch v. Donnelly, a case from Rhode Island over a public Christmas display in a park owned by a nonprofit organization. Under this test, from Justice O’Connor’s plurality opinion, if a governmental action appeared to endorse religion, it was impermissible.

Yet, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, upholding the right of a football coach in Washington to engage in silent prayer on the field at the end of games, the Supreme Court explicitly repudiated Lynch.

In Kennedy, the Supreme Court emphasized that because “a proper understanding of the [First] Amendment’s Establishment Clause [does not] require the government to single out private religious speech for special disfavor,” it “long ago abandoned Lemon and its [Lynch] endorsement test offshoot.” The panel concluded its free speech analysis by reiterating that because association officials appointed the public address announcer and approved the content of what was read, the prayer was a form of government speech subject to state regulation.

The Eleventh Circuit quickly rejected the schools’ Free Exercise claim. The court determined that because the association was regulating its own expression in restricting pregame speech at the championship, it did not violate the Free Exercise Clause.

Reflection and analysis

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent religion-friendly judgments, whether allowing aid to faith-based schools, preventing a school board from non-renewing the contract of a football coach who prayed silently on the field after games, or granting employees time off to worship, absent a finding that doing so would have created undue hardships, it is both surprising and disappointing that the Supreme Court chose not to intervene to clarify the parameters of prayer in public life following Florida’s adoption of House Bill 225.

Effective July 2023, House Bill 225 obviated the Eleventh Circuit’s subsequent order in Cambridge Christian in requiring athletic associations to “adopt bylaws, policies, or procedures that provide each school participating in a high school championship contest…to make brief opening remarks, if requested…using the public address system at the event.”

In the spirit of full disclosure, as much as I am a staunch proponent of the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion, I am generally hesitant to advocate for prayer at sporting events such as football games and other activities because, as reflected in Santa Fe, selections can too easily become highly sectarian by not including a variety of faiths represented in local communities.

In fact, difficulties arose in Santa Fe because, in allowing students to select someone to pray, officials’ failure to include appropriate guidelines to ensure inclusiveness of a variety of religious perspectives meant that they chose representatives of only one church, excluding all but their own. Further, at least one classmate harassed a student who was not of the same faith as those supporting prayer, even though school officials ordered the offending individual to apologize. Consequently, the lower courts allowed the two families challenging the policy—one from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints and the other Catholic students or alumni and their mothers—to use the pseudonym “Doe” to “litigate anonymously to protect them from intimidation or harassment.”

However, there may be times when prayer is constitutionally acceptable. For instance, because Cambridge Christian was a championship game between teams from two faith-based schools, it is unclear how or why association officials banned the prayer because, in light of the circumstances, it is difficult to have reasonably perceived it as state speech.

In light of the Supreme Court’s assertion in Kennedy that private religious speech cannot be singled out for special disfavor, other than a misunderstanding of the First Amendment’s Speech and Free Exercise Clauses or overtly displaying hostility toward people of faith, it is troublesome that the Eleventh Circuit upheld the actions of officials of the Florida High School Athletic Association who banned the prayer. Considering that both teams represented Christian schools, it is unclear how an objective observer attending the game could, or would, have perceived the prayer as state-sponsored.

It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court declined the opportunity to hear an appeal in Cambridge Christian. The case presented an interesting question of whether Christian schools’ use of public facilities to communicate their messages turned their private speech, albeit prayer, into governmental communications. It is all the more perplexing because although Florida ultimately invalidated Cambridge Christian in adopting House Bill 225, the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to explain why it chose not to review the Eleventh Circuit’s having based its judgment on the “long ago abandoned … endorsement test offshoot” that the Justices explicitly repudiated leaves open the door for future litigation.

I speculate that the Supreme Court chose not to hear Cambridge Christian because it was moot in light of House Bill 225’s allowing such prayer. But I think that the Justices, insofar as similar disagreements are capable of repetition yet evading review, should have acted. By refusing to hear an appeal in Cambridge Christian, the Court missed a golden opportunity both to correct the Eleventh Circuit’s error in having relied on Lynch’s endorsement test, rooted in a case the Justices unambiguously vitiated, and to clarify the status of prayer as a form of protected religious speech in public life.

In sum, the Supreme Court failed to address misperceptions of how association officials, or others, could have interpreted the prayer in Cambridge Christian as state speech simply because it would have been recited by someone they named over a state-owned public address system. The justices’ unwillingness to take a stance means that avoidable controversy and litigation on the status of prayer as a form of religious freedom in public life is likely to continue.