TALLAHASSEE \u2014 After a nine-year legal battle, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal by a Tampa Christian school that contended its speech rights were violated when it was prevented from offering a prayer over a stadium loudspeaker before a 2015 state championship football game.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court, as is common, did not explain its reasons. But the decision effectively was a victory for the Florida High School Athletic Association and let stand a ruling last year by a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for Cambridge Christian School in June filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the case, which stemmed from a championship game between Cambridge Christian and Jacksonville\u2019s University Christian School at Orlando\u2019s Camping World Stadium.<\/p>\n
The athletic association, a nonprofit governing body for high school sports, denied the use of the loudspeaker for a prayer. The teams prayed on the field before and after the game. Those prayers could not be heard by people in the stands.<\/p>\n
Cambridge Christian filed the lawsuit in 2016, and the dispute went to the Atlanta-based appeals court twice. In last year\u2019s decision, a three-judge panel of the court concluded that announcements over the loudspeaker at the game were \u201cgovernment speech,\u201d as they were scripted and controlled by the association. It said the association\u2019s decision to block a prayer over the public address system did not violate free speech rights.<\/p>\n
But the school\u2019s petition filed at the Supreme Court described the appeals court ruling as \u201cegregiously wrong\u201d and alleged potentially far-reaching effects if it was not overturned.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the Eleventh Circuit\u2019s 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,\u201d the school\u2019s attorneys wrote.<\/p>\n
The association\u2019s attorneys, however, argued in a brief last month that the appeals court correctly followed a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the \u201cframework for identifying government speech.\u201d They also disputed the school\u2019s contentions about far-reaching effects of the appeals court\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n
In addition, the association pointed to a 2023 state law that required allowing high schools to offer \u201cbrief opening remarks\u201d \u2014 which could include prayers \u2014 before championship events.<\/p>\n
The association said the \u201cproblem CCS (Cambridge Christian School) brought this case to address has thus been solved in the constitutionally preferred way \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The appeals court panel said the 2023 state law made moot parts of the lawsuit but that it needed to rule on the First Amendment issues because Cambridge Christian sought \u201cnominal damages.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell initially dismissed the case in 2017, but the appeals court in 2019 overturned the dismissal and sent the case back to Honeywell for further consideration. That led to Honeywell in 2022 ruling again in favor of the association, which prompted another appeal by Cambridge Christian.<\/p>\n
By Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE \u2014 After a nine-year legal battle, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[33806,32436,33804,10044,10635,33807,33810,33809,33808,4497,135,137,136,33811,33805],"class_list":["post-53982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-appeals-court","tag-cambridge-christian","tag-cambridge-christian-school","tag-christian-school","tag-florida-high-school-athletic-association","tag-government-speech","tag-loudspeaker","tag-speech-rights","tag-state-championship-football-game","tag-supreme-court","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-the-association","tag-university-christian-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}