Is It Okay to Pray Over a Public Loudspeaker?

Cambridge Christian School v. Florida Athletic Association

​Does a Christian prayer on a stadium loudspeaker at the start of a football game amount to a government endorsement of religion, or does it fulfill the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and the free exercise of religion?

That’s the question that arose when two Christian schools made it to the state championships in Florida in 2015. The state’s high school athletic association, a government entity, barred the teams from conducting a joint prayer over the stadium loudspeaker.

Many would reflexively side with the athletic association. The government sets the venue for the event. The government controls the loudspeaker. Allowing any religion to pray over government-controlled equipment might, at first glance, appear to violate the clause of the First Amendment that forbids the official establishment of religion.

That was essentially the conclusion the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals supported last year. To mix sports metaphors, it may have seemed like a slam dunk. But the Eleventh’s decision was, in fact, a bad call.

In a petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, Protect The 1st wrote that the “Eleventh Circuit held that the First Amendment was not even implicated – on the dubious theory that the proposed prayer, and by extension anything else that had ever been said by private parties on the loudspeakers, was government speech.”

Worse, that “dangerous expansion of the already questionable government-speech doctrine flips the First Amendment on its head.”

Protect The 1st is now telling the Supreme Court that this case presents “a clean vehicle to resolve the conflict and confusion” about the difference between the government’s speech and the speech of private actors using public forums.

Consider what happened when the city of Boston allowed 284 diverse groups at various times to hoist their flags on a city-owned flagpole, except for one group seeking to fly a standard that included the Latin Cross. In that case, Shurtleff v. City of Boston (2022), Protect The 1st told the Court that when the government provides a public forum for all comers, it is not “government speech.” It is merely a government forum. To single out religious expression for exclusion in a public venue is to abridge freedom of religious expression. Period.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote then that “speech by a private individual or group cannot constitute government speech if the government does not attempt to control the message.” The same principle applies, whether with flagpoles or loudspeakers.

Protect The 1st told the Court that the state athletic association “would not itself have been speaking had it allowed a student to use the limited public forum it created to pray at the championship football game.” We added that expanding the government-speech doctrine to convert government-sponsored forums into tools for censoring some views – but not others – weakens the First Amendment.

Protect The 1st concluded by telling the Court that “a prayer to solemnize the forthcoming competition, thank God, and seek His help in ensuring a good game for players and fans alike offers a religious viewpoint. That viewpoint must be respected and permitted every bit as much as a speech thanking parents, teachers, and the school, or merely cheering, ‘Go team!’”
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Many long-time Court observers believe the Justices will recognize the threat to free speech and expression in the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling and will, this fall, place this case on their docket.

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