The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a request from a Christian school to be able to pray over the loudspeaker before a football game.
Without comment, the justices announced in their Monday orders list that they will not take up the case of Cambridge Christian School v. Florida High School Athletic Association.
It would have taken four justices to vote in favor of hearing the legal battle for oral arguments to have been scheduled.
The dispute was brought by Cambridge Christian School in Tampa, Florida.
The private school argued that its First Amendment right to free speech and free exercise was violated when school representatives weren’t allowed to pray over the loudspeaker ahead of its title game.
The school was playing a fellow Christian school, and both sought to engage in the pregame prayer.
The prayer over the loudspeaker had been allowed in a prior year, but in 2015, the Florida High School Athletic Association, which oversees public and private school athletics, said it would be considered government speech and an endorsement of religion. The association banned the pregame prayer.
The school sued in 2016, but lower courts sided against the Christian school in its free speech and free exercise of religion fight.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held there was no violation of free speech rights and that the prayer over the loudspeaker could be deemed government speech.
The high court not taking up the appeal leaves the 11th Circuit’s ruling in place.
