In a unanimous decision, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Kountze Independent School District student cheerleaders' petition to review a case involving their right to display Bible verses on sports banners during football games.
The court overturned a 2014 Texas Court of Appeals decision that ruled the case "moot" that prevented the students from their right to free speech and religious expression. It remanded the case back to the appeals court to reconsider the case.
"This is a victory for the free speech and religious liberty rights of all Texas students. We are delighted that the court considered this case so straightforward that it did not even require oral argument," said Kelly Shackelford, president of Liberty Institute, which defended the cheerleaders along with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
According to the Liberty Institute, the case began in 2012 when middle school and high school cheerleaders in Kountze, Texas, decided to paint Bible verses on run-through banners at football games.
The atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) subsequently sent a complaint to the school district superintendent who forthwith banned the religious messages.
The cheerleaders and their parents filed a lawsuit to seek a temporary restraining order and temporary injunction to bar government school officials from censoring the cheerleaders' religious messages.
The court granted the TRO and a temporary injunction and in May 2013, Hardin County District Court Judge Steven Thomas ruled in favour of the cheerleaders, saying the banners are "constitutionally permissible."
However, the school district appealed the court's decision in the Beaumont Court of Appeals, which later ruled in 2014 that the case was moot since the district had already allowed the banners.
But the appeals court's decision left unresolved the claim by the school district that the banners were government speech subject to school censorship or ban. The cheerleaders sought for a review of the ruling by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruled that "the District's voluntary abandonment here provides no assurance that the District will not prohibit the cheerleaders from displaying banners with religious signs or messages at school-sponsored events in the future."
"Indeed, Resolution and Order No. 3 only states the District is not required to prohibit the cheerleaders from displaying such banners, and reserves to the District unfettered discretion in regulating those banners–including the apparent authority to do so based solely on their religious content. Thus, like Seton, this case is not moot," the court said.
