Texas Teacher Can Pursue School Prayer First Amendment Claims

A Houston-area teacher may sue her principal on constitutional grounds for denying her the right to pray on school grounds whenever students might see her, the Fifth Circuit ruled.

If Cardiff Junior High principal Bryan Rounds instituted a categorical ban on teacher prayer in potential view of students, as alleged by teacher Staci Barber, it would violate “clearly established law,” wrote Judge Cory T. Wilson of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The 2022 US Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District “expressly rejected the proposition that religious expression by a public-school employee may be restricted merely because students might observe it,” Wilson said.

The panel affirmed a district court ruling that Rounds shouldn’t be shielded from Barber’s First Amendment claims as a public school principal, but reversed the district court and said he should receive qualified immunity for her disparate treatment claim under the 14th Amendment.

Barber is a Christian who, before the events that spurred her suit, said she had regularly engaged in prayer and Bible study with other teachers before the school day began.

In September 2023, Cardiff’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes club planned to host an annual prayer event in which students across the country gather to pray together, usually before school at their school’s flagpole, the court said. Barber emailed staff inviting them to join her by the flagpole to pray.

Rounds responded in a staff-wide message, in which he stated district policy prohibited employees from “praying with or in the presence of students,” Wilson said. He also emailed Barber directly, reiterating that “‘employees CANNOT pray with or in the presence of students,’” the court said.

When Barber and colleagues went to pray near the flagpole anyway, Rounds again told her that teachers may not pray where students “might see” or “be influenced by” their conduct, the court said.

Barber sued Rounds, in his individual and official capacities, alleging they violated her rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendment.

Rounds’s qualified immunity bid for the First Amendment claims fails in part because “visibility-based” restrictions of religious exercise implicate both the constitution’s free speech and free exercise clauses, Wilson said.

However, because Barber’s complaint fails to allege that Rounds personally engaged in conduct that treated her differently from “any similarly situated employee,” she hasn’t stated an equal protection claim against Rounds in his individual capacity, the court said.

Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod and Judge Jerry E. Smith joined the opinion.

The American Center for Law & Justice and Brett Stalcup of Dallas represent Barber. Thompson & Horton LLP represents Rounds.

The case is Barber v. Rounds, 5th Cir., No. 25-20125, 3/9/26.