A Texas state judge has held that allowing high school cheerleaders to display religious messages on banners at football games is not an unconstitutional government establishment of religion.
The decision last week in Matthews v. Kountze Independent School District is largely in line with a preliminary ruling issued in October that granted a temporary injunction allowing the cheerleaders at Kountze High School, northeast of Houston, to continue to display banners with messages referring to God and Christ.
The cheerleaders sued the Kountze district and then-Superintendent Kevin Weldon, who had said he felt bound by U.S. Supreme Court precedent to prohibit the religious messages on public school grounds.
