Cite as: 530 U. S. 290 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
opinion the District's October policy created a limited public forum that had a secular purpose 10 and provided neutral accommodation of noncoerced, private, religious speech.11
We granted the District's petition for certiorari, limited to the following question: "Whether petitioner's policy permitting student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games violates the Establishment Clause." 528 U. S. 1002 (1999). We conclude, as did the Court of Appeals, that it does.
II
The first Clause in the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Fourteenth Amendment imposes those substantive limitations on the legislative power of the States and their political subdivisions. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 49-50 (1985). In Lee v. Weisman, 505 U. S. 577 (1992), we held that a prayer delivered by a rabbi at a middle school graduation ceremony violated that Clause. Although this case involves student prayer at a different
10 "There are in fact several secular reasons for allowing a brief, serious message before football games—some of which [the District] has listed in its policy. At sporting events, messages and/or invocations can promote, among other things, honest and fair play, clean competition, individual challenge to be one's best, importance of team work, and many more goals that the majority could conceive would it only pause to do so.
"Having again relinquished all editorial control, [the District] has created a limited public forum for the students to give brief statements or prayers concerning the value of those goals and the methods for achieving them." 168 F. 3d, at 835.
11 "The majority fails to realize that what is at issue in this facial challenge to this school policy is the neutral accommodation of non-coerced, private, religious speech, which allows students, selected by students, to express their personal viewpoints. The state is not involved. The school board has neither scripted, supervised, endorsed, suggested, nor edited these personal viewpoints. Yet the majority imposes a judicial curse upon sectarian religious speech." Id., at 836.
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