Fifth Circuit Denies Immunity to Katy Principal Accused of Banning Teacher Prayer Students ‘Might See’

A Texas math teacher who was told she could not pray anywhere on campus where students might see her has won the right to keep suing her former principal over it. On March 9, 2026, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Bryan Scott Rounds, the former principal of Cardiff Junior High in the Katy Independent School District, is not entitled to qualified immunity on teacher Staci Barber’s First Amendment claims.

The ruling means Rounds cannot use the legal doctrine that often shields government officials from personal liability to end Barber’s free speech and free exercise claims against him. The case, which drew renewed attention in September, now goes back to federal district court in Houston.

A prayer at the flagpole

The facts, as alleged in Barber’s complaint and recounted by the court, are simple. Barber is a longtime teacher at Cardiff Junior High and a Christian who regularly prayed and studied the Bible with other teachers before the school day began. CBN News described her in 2024 as a 26-year teaching veteran.

In September 2023, the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes club planned a “See You at the Pole” event, the annual gathering where students pray together at their school’s flagpole. As she had done for the prior three years, Barber emailed staff inviting them to pray with her at the flagpole at 8 a.m. She understood, the court noted, that the student group would not arrive until after the teachers had finished.

Rounds answered with two emails. To the whole staff, he wrote that district policy prohibited employees from “praying with or in the presence of students.” To Barber directly, he wrote that “employees CANNOT pray with or in the presence of students,” and that although her gathering would be before the school day, she would still be “on campus[,] visible to students in [her] role as an employee.”

Barber replied that the invitation was “only for staff before students arrive just like [she and fellow teachers] ha[d] done for the past three years. . . . There [would] be no kids when [she and her colleagues] [were] out there.” Rounds wrote back that “[b]y 8:00 AM students are generally waiting at the front entry of the building,” so teachers praying at the pole would be “a violation of school policies.”

When Barber and a few colleagues prayed near the flagpole anyway, Rounds stopped them and called them into a conference room. There, according to the complaint, he told them teachers may not pray where students “might see” or “be influenced by” their conduct, even “when the teachers were not on school time.”

What the court decided

Barber sued Katy ISD and Rounds in March 2024, represented by the American Center for Law and Justice. The district court denied Rounds qualified immunity on most of her claims, and he appealed.

Writing for a panel that also included Chief Judge Elrod and Judge Smith, Judge Cory T. Wilson held that Barber’s complaint plausibly describes a categorical, visibility-based ban on teacher prayer, not a narrow rule about teachers joining a student event. Rounds had argued he was only enforcing district policy and the federal Equal Access Act, which limits staff to a nonparticipatory role at student religious meetings. The court rejected that reading at this stage, calling it “a stretch to read the Equal Access Act—a law aimed at enhancing students’ religious liberty—to curtail the private religious expression and exercise of teachers like Barber.”

The heart of the ruling is the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which vindicated a high school football coach who was disciplined for praying on the field after games. “Kennedy expressly rejected the proposition that religious expression by a public-school employee may be restricted merely because students might observe it,” the Fifth Circuit wrote. The panel concluded that Kennedy “clearly established that school officials may not impose categorical, visibility-based restrictions on an employee’s private religious expression or exercise outside official duties.”

Because Kennedy was decided more than a year before the flagpole incident, the court said, the law was settled “beyond debate by September 2023.” Its conclusion was blunt: “If Rounds imposed a categorical ban on teacher prayer wherever students might see it, as Barber alleges, he violated clearly established law.”

The ruling was not a clean sweep. The panel reversed on Barber’s Fourteenth Amendment equal protection claim, finding that her complaint attributed unequal treatment to the district generally rather than to Rounds personally, so he is immune on that one claim. The panel issued no dissent.

What happens next

The decision came at the pleading stage, so the court accepted Barber’s allegations as true without deciding whether they will be proven. Her claims against Rounds in his official capacity and against Katy ISD itself were not part of the appeal and remain pending in district court. As of May 2025, the ACLJ said discovery in the case against the district had closed and its motion for summary judgment against the district was ready for the court’s consideration.

Texas Scorecard reported on March 12 that Rounds had reportedly stepped into an interim administrator role that spring and would retire at the end of the school year.

The case matters well beyond Katy. Kennedy was supposed to settle the question of whether a teacher’s private faith becomes illegal the moment a child might glance in her direction. That a principal was allegedly still enforcing exactly that rule more than a year later shows why rulings like this one are necessary. Public schools are not religion-free zones for the adults who work in them, and the Constitution does not require a teacher to hide her prayers in a closet.

The Supreme Court already said teachers don’t lose their faith at the schoolhouse gate, and now a Texas principal accused of ignoring that will have to answer for it in court.

Editor’s note: This article covers a Fifth Circuit ruling issued in March 2026 that drew renewed attention in September 2026.

More from The Rothman Report

Lifelong Democrat Sheriff Quits the Party After Locals Told Him to Leave for Backing Rogers and JamesTaco Bell Coworker’s Tip Stopped a Self-Described Neo-Nazi’s Alleged Plot Against an Aurora Hindu TempleParalympian Veteran Waited 5 Years for a Wheelchair Lift. She Says Canada Offered Her Assisted Death.