When the football team of Kountze High School in East Texas runs on the field for games this season, the players burst through banners carrying words from the Bible. To the school’s cheerleaders, the banners are personal statements, sharing messages of inspiration. They say the banners are a form of free speech and religious expression protected by the Texas Constitution and Texas statutes.

But under a 2000 Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case, this kind of religious display at a public school event clearly violates the First Amendment. Those banners are not merely personal expressions of belief, but in that setting become religious messages endorsed by the school, the school district and the local government.

That’s why officials of the school district last month prohibited the banners at football games. Cheerleaders and their parents sued, and on Thursday, a state court judge temporarily blocked the school district’s policy and allowed the cheerleaders to use religious banners until the case is resolved in a trial next June.

In the 2000 case, the Supreme Court said the Constitution prohibits a student from delivering prayers over the public address system before each football game because that practice violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which forbids government from favoring a particular religion. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, “the choice between whether to attend these games or to risk facing a personally offensive religious ritual is in no practical sense an easy one.” The Constitution, he said, “demands that the school may not force this difficult choice upon these students.”