Friend:

I hope this update finds you safe and healthy as we begin yet another month in an unprecedented and unsettling time.

This week, Americans United filed two more coronavirus-related friend-of-the-court briefs – this time opposing the demands of churches in California and Kentucky for religious exemptions to temporary bans on large gatherings. In addition to our new COVID-19 work, AU is busier than ever with our traditional work of preventing the misuse of religious freedom as a license for discrimination against women, LGBTQ people and others.

Even amid this crisis, these same threats to church-state separation are as real and imminent as ever.

In a new Masterpiece Cakeshop-like case, AU, joined by 14 religious and civil rights organizations, urged the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm that religious freedom gives us all the right to believe, or not – so long as we don’t harm others.

That principle will be tested again in the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, when the Court will hear arguments (by telephone!) in Trump v. Pennsylvania, a case involving the Trump administration’s dangerous rules that would allow employers and universities to invoke religious or moral beliefs to deny birth control coverage to employees and students. These are the very same rules that Americans United is challenging in our own lawsuit filed with the National Women’s Law Center and the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of University of Notre Dame students.

Are you craving a new experience? Come to a virtual rally on Tuesday, May 5th, where I will join our allies and urge the Supreme Court to protect both religious freedom and reproductive freedom.

To attend this rally from home, click here to learn more and RSVP now.

Your support and dedication in this moment keep us going and makes our country better. Thanks for being with us, friend.

With hope and determination,