Friend:

Why is religious freedom important to you? This year, AU asked high school juniors and seniors to answer this question in an essay, and over 300 submitted responses. We were thrilled to read the diverse perspectives and voices that these essays represented, and finally – with great difficulty – we narrowed them down to three winners.

The winning essays are all available to read now on our blog! Click here (or on the articles below) to read them.

Part of AU’s mission, as the only organization dedicated solely to the defense of church-state separation, is to ensure our work is continued by the generations to come. We are thankful that this contest brings in so many young voices, and we are hard at work building on that youth outreach in lots of new and exciting ways.

Before I sign off, I wanted to update you on AU’s fight against foster care discrimination. On Thursday, AU filed an important friend-of-the-court brief in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, an upcoming Supreme Court case centered on taxpayer-funded foster care agencies that want to use a religious litmus test to discriminate against qualified parents. You can read more about the case, and AU’s brief that tells some of these families’ stories of discrimination, in this statement.

Thanks for all you do to support the separation of religion and government, friend, and thanks for reading this update.

Sincerely,