Friend:

It was another emotional week, but this time in a good way! Vice President Kamala Harris became the first woman and the first person of color to hold the office, and Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States.

In electing these leaders, America voted for democracy, diversity, and the Constitution, including religious freedom for all of us. Our country overcame a violent insurrection, driven by a white Christian nationalist ideology, to complete the transfer of power peacefully and safely. And just hours after the Inauguration, President Biden repealed former president Trump’s Muslim Ban – the very first item on AU’s “Agenda to Restore and Protect Religious Freedom” – signaling a renewed commitment and good start by our government to rejecting discrimination on the basis of religion.

But the fact is, repairing the damage done to religious freedom by Trump and his allies will still require monumental effort and decisive action.

Americans United is already hard at work. We just filed two new lawsuits against the outgoing Trump administration to invalidate harmful last-minute policies.

We are seeking to overturn a Trump administration rule undoing religious freedom protections for those seeking access to social services. This unlawful rule makes it harder for already marginalized populations to access essential social services, even as we continue to reel from a historic pandemic and economic collapse.

In a second lawsuit, we are urging the court to invalidate a Trump Department of Education rule that forces public universities to fund discrimination by student groups. The new policy requires schools to exempt religious student organizations from nondiscrimination provisions that apply to all other clubs that are funded by student fees. For the most part, this rule is intended to allow religious student clubs to bar LGBTQ students from membership. Our suit makes clear that this unconstitutional rule jeopardizes the rights of all students to be free from religion-based discrimination.

These cases are part of AU’s leading efforts to ensure the separation of church and state remains a central tenet of our democracy – and, friend, they are made possible by your generous support.

I’ll close by borrowing the words of National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, “... [W]hile democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.”

With hope and determination,