Friend,

Far too many Americans take the separation of church and state for granted. Now, with a change in administration, it’s even easier to tune out the many ways that religious freedom is being misused to license discrimination and undermine democratic principles.

That’s why I’m writing to you with an update on AU’s important legal work—what we’re doing right now to defend religious freedom, and how it is protecting your right to live free from the harm of religious discrimination.

Please read on for more details, and consider supporting our work with a donation of $50 today. Every gift makes a difference.

As AU’s Legal Director, I lead my team in using high-impact litigation to defend families, schoolchildren, LGBTQ people, women seeking reproductive healthcare, and countless others from the often devastating consequences of discrimination in the name of religion.

On January 19, 2021, we and our partners at American Atheists sued to block a Trump Administration rule, created by former Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, that in effect forces marginalized students to subsidize discrimination against themselves.

This rule—based on DeVos’ incorrect and harmful interpretation of the First Amendment—requires public colleges and universities to exempt religious student groups from nondiscrimination policies that all other school-funded clubs must follow.

Very soon, we anticipate a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the religious-freedom case of the year: Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Fulton involves a taxpayer-funded foster-care agency that wants the Court to create a constitutional right to discriminate against qualified families because the prospective foster parents are LGBTQ and therefore don’t follow the agency’s religious tenets.

AU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Fulton to describe the painful experiences of four families—including our clients Aimee Maddonna, a Catholic mother of three from South Carolina, and Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin, a married same-sex couple from Texas—who were rejected as potential foster parents because they failed to pass the religious tests of foster-care agencies hired and paid by the government to do the government’s work running the foster-care system.

A bad decision in Fulton has the potential to redefine religious freedom as a constitutional right to discriminate.

As the nation’s foremost defenders of church-state separation, we can’t risk being caught unprepared by what could be a momentous new legal precedent. No matter how the Court rules, AU will continue to fight on behalf of people like Aimee, Fatma, and Bryn.

To support AU’s important legal work in defense of church-state separation, click here to donate $50 today.

Friend, virtually all the work we do is funded by individual contributors like you. It is more important than ever that we have you by our side.

Thanks for being such a committed ally in the fight for religious freedom.

Sincerely,

Richard B. Katskee
AU Vice-President and Legal Director