News From The Week Of October 25 – October 29, 2021

Friend:

It’s a busy stretch for all things Supreme Court, and AU is in the thick of it.

Yesterday, we filed our “friend of the court” brief in this term’s religious-education case, Carson v. Makin: [link removed]. Its very presence on the docket underscores how dangerous the court’s 6-3 conservative majority is for religious freedom. Here’s why:

Maine has a program to fund public-school-equivalent education at private schools in rural school districts that don’t have their own public high schools. To protect the religious freedom of taxpayers, Maine prohibits the use of taxpayer money to fund religious education through this program.

But in their relentless drive for religious privilege, pro-voucher forces and their religious extremist allies want to build on the Court’s decision in Espinoza v. Montana from just a year ago and force taxpayers to fund not only religious schools, but explicitly religious instruction. Carson is their route to doing so. These foes of public education believe that this imbalanced Supreme Court will welcome the opportunity to rule in their favor and overturn earlier rulings against them by the U.S. District Court in Maine and the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

But AU’s brief makes a compelling case to uphold Maine’s standards. It is persuasively grounded in judicial precedent, including this Supreme Court’s own decisions. Oral arguments in Carson are scheduled for Dec. 8. No matter what the Court decides, AU will continue to make your voices heard in support of church-state separation and secular public education, which are foundational to our democracy.

And speaking of Constitutional principles, on Monday, the Court hears arguments on emergency lawsuits from the Biden administration and Texas abortion providers to block the Texas abortion ban. (The Court allowed the law to take effect last month essentially on the basis that its Orwellian citizen enforcement mechanism meant that state officials might not be able to be sued to block it.) A decision is expected to be issued quickly. Oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case ([link removed]) come four weeks later, on Dec. 1.

We’re about to learn how rock-solid the court’s six-member conservative majority is, and whether it will continue to favor the religious beliefs of a minority of Americans over the freedom and equality of others. If it does, many more lower-court victories, grounded in a definition of religious freedom that’s served our country well for 230 years, will be in jeopardy.

AU will never waver in our defense of true religious liberty, and our commitment to church-state separation that provides freedom without favor and equality without exception. Thank you for being an essential ally in this monumental fight.

With hope and gratitude,

Rachel K. Laser
President and CEO

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New Poll Shows That Americans Support Church-State Separation:
Americans support the separation of religion and government – except for a stubborn minority that would be only too happy to scrap that constitutional principle entirely.
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Christian Nationalists Love To Distort Our History. There’s A Reason For That:
If students walk away from a study of history convinced that America has never done anything wrong, that we’re God’s favorite nation and everything we do meets with divine approval, chances are they didn’t study 'history' at all – they got a course in Christian nationalist propaganda.
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The Council For National Policy Is The Scariest Christian Nationalist Group You’ve Never Heard Of:
The Council for National Policy operates alongside a dizzying array of Christian nationalists and far-right groups, some of which backed Donald Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 election and are now involved in voter-suppression campaigns.
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Peaceful Protests Are Fine. Threatening People Is Not:
In some parts of the country, meetings of school boards and other units of local government have been extremely contentious, as Christian nationalists and others denounce policies designed to curb the spread of COVID-19.
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Dear Texas, Please Say No To This Dangerous Proposition:
On Election Day, the people of Texas should vote ‘No’ on Proposition 3, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit state and local governments from adopting any measures that limit services held by a religious organization, even if public safety necessitates it.
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