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. 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 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,