Friend:

The “so-called” separation of church and state. With those two little words—“so-called”—Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch demonstrated what we’re up against.

Gorsuch’s remarks came yesterday during oral arguments in one of the many religious-freedom cases on the Supreme Court’s docket this term.

Click here to make a contribution to Americans United to defend church-state separation.

In Shurtleff v. City of Boston, the court is considering whether a city can be forced to fly a Christian flag from a city hall flagpole at the behest of a Christian nationalist group.

If you or I saw a religious flag flying on a city hall official flagpole beside the U.S. and state flags at the seat of government power, we would view that as the government unconstitutionally endorsing a particular religious belief.

As my friend Brian Kaylor, a Baptist minister, and I wrote in our recent op-ed in The Boston Globe, at a public building where everyone is supposed to be treated equally under the law, religious displays that send messages of unequal status undermine the democratic principle of religious freedom.

While a lot of religious and civil-rights groups agree with us and joined a brief we filed in this case, this is one of the rare occasions when our usual allies at the ACLU disagree. I debated the ACLU’s National Legal Director David Cole during a live television spot in Boston last night—you can watch here as we discuss whether flags on the flagpole amount to government speech that must not endorse religion (our view) or are private speech displayed in a public forum that must permit all viewpoints (their view).

But one thing David and I agree on is that the Supreme Court seems likely to rule against Boston. And that, combined with Justice Gorsuch’s dig at “so-called” church-state separation, should concern all of us who care about protecting real religious freedom for everyone.

Click here to make a contribution to Americans United. Church-state separation is a core tenet of our democracy. Help us make clear that even Supreme Court Justices don’t get to rewrite history.

With an enlarged conservative faction that has expressed hostility toward church-state separation on numerous occasions, the court has accepted an extraordinary number of cases this term that give it plenty of opportunities to chip away at this bedrock principle. Just last week they added one more to their docket—AU’s case, Kennedy v. Bremerton, in which we represent a public school district that stopped a football coach from leading students in prayer on the 50-yard line after games.

From school prayer to religious displays to tax dollars funding religious instruction, religious extremists have the Supreme Court’s ear. We at Americans United will need all the support we can get to fight back, friend. Because you and I know there is no “so-called” about it: Separation of church and state was enshrined in the constitution to be a shield that protects freedom and equality for all of us. And we’ll continue to reinforce that shield, just as we’ve done for 75 years.

In solidarity,

Rachel K. Laser
President & CEO