Friend:

Religious extremists are emboldened. We knew they would be after this last Supreme Court term. Especially after the ultra-conservative bloc adopted the “deceitful narrative” of Coach Kennedy’s lawyers and allowed the coach to impose his coercive prayers on players on the 50-yard-line after football games. We warned that religious extremists would brazenly abuse the decision to impose prayer on students and their families in other venues.

Sure enough, “Kennedy” is literally the first word in the introduction of the latest court brief filed in a Florida football prayer case by First Liberty Institute – the legal group representing Kennedy and a key cog in the billion-dollar shadow network seeking to undermine church-state separation, religious freedom and our democracy. 

The case is Cambridge Christian School v. Florida High School Athletic Association. First Liberty wants the courts to force the state association, which includes a lot of public schools plus some private religious schools, to give a Christian school special access to the public address system to broadcast Christian prayers during pregame festivities at state championship games. Even though the Christian school is being treated the same as rest of the schools – none of the other schools are allowed to use the public address system before games – First Liberty claims it’s somehow discriminatory to refuse to broadcast the religious school’s prayers. It’s the usual Christian nationalist distortion: claiming religious freedom when they want religious privilege. 

The lower court already rejected First Liberty’s arguments – twice – in this case, but they’re appealing the case to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; in their brief, they reference the Supreme Court’s Kennedy decision more than a dozen times.

This week, Americans United was joined by our allies at the ACLU and nine national religious organizations in filing a friend-of-the-court brief explaining why the state association was right to decline to grant a private religious school special access to the PA system for prayers. The brief further explains that if the state association had allowed the religious school to broadcast prayers at the game, it would have violated the religious freedom of all the children and families in attendance because it would have forced them to take part in communal prayer at a state-sponsored event.

We’ll keep saying it – religious freedom is not religious privilege for a select few. It is not a right to force the government to impose the religious beliefs of some onto everyone else. And it’s not a right to turn state-sponsored high school football games into prayer rallies.

But we also know that the shadow network of religious extremists and their political allies will keep trying to secure power and privilege, even as they undermine our Constitution and our democracy. That’s why Americans United will continue fighting in the courts, in Congress, in state legislatures and in the public square for true religious freedom. And that’s why we need a national recommitment to the separation of church and state – it’s what protects the freedom for all of us to live as ourselves and believe as we choose. I’m proud to have you on our side as we continue our mission of securing freedom without favor and equality without exception for everyone. Now is a great moment to recruit more friends and family to our cause. 

With hope and determination,

Rachel K. Laser
President and CEO