Friend:

It’s really nice to pause at the end of each week and reflect on what AU and our supporters accomplished. Sometimes we reach a big milestone – like filing our lawsuit challenging Missouri’s abortions bans last month. And sometimes it’s under-the-radar efforts to move the needle on a particular issue.

But whatever happens in any given week, I’m always amazed at the breadth and depth of the experience and knowledge of AU’s team when it comes to church-state separation and all of the many issues that connect with it. This past week is a perfect example:

• On Monday, we applauded the Biden administration for proposing critical changes to the Trump-era birth control rules that had allowed employers and universities to cite religious or moral beliefs to deny birth control access to workers and students. We’ve been fighting these rules in court since they were proposed five years ago, and they’re one of several Trump-era policies we’ve been successful in urging the Biden administration to roll back.
• Also on Monday, we filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a federal case involving yet another wedding services business, this time a photography business in Kentucky that wants to misuse religious freedom as a license to discriminate against LGBTQ customers. Our brief, joined by 15 religious and civil-rights organizations, explains that anti-discrimination laws protect religious freedom for everyone and focuses on religious minorities and the nonreligious.
• The next morning we sent a meticulously detailed legal memo to Oklahoma officials urging them to disregard bad advice from a lame-duck attorney general who wrongly opined that the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board should allow public charter schools to indoctrinate their students in religion. Public schools are not and should not be Sunday Schools! We explained that the former AG’s opinion is a radical departure from well-established law. We’ll be monitoring this situation closely, as the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City applied earlier this week to run a virtual public charter school.

And that doesn’t even include the recent appellate brief we filed in our client Shelly Fitzgerald’s civil-rights case in Indiana, our work to fight private school vouchers and other dangerous bills in states across the country, monitoring Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, and ramping up preparations for our inaugural Summit for Religious Freedom (SRF) on April 22-24 (please register now to join us in Washington, D.C., or virtually).

I’m so proud of all that our team accomplishes every day to defend the separation of church and state. And I’m beyond grateful to have your support as we work toward a country that realizes freedom without favor and equality without exception.

With hope and determination,

Rachel K. Laser
President and CEO