Dear Friend,

“You can’t talk about that.” I hear a version of this a lot. Running a communications shop for the nation’s leading church-state watchdog is sometimes a challenge—but not in the way you think. Not because topics are too hot for our supporters to handle, but because AU’s Policy team does all this amazing work that we simply can’t talk about publicly.

AU’s Policy staff are the leading experts “on the Hill” (as they say) in Washington, D.C., for anything related to church-state separation or religious freedom. They meet with your senators and representatives, consult with White House officials, prep members of Congress and their staff for hearings, brief them on legislation and lawsuits, and help draft federal regulations and legislation.

I want to tell you the who, the how, the what, and more about those many meetings, but we can't really get more specific than that! It's frustrating because they do so much more, but their effectiveness depends on quietly getting the job done behind the scenes—and AU not getting public credit for all their hard work.

But I can tell you that, lately, AU’s Policy team has had an amazing string of victories. Specifically, they’ve been working to roll back Trump administration rules and regulations that legalized discrimination in the name of religion. They’ve successfully lobbied the Biden administration to:

— Improve access to birth control for workers and university students after Trump allowed employers and colleges to cite religious beliefs to block access.
— Restore religious freedom protections for people who use government-funded social services.
— Protect patients’ health by rescinding the Denial of Care Rule that allowed health care workers to cite religious beliefs to discriminate, even in life-or-death emergencies.
— Restore anti-discrimination protections for students in school-sponsored religious clubs at public colleges and universities.
— Roll back a religious exemption that expanded the ability of federal contractors to discriminate against workers.

That last rule is final and the rest are being finalized as you read this. And, of course, this work is backed up by the AU Legal team, which has sued over most of these rules too.

AU’s Policy experts are unsung heroes on the Hill. The team is quietly, diligently doing the hard, necessary work and rarely getting the credit. You support their crucial behind-the-scenes work by supporting AU.

Thank you.

Andrew L. Seidel
VP of Strategic Communications

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