When the Supreme Court nearly a year ago refused to hear the appeal of a coalition of Indian tribes over plans to dig a huge open-pit copper mine at Oak Flat, Ariz., it looked like legal hopes for the tribes had been vanquished.

But that appears no longer to be the case.

The tribes, united for litigation purposes as the Apache Stronghold, claim that indigenous peoples have been using the site since time immemorial for “prayer, gathering medicine, and holding religious ceremonies.” As they note, they have been using the land since long before the land had become Spanish territory or part of the United States.

Indian use of the land is threatened by Resolution Copper’s plans for a multibillion-dollar project that would destroy the surface of the region in order to mine copper and other minerals more than a mile below the surface. The federal government is involved because the site has been owned by the federal government, which had approved a land swap to allow for the mining construction.

The Apache Stronghold — whose legal supporters have included a coalition of Christians, Sikhs, Jews and other religious adherents and the one of the nation’s leading law firms, Becket, involved in religious-freedom litigation — first filed suit to stop the project in 2021. The dispute has had a complicated legal history that includes lawsuits by other organizations, has been litigated as far as the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled 6-5 in 2024 against Apache Stronghold, saying that the planned land swap would not deny Native Americans an “equal share of the rights, benefits, and privileges enjoyed by other citizens.”

The tribes claimed that the land swap violates, among other things, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. They also claim that they have treaty rights to continue using the land for worship. According to the Becket law firm, Oak Flat is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and was formally protected from mining and other harmful practices for 70 years until a controversial last-minute provision was slipped into a must-pass defense bill in December 2014.

The tribes also claim that the project would violate environmental laws and the National Historic Preservation Act.

The Ninth Circuit ruling was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, which last year refused to hear the case. As is typical, the Supreme Court did not state why it decided not to hear the case, nor how many of the four justices needed to sign on to hear a case had done so. But in an unusual move, Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by a colleague, Clarence Thomas, wrote a dissent saying that the high court had made a “grievous mistake” in refusing to consider the appeal. “Faced with the government’s plan to destroy an ancient site of tribal worship, we owe the Apaches no less,” Gorsuch wrote.

What has changed since that Supreme Court rejection is that land was formally transferred to Resolution Copper in March — in a way that an amended version of the Apache Stronghold v. United States lawsuit says is illegal.

“The feds rushed the Oak Flat transfer through under cover of darkness because they wanted to dodge meaningful judicial review,” Becket senior counsel said in press statement. “That was as illegal as it was brazen. The court should rescind the illegal transfer and protect the freedom of Western Apaches to continue worshiping at Oak Flat for generations to come.”

The federal government has yet to formally responded to the amended lawsuit.

Without a vote to spare, a federal appeals court has determined that a 2025 Texas law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms is constitutional.

By a 9-8 vote today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the law does not violate the clause of the First Amendment prohibiting the establishment of religion. It also found that the law does not interfere with the rights of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children.

The court’s majority opinion, written by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who was appointed to the court in 2017 by President Donald Trump, said of the Texas law, known as Senate Bill 10:

S.B. 10 looks nothing like a historical religious establishment. It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams. It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason. It levies no taxes to support any clergy. It does not co-opt churches to perform civic functions. These are the kinds of things “establishments of religion” did at the founding. S.B. 10 does none of them.

Last year, Texas became the third state to require the posting of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, following Louisiana and Arkansas. Federal courts have found the Louisiana and Arkansas laws unconstitutional, and the Texas law was found unconstitutional in two federal rulings before today’s decision.

According to news reports, attorneys for the parents who had filed the lawsuit against Texas said they plan to appeal today’s ruling immediately. Because the ruling conflicts with those in Louisiana and Arkansas, it is likely that the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case in older to resolve the conflicting opinions.

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, it won’t be the first time that the top court has considered the issue. The court ruled 5-4 in 1980 in Stone v. Graham that a similar Kentucky law was unconstitutional. During the past decade, however, the high court has demonstrated a willingness to expand the circumstances under which religion can be a presence in public schools.

Earlier version (Nov. 20, 2025): Ten Commandments law in Texas found unconstitutional by another judge

Some school districts in Texas are complying with a new law that requires them to post a copy of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms. But wherever the law has been challenged, courts have struck it down, saying it conflicts with First Amendment guarantees of freedom of religion and freedom from the government establishment of religion.

The most recent such decision came this week in a ruling by Judge Orlando L. Garcia of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. The ruling applies to 14 school districts, including some of the state’s largest such as those in Fort Worth and Arlington.

Earlier this year, Judge Fred Biery of the same court issued a similar ruling that applied to 11 school districts. Similar laws in Louisiana and Arkansas have also been invalidated by federal courts.

Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas are the three states that have passed Ten Commandments school legislation in recent years. Although the laws have been challenged in all three states, no court yet has upheld one.

Among other things, Garcia said in his ruling that Texas law violates the First Amendment because “it is impracticable, if not impossible, to prevent plaintiffs from being subjected to unwelcome religious displays” when the Ten Commandments are conspicuously posted in the way the law requires.

The Texas law, which had overwhelming Republican support and Democratic opposition, was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in June.

Texas is expected to appeal the ruling to a federal appeals court, which could make a ruling binding on more school districts.

Although it is unknown how today’s U.S. Supreme Court would look on such a case, the court invalidated a similar law in 1980. In Stone v. Graham, the court decided 5-4 that a similar Kentucky law “had no secular legislative purpose” and was “plainly religious in nature.”

Original article (May 29, 2025): Texas to become third state to require Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms

The Texas House yesterday approved the final amended version of Senate Bill 10 on an 82-46 vote, sending it to Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature. Abbott has said he would sign the bill. “Let’s get this bill to my desk. I’ll make it law,” Abbott wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on May 1.

Although its implementation is likely to be delayed by court challenges, the Texas law is scheduled to go in effect Sept. 1, roughly the start of the upcoming school year.

The bill is similar to legislation passed earlier in Louisiana and Arkansas. Louisiana’s legislation has been successfully challenged in federal court and is awaiting judicial action on an appeal. The Arkansas legislation, scheduled to go in effect next Jan. 1, has not been challenged in court, although a lawsuit is likely.

Opponents of the Texas bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, have promised to bring a court challenge soon.

The Texas bill requires that a “durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments” be posted in “a conspicuous place” in every public elementary or secondary school classroom. The sign is not to include any text other than the specified version of the Ten Commandments and be “legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom in which the poster or framed copy is displayed.”

The text specified in the legislation is a highly abridged version of the Ten Commandments from the book of Exodus in the King James Version of the Bible. It begins with “I AM the LORD they God.” The numbering scheme used in this version is one commonly used by Protestants; although Catholics and Jews also have the Ten Commandments as part of their scriptures, they divide the text into commandments differently.

As was the case in Louisiana and Arkansas, the Texas legislation had strong Republican support and strong Democratic opposition.

Most likely, implementation of the Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana laws would require the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a 1980 decision, Stone v. Graham, it which it found a similar Kentucky law unconstitutional. The 5-4 ruling found that the Kentucky law “had no secular legislative purpose” and was “plainly religious in nature” — one argument that the ACLU and other opponents have been making with the current round of legislation.

Obviously, supporters of the new laws are hopeful that the current Supreme Court will be more amenable to this type of legislation than is was 45 years ago. In the past decade, the court has generally been friendly to efforts by various states and local school boards to have public-school students exposed to religious instruction.

Voters in at least seven states will be voting in November on matters that have been important to conservative evangelical Christians in recent years. The issues have been placed on state ballots either by petition or legislative referral.

Five of the states will be voting on ballot measures related to transgender students or minors, in most cases by petition efforts organized by evangelicals and conservative Catholics. Other states will vote on issues as varied as prayer in schools and mandatory closure of churches during public emergencies.

Here’s a quick look at the ballot measures1:

Alabama: Student-led prayer

The Require Pledge of Allegiance and Allow Student-Led Prayer in Public Schools Amendment is a proposed change to the state Constitution that would require public schools to have a daily Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag each day as well as a student-led prayer. Students would be allowed to opt out of either the pledge or the prayer “based on their own beliefs.”

The proposed amendment does not specify how the student-led prayer would be conducted, leaving such details up to local school boards.

The proposal was placed on the ballot via unanimous Republican support and divided Democratic support. The Alabama House approved the amendment on a 94-3 vote, while the Senate did so on a 24-6 vote.

Colorado: Transgender surgeries and athletics

Petition efforts led by Catholic and evangelical Protestant interests led to two transgender-related issues being placed on the ballot. They are the proposed Protect Children from Irreversible Sex Change Surgery Act and the Sex Requirement for School and College Sports Initiative.

The first measure would prohibit health care professionals from performing or providing surgeries to persons under age 18 for the purpose of altering biological sex characteristics, and the second would require student athletes at the K-12 and collegiate levels to play on teams that match their sex, defined as biological reproductive systems. The main groups behind the measures were the Colorado Catholic Conference and Focus on the Family.

A coalition called Families Not Politics is opposing the two measures. Members of that coalition include Planned Parenthood, the Interfaith Alliance and Rocky Mountain Equality.

Maine: Transgender athletics

The Birth Certificate Sex Requirement for Public School Sports Initiative was placed on the ballot by petition. It would require that public school sports teams designated for girls or boys be limited to students of the corresponding sex, as recorded on their original birth certificate.

Leaders of the campaign for the initiative include the Maine Republican Party and various Republican public officials.

The initiative is opposed by individual Democrats that include the governor, Janet Mills. Groups in opposition include the American Academy of Pediatrics (Maine chapter), Equality Maine, the Maine Council on Aging and the Maine Women’s Lobby.

As of January, the initiative’s supporters had raised $800,000 in campaign funding. There were no groups in opposition that had filed a report.

Missouri: Abortion and gender transition

Amendment 3 was placed on the ballot by the Missouri Legislature on close to party-line votes, with Republicans supporting it and Democrats in opposition. (One Republican in each the House and Senate voted with Democrats.) The votes in favor were 103-51 in the House and 21-11 in the Senate.

Amendment 3 would:

🟪 Repeal the constitutional right to reproductive freedom approved by voters in 2024.

🟪 Prohibit abortions except in cases of “medical emergency, fetal anomaly, rape, or incest,” and permit abortions in cases of rape or incest only through 12 weeks of gestation.

🟪 Prohibit gender transition surgeries for minors, as well as the prescription or administration of cross-sex hormones or puberty-blocking drugs to minors for the purposes of gender transition.

Opponents of the amendment appear to have an overwhelming campaign financing advantage. At last report they had raised $2.2 million compared with about $322,000 for the supporters.

Virginia: Same-sex marriage and reproductive freedom

Measures placed on the ballot by the Virginia Legislature are the Remove Constitutional Same-Sex Marriage Ban Amendment and the Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment.

The first would eliminate an unenforceable provision of the state Constitution limiting a marriage contract to one woman and one man. The second would recognize a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom.”

Reproductive freedom is defined as “including the ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one’s own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.” It would allow state lawmakers to regulate third-trimester abortions except in cases of fetal inviability or when “in the professional judgment of a physician is medically indicated to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.”

Both measures cleared the Legislature with unanimous Democratic support. Republicans opposed both measures, although a small number of them voted with Democrats on the marriage amendment.

Washington: Transgender sports and parental rights

Two ballot measures on the Washington state ballot were put there by initiative signatures: the Sex Verification Requirements for Female School Sports Initiative; and the Parental Right to Review Education Materials, Receive Notifications, and Opt Out of Sexual-Health Education Initiative.

The first would require school districts and nonprofit organizations that regulate interscholastic activities to “prohibit biologically male students from competing with and against female students” in sports with separate team or individual competitions for male and female students. Students wanting to participate on female teams would be required to provide documentation of their sex from a health care provider.

The second measure would reinstate the Washington Declaration of Parental and Legal Guardian Rights (Initiative 2081), which was passed by the Legislature in 2024 but then amended in 2025.

In doing so, the initiative would re-enact these parental rights:

🟪 To receive prior notification about medical services being offered to their child, except in medical emergencies.

🟪 To receive prior notification about medical services or medications provided that could affect the parent’s or guardian’s health insurance costs.

🟪 To receive prior notification when the school arranges medical treatment that requires follow-up care after school hours.

Among other changes, the initiative also would repeal or modify various other rights that lawmakers enacted in 2025.

Both initiatives have been promoted by a coalition of Christian conservatives that includes Catholics and evangelical Protestants.

Opponents include the state’s Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Wisconsin: Emergency church closures

Wisconsin’s Prohibit Government Closure of Places of Worship During Emergencies Amendment comes in the aftermath of the covid epidemic. It would prohibit the state or any political subdivision from ordering the closure of or forbidding gatherings in places of worship in response to a state of emergency, including public health emergencies.

The proposed amendment was placed on the ballot by the Legislature with unanimous backing from Republicans and nearly unanimous backing from Democrats.

Although the data is far from conclusive regarding long-term trends, there appears to be increasing support for the belief that a decades-long decline in religious affiliation or interest may be leveling off or possibly reversing. And the reversal, to the extent it exists, may be especially pronounced among young men.

Such are the conclusions that might be drawn from two recent batches of data: a Barna report from its State of the Church inititive last month and an analysis released today by the Gallup polling organization of polls conducted in 2024-25.

Long-term trends about religious beliefs and practices can be difficult to determine because of the variety of definitions used in the various studies and that changes, when they occur, may fall within the range of the margin of error in a given year. However, data accumulated since the days of the covid epidemic seem to show that the rate of disaffiliation from organized religious in the United States has leveled off and possibly reversed, and that during an even more recent period that men have started showing more interest than women do in religion, a reversal from the situation during many decades.

Here's a quick look at the two surveys:

Barna: Gen Z most likely to expect spiritual revival

Although a Barna survey of 1,073 Americans in February didn't directly measure interest in matters of faith, it did so indirectly by finding that young adults are more likelier than their older peers expect spiritual revival. This may reflect that generation's attitudes toward spirituality in general.

While the survey found 29 percent of adults believe a spiritual revival probably or definitely will happen in the next 12 months, among Gen Z adults (those born since 1999) that number rises to 38 percent. Among boomers, the oldest adults in the survey, those born between 1946 and 1964, only 28 percent have such an expectation.

That isn't a lot of data, as the survey did not include a definition of spiritual revival, but it's enough for Barna's CEO, David Kinnaman, to say something is stirring. “The research doesn't predict a revival,” he said. “… Yet it reveals something worth paying attention to: a large number of Americans believe one is possible, and for younger adults especially, that belief is being forged in some of the most difficult circumstances of their lives.”

Of the Gen Z surveyed, 42 percent of those expecting a revival gave mental health challenges as the top reason. Among boomers expecting a revival, 60 percent said one would occur because of younger generations turning to God.

Gallup: Men increasingly find religion ‘very important’

The Gallup study, based on data from 2024-25, shows a sharp increase of young men (ages 18-29) who say that religion is “very important” in their lives. The number is up from 28 percent in 2022-23 to 42 percent in the most recent report.

During the same period, young women's attachment to religion stayed steady at about 30 percent.

Gallup noted in the study:

With the recent surge in their attachment to religion, young men have returned to the high point of their expressed religiosity of the past 25 years, roughly tying the 43 percent found in 2000-2001. By contrast, women of all age groups and older men are at or near their historical lows.

Gallup also noted that the percentage of young men reporting they attended religious services at least once a month has also risen. The number is now at 40 percent, contrasted with around 33 percent from 2016 to 2023.

In contrast, religious attendance for older adults is at or near its lowest during this century.

Gallup also found a partisan divide: From the 2022-23 study until the most recent report, attendance has risen 7 percentage points among young Republican men, 8 points among young Republican women and 3 points among young Democratic men. Attendance rates among young Democratic women were essentially unchanged.

Gallup summarized the results of its study like this:

The religiosity of Americans as a whole remains at a low ebb, with the importance of religion to people, their self-reported attendance and their identification with a religion all holding at or near the lowest levels in Gallup's long-term trends. Yet young men appear to be the emerging exception to the rule.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s frustration with Pope Leo XIV couldn’t have been clearer: Responding to questions in an interview with Fox News on Sunday related to the pope’s admonitions against the war with Iran, the vice president said “that in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality.”

But there’s a glaringly obvious problem with Vance’s comment: Questions of war are inherently questions of morality, and they have been such in Christianity since its earliest days, when most Christians were pacifists even while facing severe persecution from the Roman Empire.

And more than any other Christian tradition, the Catholic church has literally spent centuries refining its official perspectives on war, developing what has become known as the just war doctrine. Development of the doctrine probably begin in the fourth century with St. Ambrose and arrived at something similar to its current form with St. Thomas Aquinas nearly a millennium later. A codification of the current understanding of the morality of war can be found in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

It is not a pacifist approach. It finds that war can be justified when certain conditions be met, such as that better options aren’t available and that the damage caused by the war doesn’t cause more evil than the war is intended to eliminate.

Many other Christian bodies that have taken a stance on the morality of war have followed the Catholic approach. Much of the international law related to the waging of war, such as the required protection of civilians, correlates to Catholic teaching.

In other words, as much as Vance may think that Pope Leo has gone outside of his lane in addressing the U.S./Israeli/Iranian war’s morality, in criticizing the war Leo has been talking about what popes have talked about for centuries.

It’s understandable why Vance may find this fact inconvenient. The just war doctrine was never meant to justify wars of choice, wars such as the current war that are launched when the initiating belligerent faces no imminent threat, situations where the possibility of a negotiated settlement hasn’t been exhausted.

The frustrations of Vance, himself a Catholic with imminent plans to release a book detailing his conversion to the faith, are certainly heightened by the repeated criticism of Pope Leo and his predecessor, Pope Francis, to the two Trump administrations’ anti-immigration policies. But in neither case have the popes directly addressed strictly policy issues, such as how many immigrants should be legally admitted to the United States nor whether Iran should be permitted to develop nuclear energy source for civilian use. Doing so would indeed put a pope outside of his lane.

But calling attention to the suffering that war produces, to questioning the motives of those who may profit politically or financially, those are not merely the prerogative of the pope, they are among his duties.

And in this particular case, the world, and certainly the U.S. political system, would do well to heed Pope Leo’s counsel:

Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life.

It isn’t surprising that American Jews have a mostly positive views toward Israel — in fact, according to a Pew Research Center report just published, almost two-thirds do. The same is true of an almost identical number of white evangelicals.

What might be surprising is that no other religious groups included in the survey results do. As would be expected, American Muslims are the least receptive to Israel: Only 4 percent say they have a favorable view of Israel. For most other religious groups, Israel’s favorability rating is in the 30-some percent range.

The survey results come from a responses by 3,507 U.S. adults1 from Pew’s American Trends Panel during March 23-29 — a period when news was dominated by the current U.S.-Israeli war against Iran before a ceasefire had been announced.

Here’s the precise breakdown of positive feelings toward Israel by religious group:

🟪 White evangelical Protestants: 65%
🟪 Jews: 64%
🟪 White nonevangelical Protestants: 39%
🟪 Catholics: 35%
🟪 Black Protestants: 33%
🟪 Religiously unaffiliated: 22%
🟪 Muslims: 4%

Overall, 37 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Israel; the views of 60 percent are unfavorable.

According to Pew, the overall views toward Israel have grown more negative during the past year: The 60 percent unfavorable rating is up from last year’s 53 percent.

In addition to the religious divisions, the poll also found sharp divisions by age and party affiliation:

🟪 About half of Americans 50 and over, 49 percent, said they have an unfavorable view of Israel. For Americans 18 to 49, the total was 70 percent.
🟪 Among Republicans, 41 percent were unfavorable toward Israel; for Democrats the total was 80 percent.

Nothing says more about the moral collapse of Christianity in the United States than the recent lack of public reaction — and even occasional praise — as President Donald Trump and his inner circle applaud the morally reprehensible and engage in blasphemy, all in the name of Christ.

To be fair, we’re not talking about all of Christianity here. Catholic bishops, following the lead of the American Pope Leo, have consistently placed themselves at odds with Trump on issues such as immigration and the war against Iran. So have the most prominent voices of mainline Protestantism. Even the National Association of Evangelicals has consistently challenged aspects of Trumpism, such as by advocating for immigrants.

But none of those, with the exception of the pope, are widely known as Christian leaders.

For many Americans these days, it is not the voices of reason that are linked to the word “Christian.” It is the loud voices of the MAGA wing of Christian nationalism.

And they seem to be indifferent at best as Trump and his secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, take the name of the Lord in vain by proclaiming divine support for their policies:

• Trump was asked by a reporter during a press conference yesterday if God supports his policies on Iran, policies that include war crimes. “I do,” said Trump when asked the question, “because God is good.”

• Pete Hegseth, the secretary of Defense, who has pictured the United States as a Christian force against the evils of Islam, has said much the same thing. Yesterday, he even compared the rescue of a U.S. pilot over the weekend with the Resurrection of Jesus. “Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn,” he said.

The response of silence from MAGA-supporting Christian leaders to Trump’s vulgar social media post on Easter morning — the one in which he used the f-word, threatened to commit war crimes and ended with “Praise be to Allah” — has been telling.

One of the very few who has publicly said anything is Franklin Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham and the closest thing we have to an unofficial spokesperson for American evangelism. But Graham, who in normal times posts frequently on social media, commented only because he was queried by his local newspaper, and then he declined to criticize Trump. His most harsh comment was that Trump “sometimes chooses words to express himself that I do not agree with.” Then Graham defended the policies of a president who today threatened genocide, saying that Trump is “trying to protect the world from a very serious nuclear threat and give the people of Iran a chance at freedom.”

It’s hard to see how Iranians could be free if Trump were to carry out his threat that a “civilization will die tonight” if the Iranian leaders don’t succumb to his demands later today.

As morally lacking as Graham’s comments were, the words of evangelical political thinker Eric Mataxas, as quoted by the Christian Post, were worse: “We need more of this, not less” he said.

And then there was Christian apologist Dinesh D'Souza, who favorably compared Trump to the Old Testament prophet Elijah.

And after that, comments from the most consistently outspoken evangelical leaders are nowhere to be found. If they’re bothered by the sacrilege of linking the Prince of Peace to a potentially genocidal military action, they don’t appear to care to let anyone know.

More than a decade after the Arkansas Legislature first passed a law authorizing the establishing a Ten Commandments monument on the Arkansas Capitol grounds, a federal court judge has found the display of the three-ton sculpture unconstitutional.

In her ruling last week, Judge Kristine Baker of the U.S. District Court of the Central Division of the Eastern District of Arkansas invalidated the law authorizing the monument and ordered it to be removed. The part of her order involving the removal does not go in effect until either any appeals of her ruling are resolved or the deadline for filing an appeal has passed.

The monument has a convoluted history: The Legislature first passed the law authorizing a Ten Commandments monument in 2015, claiming that the Commandments “are an important component of the moral foundation of the laws and legal system of the United States of America and of the State of Arkansas.” The Satanic Temple then sought permission to install a monument of the pagan deity Baphomet, resulting in a 2017 law that set up a process for approval of monuments on state lands near the Capitol, a process that rejected the Satanists’ plan.

A Ten Commandments monument was installed in 2017, but it was almost immediately destroyed by a vandal using an automobile. A new monument, the one that was the subject of the lawsuit, was put up in 2018, this time protected by four concrete bollards.

In ruling against the monument, Baker found:

🟪 That the “primary purpose” of the 2017 law was to promote the Ten Commandments.

🟪 That “historical tradition or practice does not support” the law, a finding that was used in part to distinguish the case from Van Orden V. Perry, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision from 2005 that allowed a very similar Ten Commandments monument in Texas to remain on display.

🟪 That the law favored Christianity and deprived the Satanist group from promoting its beliefs on an equal footing.

🟪 That a discriminatory intent was a motivating factor behind the law.

Baker was appointed to her post by President Barack Obama.

As would be expected, Baker’s ruling received both praise and acclaim.

Among those happy with the ruling was Amitai Heller, the legal director of the American Humanist Association, which, among other things, promotes church-state separation. He said on his group’s website:

State capitols should be welcoming to all citizens, and this ruling rightfully rejects this effort to promote one specific set of religious beliefs above all others — including the right to not believe at all. This decision affirms the First Amendment’s bedrock constitutional principle of church-state separation, which ensures these very freedoms.

Meanwhile, Jason Rapert, a former state senator who had sponsored the monument legislation, condemned the ruling in a video on Facebook, saying:

The judge, Kristine Baker, has released this decision on the eighth anniversary [of the monument’s placement] ..., which I think is very, very interesting that she released a decision against the Ten Commandments during Holy Week, which is really just a slap in the face of Jews and Christians. ... This is Mosaic law. This is literally as much a Jewish symbol as a Christian symbol to some people.

Rapert promised that Baker’s ruling would be appealed.

When parties to a lawsuit come to an out-of-court settlement, it is routine for courts to approve them. But that isn’t what happened this week as Judge J. Campbell Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas rejected a settlement that would have allowed churches to endorse candidates without losing their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

The ban on political contributions by nonprofit organizations has long been a fixture of American tax law; the prohibition is known as the Johnson Amendment and was passed by Congress in 1954. But the ban has drawn the ire of religious conservatives in recent years, and abolishing or modifying it as it applies to churches has been a goal of President Trump since his first term of office.

Churches opposing the ban seemed to have reach their goal last year when the Internal Revenue Service came to an out-of-court agreement in a lawsuit filed by the National Religious Broadcasters and two Texas churches. That settlement said that the Johnson Amendment had long been interpreted incorrectly and would have allowed the NRB and the churches to make endorsements as long as they did so through their “customary channels of communication.”

Not so fast, said Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which intervened to keep the settlement from going in effect.

Barker, who had been appointed to the bench by Trump, made his ruling on procedural grounds, saying he didn’t have the authority to approve the settlement because of two laws known as the Tax Anti-Injunction Act and the Declaratory Judgment Act.

Barker pointed out that his ruling doesn’t leave the NRB and churches without recourse if they were to be taxed for violating the Johnson Amendment. “A refund suit could be brought if a tax were ultimately collected,” he said in his written opinion. “… A dispute in that posture would also have the benefit of a specific set of facts upon which the IRS made a determination.”

Reaction to ruling

As expected, the NRB denounced the reasoning and Americans United applauded it.

The NRB said in a press statement that it would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The organization said it should not have to put itself in legal jeopardy get a legal determination on the Johnson Amendment:

The plaintiffs here have no other forum to challenge the free speech restrictions imposed by the Johnson Amendment’s limitation on the right of nonprofits to speak about candidates, unless they first violate the law and then become subject to IRS enforcement action. No person should be forced to place themselves in legal jeopardy to protect their constitutional rights. And the Supreme Court has backed this conclusion on numerous occasions.

Americans United stood by its position that the proposed settlement was unconstitutional by treating churches differently than other nonprofit organizations. AU’s CEO Rachel Laser said in a press statement:

We’re glad that the Johnson Amendment will remain a strong bulwark to stop religious extremists from exploiting houses of worship. Tax-free giving to charities should fund charitable work, not partisan politics. The proposed settlement agreement to exempt only houses of worship and not secular nonprofits would have been unfair and a violation of church-state separation. It also would have been unhealthy for our democracy because it would allow churches to become unaccountable political action committees. The court was right to reject the administration’s attempt to use the courts to rewrite our laws.

Original article (July 8, 2025): Group fights IRS determination that churches can endorse candidates

Since 1954, churches and other nonprofit organizations that fall under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service code have been prohibited from participating in elections for public office. Because of the law, ever since then, with a few defiant exceptions, churches have refrained from endorsing candidates for U.S. president and other elective offices.1

But now, suddenly the IRS says, in effect, that the law has been misinterpreted all this time. In papers filed yesterday in a federal Texas court, the IRS said that when “properly interpreted,” churches are in no danger of losing their tax-exempt status if they endorse candidates as long as they make their endorsements through their “customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services.”

When a church communicates its endorsement in that manner, it is not participating in the election, the IRS claimed in the court document.

The proposed settlement does not address related issues such as whether a church could contribute financially to a campaign.

Not so quick, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a major church-state interest group that frequently opposes the political agenda of the religious right. Americans United said in a press statement:

The Trump administration’s radical reinterpretation of the Johnson Amendment is a brazen attack on church-state separation that threatens our democracy by favoring houses of worship over other nonprofits and inserting them into partisan politics.

The law affecting nonprofit election participation is known as the Johnson Amendment, as it was introduced by then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson as part of an overhaul of the IRS code. It wasn’t controversial at the time, and the provision later became part of the 1986 overhaul of the IRS code during the Ronald Reagan administration.

Controversy over the provision began about a dozen years ago when various churches of a Christian nationalist or religious-right bent began advocating for its repeal, claiming that it violated their First Amendment rights. Donald Trump made repeal of the Johnson Amendment part of his platform during his 2016 campaign as he successfully sought support from evangelical pastors and parishioners.

Since then, a small number of evangelical pastors have endorsed Trump from the pulpit, and some evangelical churches have distributed voter information material that offered reasons for supporting Trump without explicitly endorsing him. And others have skirted the law in various ways, most blatantly in 2024 when Trump held a campaign rally at a Phoenix, Ariz., church.

Skirting of the law hasn’t been limited to evangelicals. It has become a tradition at some historically black Protestant churches for Democratic candidates to speak during worship services held during campaign season, and at one Philadelphia church last year a pastor praised then-President Joe Biden as the “man we need” without formally endorsing him.

Both Biden and candidate Kamala Harris spoke to worshipers during Sunday services in 2024. Although Trump apparently did not speak during any worship services, he frequently addressed religious organizations, including some with nonprofit status.

The IRS position, explained

The IRS explained its new position in the form of a proposed settlement submitted to the Tyler Division of the U.S. District Court if Eastern Texas the in the National Religious Broadcasts v. Long2 case in which the plaintiffs, which included two churches, sought a judgment allowing all nonprofits to endorse candidates. The settlement, outlining when the Johnson Amendment wouldn’t be enforced, applies only to churches and other houses of worship.

The key part of the IRS rationale for the proposed settlement states:

When a house of worship in good faith speaks to its congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith, it neither “participate[s]” nor “intervene[s]” in a “political campaign,” within the ordinary meaning of those words. To “participate” in a political campaign is “to take part” in the political campaign, and to “intervene” in a political campaign is “to interfere with the outcome or course” of the political campaign. ... Bona fide communications internal to a house of worship, between the house of worship and its congregation, in connection with religious services, do neither of those things, any more than does a family discussion concerning candidates. Thus, communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted.

The court filing also noted that for many houses of worship, “the exercise of their religious beliefs includes teaching or instructing their congregations regarding all aspects of life, including guidance concerning the impact of faith on the choices inherent in electoral politics.”

Update: Americans United files motion to intervene as defendant

The settlement reached by the plaintiffs with the IRS is subject to approval by the district court. Americans United recently filed a motion seeking to intervene as a defendant, meaning in effect that it would argue in court in the position of the federal government if the federal government were interpreting the law as it had before the Trump administration took over.

The motion asks the court to let AU submit what is known as an amicus brief if it can’t formally intervene. Both the plaintiffs and the federal government have indicated they wouldn’t oppose letting the AU submit such a brief, according to the AU document.

The AU said in its filing that the proposed settlement “contains sweeping legal analysis and language that Americans United rejects as procedurally improper, legally unsound, and deeply harmful to the interests it seeks to protect.”

It is not clear which judge would hold a hearing if there is one on whether to accept the proposed settlement. The court’s chief judge is Amos Mazzant III, a Barack Obama appointee.

Chalk up another win for an evangelical Christian using First Amendment free-speech protections in ways opposed by LGBTQ activists.

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 303 Creative v. Elenis that an evangelical website designer had the constitutional right to deny services related to same-sex weddings. Today, the court said in Chiles v. Salazar that Colorado could not enforce a ban on conversion therapy for minors. But there was a key difference in the two cases: In 303 Creative, the court was split 6-3 along ideological lines. In today’s ruling, however, two of the court’s three liberal members went along with the conservative majority, handing mental-health counselor Kaley Chiles an 8-1 victory.

Chiles, basing her concerns on her beliefs as an evangelical Christian, had fought Colorado’s 2019 law, which prevented licensed counselors1 from offering “any practice or treatment ... that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” The law, Chiles’s attorneys argued, restricted Chiles’s free-speech rights in part because the only therapy she was offering was speech-based, not involving discredited approaches such as medicinal treatment or shock therapy. They also argued that the law was broadly written in a way that it discriminated against viewpoints disfavored by the state.

All the justices other than Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, based the ruling on First Amendment free-speech grounds2:

Start with the most obvious point. While the First Amendment protects many and varied forms of expression, the spoken word is perhaps the quintessential form of protected speech. And that is exactly the kind of expression in which Ms. Chiles seeks to engage. As a talk therapist, all Ms. Chiles does is speak with clients; she does not prescribe medication, use medical devices, or employ any physical methods.

Next, and nearly as clear to our eyes, Colorado seeks to regulate the content of Ms. Chiles’s speech. When it comes to issues of human sexuality, some of her clients “are content with” their sexual identity and orientation and want help only “with social issues [or] family relationships.” But other clients seek her counsel on how to “reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with [their] bod[ies].” And in those cases, Colorado regulates how Ms. Chiles may respond. Under its law, she may not speak in any way that attempts to change a client’s “sexual orientation or gender identity” — including a client’s “behaviors or gender expressions” — or in any way that seeks to “eliminate or reduce” a client’s “sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”3

The majority opinion several times referred to the contentious nature of arguments over LGTBQ issues. But it emphasized that the right to free speech has as one of its chief purposes protecting the right to convey unpopular or controversial opinions:

We do not doubt that the question “how best to help minors” struggling with issues of gender identity or sexual orientation is presently a subject of “fierce public debate.” But Colorado’s law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint. Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same.

But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. It reflects instead a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth. However well-intentioned, any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an “egregious” assault on both of those commitments.

A concurring opinion, and a dissent

About 30 states have laws similar to Colorado’s. Today’s decision raises questions about those other laws, although it is possible that laws in some states, if they are structured differently, might withstand Supreme Court scrutiny. At least that is what a concurring opinion written by one of the court’s more liberal justices, Elena Kagan, and signed by Sonia Sotomayor, suggested:

I write only to note that if Colorado had instead enacted a content-based but viewpoint-neutral law, it would raise a different and more difficult question. … Fuller consideration of that question, though, can wait for another day. We need not here decide how to assess viewpoint-neutral laws regulating health providers’ expression because, as the Court holds, Colorado’s is not one.

Meanwhile, in her dissent, Jackson pointed to the harm that conversion therapy can cause:

Not only is conversion therapy ineffective, former participants of conversion therapy report that it causes lasting psychological harm. Gay and transgender children who underwent nonaversive conversion therapy say they were taught to feel shame and self-hatred.

Calling the majority opinion “puzzling,” Jackson wrote that states have the right to prohibit such therapy and that any infringement on speech is only incidental.

It was less than a year ago that the U.S. Supreme Court, by the narrowest of margins, brought an end to plans to create a totally government-funded virtual school operated by Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma. Now, advocates of religious schools financed with taxpayer dollars have filed a lawsuit that could ultimately give the nation’s top court a second chance to approve such a school.

But this time, the school would be Jewish rather than Catholic.

The case is National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation v. Drummond, in which the foundation is seeking to overturn the February decision by the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board to reject the creation of a virtual charter school whose curriculum would include Jewish religious instruction. Ben Gamla already operates four in-person charter schools in Florida, although those schools provide only a secular education, albeit one steeped in familiarizing students with the Hebrew language and Israeli culture.

It was that Oklahoma school board that in 2023 had approved the creation of the St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School, which could have become the nation’s first government-funded religious school were it not for courts that stepped in the way. The Oklahoma Supreme Court was the first to prevent the school’s creation, saying that it violated both the Oklahoma and U.S. constitutions. That decision in turn was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which split 4-4 on overturning the Oklahoma court’s ruling. Because the vote was a tie, it had the effect of upholding the Oklahoma ruling without setting a precedent.

When the board rejected Ben Gamla’s plans for a charter school, the board said it did so because it was bound by the ruling of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

The tie vote in the nine-member U.S. Supreme Court was possible because one of the justices, Amy Coney Barrett, who is Catholic, recused herself, presumably because of indirect connections she had with the proposed Catholic school. Supporters of religious charter schools are betting that Barrett will provide the vote needed for the Supreme Court to order the board to accept Ben Gamla’s charter application.

Ben Gamla filed its lawsuit in the Western District of Oklahoma U.S. District Court. It is being represented by the Becket law firm, which had represented the Catholic school and is one of the country’s biggest players in religious-liberty litigation.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are Gentner Drummond, the Oklahoma attorney general and members of the charter school board.

According to the lawsuit, Ben Gamla “aims to create a charter school in Oklahoma where students receive a rigorous academic education alongside a deep cultural and ethical grounding derived from the Jewish faith, heritage, and tradition.”

The lawsuit further explained1:

For many Jewish parents, and especially Orthodox Jewish parents, it is an important religious obligation to send their children to Jewish schools, where they will receive an education in secular subjects as well as the Jewish faith. This belief concerning the importance of religious education comes straight for [sic] the Torah, the Talmud, and the Jewish Code of Law, which explain that Jewish parents have a solemn responsibility to transmit the Jewish faith to their children.

Unfortunately, a Jewish education is not widely available in many parts of the United States. Where it is available, it can often be prohibitively expensive and beyond the reach of many Jewish families. Plaintiff Ben Gamla thus seeks to fill a gap by partnering with Jewish parents in upholding their religious beliefs and obligation to provide a Jewish education to their children. Indeed, the transmission of Jewish religious beliefs and practices to children is a core aspect of Ben Gamla’s religious mission.

It is likely that the federal court will schedule its first hearing in the case for later this year. Ben Gamla is likely to base its legal arguments in part on the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Makin v. Carson, which found that states providing education vouchers cannot discriminate against religious schools simply because they are religious.

Since the lawsuit was filed just a few days ago, Drummond’s office has yet to file a formal response.

Although it has not yet publicly commented on the new lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union will almost certainly oppose Ban Gamla’s plans. It was one of the groups that had sued to prevent the formation of the St. Isidore school.

When announcing its opposition to that Catholic school, the ACLU said:

A private religious school is, of course, well within its rights to teach [religious] lessons. And churches are free to inculcate these beliefs in Sunday school. But they are wildly unconstitutional in public schools. Indeed, the mere notion of a religious public school is a constitutional oxymoron. This would be true for any proposed religious charter school — whether imposing Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or any other faith on students.

Another lawsuit in Tennessee

A lawsuit similar to the new one in Oklahoma is also underway in Tennessee. There, the ACLU and various individuals and other entities are trying to overturn a decision by the Knox County Board of Education to allow the creation of the Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville, which would have an evangelical Christian mission, as a charter school.

Regardless of lower-level judicial decisions in Oklahoma and Tennessee, the cases are almost certain to face appeals. There is no way to know this early which one, if either or both, will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

White evangelical Protestants in the United States are likelier than U.S. Catholics to believe the abortion is morally wrong, according to the results of a survey published this month by the Pew Research Center. In fact, on a variety of issues, white evangelical Protestants are the group most likely religious group to adhere to traditional moral views, and Catholics are likelier than not to disagree with many of their church’s teachings.

If there is one moral issue that the vast majority of Americans agree on, regardless of religious belief, it is that it is wrong for a married person to have an affair.1 Ninety percent of Americans agree with that statement. The religious group least likely to find extramarital affairs immoral is atheists, but even 84 percent percent of them agree they are.

The survey results, published last week, were based primarily on responses to questions asked in March 2025 to 3,605 members of Pew’s American Trends Panel. The report also included findings from a separate ATP survey of 8,937 U.S. adults conducted last May.

Evangelicals’ views often differ from those of general population

These are among the issues where white evangelicals had moral views differing significantly from the population as a whole:

🟪 Nearly four out of five, or 78 percent, of white evangelicals believe that abortion is morally wrong. A bit less than half, 47 percent, of Americans in general (a number that includes evangelicals) agree.

🟪 About half of adults, 52 percent, say it is wrong to view pornography. But four out of five white evangelicals, 80 percent, say that.

🟪 A sizable minority, 40 percent, of Americans find homosexuality to be morally wrong. But nearly three out of four white evangelicals, 72 percent, say it is.

🟪 Six out of 10 white evangelicals say it is morally wrong for a patient to seek to end his or her life with the help of a doctor. But only about a third of the general population, 35 percent, agree with that statement.

In all four of the above issues, white evangelicals hold stronger views than any other religious subgroup included in the survey.2

There are some issues where evangelicals tend to be in agreement with the general American views that could be considered permissive. For example, only about a third (33 percent) agree that marijuana use is morally wrong, and less than half (44 percent) would say the same about getting divorced. A minority, 40 percent, find gambling to be morally wrong. But in all three cases, evangelicals’ views are more strict than those of the population as a whole.

Catholics often disagree with Catholic teaching

Some of the most striking results of the survey are the numbers of Catholics who disagree with their church’s teaching.

🟪 A slim majority of Catholics, 55 percent, do agree with the church’s view that abortion is morally wrong. But fewer than one out of seven, 13 percent, agree with church doctrine that the use of contraceptives is wrong.

🟪 A similarly small minority of Catholics, 15 percent, find in vitro fertilization to be morally wrong.

🟪 About a third of Catholics, 34 percent, say that homosexuality is morally wrong, a figure that is slightly less than that of the general population. A bit more than that, 40 percent, condemn doctor-assisted suicide.

Survey also finds strong partisan divide on some issues

Partly because religious and political identities are often intertwined, the survey found strong partisan connections on some of the moral issues in the survey.

🟪 On abortion, notably, the survey found that 74 percent of Republicans — but only 24 percent of Democrats — found it to be morally wrong. The divide was almost as wide on the morality of homosexuality: Nearly six in 10, 59 percent, of Republicans said it is morally wrong, and 20 percent of Democrats.

🟪 On some other issues, the divide was narrower but still significant: Most Republicans, 65 percent, for example, condemn viewing pornography as wrong, but only 39 percent of Democrats. And almost half of Republicans, 48 percent, morally condemn doctor-assisted suicide, but only about a fourth of Democrats, 23 percent, do.

Texas has made at least four Muslim schools eligible for indirect funding under the state’s school voucher program in the aftermath of a federal court ruling that had extended the deadline for parents to apply.

Under the program, parents can receive up to $10,474 per school-age child so that they can attend private instead of public schools. As of early February, the state had approved hundreds of schools, nearly all of them Christian or secular, to be eligible to receive the voucher funds — but not a single Muslim school. The result was a pair of lawsuits filed by Muslim parents claiming that they had been discriminated against because of their religious beliefs.

As a result of one of the suits, U.S. District Court Judge Alfred Bennett, based in Houston, last week extended the state’s March 17 deadline for parents to apply for voucher funds and set an April 24 hearing on parents’ claims.

The state’s decision to include the schools listed in one of the lawsuits appears to be based on evidence presented at a hearing before Bennett earlier this month. Here is how the law firm of Wright Close Barger & Guzma, representing Muslim parents, characterized the hearing in a press statement:

In granting relief [by extending the application deadline], the court observed that it was “troubled” that while more than 2,000 schools — including institutions affiliated with other faiths and those accredited by the same organizations as the plaintiff schools — were approved to participate in TEFA [Texas Education Freedom Accounts], not a single Islamic school was approved.

The proceedings further revealed that the State’s own explanation for its exclusion did not withstand scrutiny. Although the State initially claimed that Islamic schools were excluded due to issues with one particular accrediting organization, in court the State conceded that several hundred other schools accredited by that same organization were approved for participation. The State further conceded that there was no evidence linking the plaintiff Islamic schools to any terrorist organization, undercutting prior insinuations made by state officials.

It was not immediately clear whether the state’s most recent actions would lead to final resolution of the lawsuits.

Original article (March 16, 2026): Muslims claim unconstitutional exclusion from Texas school voucher program

When the creation of a costly school voucher program was debated in the Texas Legislature last year, advocates said it would empower parents to direct the education of their children regardless of their religious beliefs, providing them opportunities to receive instruction in ways they couldn’t get in public school. But that promise is ringing hollow for many of the state’s Muslim parents wanting to give their children an education rooted in Islam as state officials have excluded some two dozen Muslim schools from the list of schools eligible to receive indirect state funding via Texas Education Freedom Accounts.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Christian (generally Catholic or evangelical), Jewish and secular schools have been approved for the list.

Under the program, parents can receive vouchers of up to $10,474 per child to get reimbursed for tuition, fees and education expenses beginning this autumn, and much more than that for disabled students. The program is turning out to be highly popular: The $1 billion allocated for the program can accommodate nearly 100,000 students, but more than 160,000 have applied with more to come before tomorrow’s application deadline. A lottery will be used to select the students whose parents will receive the funding.

The state’s acting comptroller, Kelly Hancock, has excluded the Muslim schools because of their alleged ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization that Hancock has claimed is linked to terrorism and/or foreign adversaries. CAIR has vigorously denied it supports terrorism.

The result is a pair of lawsuits filed in federal district courts seeking to get Muslim schools approved for the program:

🟪 Mehdi Cherkaoui, an attorney who has two children attending the Houston Quran Academy Spring, filed a lawsuit in late February against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Hancock, and Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath.

🟪 Last week, three parents (Layla Daoudi, Muna Hamadah and Farhana Querishi) and three school operators (Bayaan Academy, the Islamic Services Foundation and The Eagle Institute) filed a lawsuit against Hancock and the manager of the voucher program, Mary Katherine Stout.

According to Cherkaoui’s lawsuit, there was not a single accredited Muslim school that had been approved for the program as of Feb. 4. It is unclear whether any have been added to the list of approvals since then. According to news accounts, there also have been a few non-Muslim schools that have been excluded because of alleged connections with CAIR.

According to Cherkaoui’s lawsuit, this is the sequence of events that led to the exclusion: Last December, Hancock requested Paxton’s legal opinion on whether the comptroller could disqualify accredited Islamic schools that had “hosted publicly advertised events organized” by CAIR, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” and “transnational criminal organization” the month before. Paxton determined that the voucher program could legally disqualify schools “to stop any school illegally tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries from accessing taxpayer dollars.” Between the time of that determination and the filing of the lawsuit, no Muslim schools were approved for the program.

Cherkaoui said that the exclusion violates First and Fourteenth Amendments, which provide for freedom of religion and equal protection under the law, respectively.

News accounts have indicated that several of the schools as well as CAIR deny having had any connection with each other. In any case, the alleged connections appear to be nebulous, involving a school accrediting agency, Cognia, participating in CAIR-sponsored events.

Abbott has defended the exclusions. In a tweet on the X social network, Abbott said in response to a news article about the exclusions:

That’s right.

We don’t want school choice funds going to radical Islamic indoctrination with historic connections to terrorism.

I signed laws banning Sharia cities.

I designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations.

And I will pass another law that completely bans Sharia Law in Texas.

Another voucher court fight could occur in Florida

Meanwhile, a similar legal dispute could be taking shape in Florida.

The Florida Legislature on Thursday passed a bill that would allow certain state officials to designate groups as terrorist organizations and would prevent private schools with ties to those organizations from receiving voucher funds from parents. The bill had Republican support and Democratic opposition. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the bill.

Muslim schools have been receiving funds through the state’s voucher program.

In December, DeSantis signed an executive order declaring CAIR to be a terrorist organization. But a federal judge blocked that order after CAIR challenged DeSantis’s action with a lawsuit.

A Mississippi street preacher will get his day in court.

The preacher, Gabriel Olivier, is an independent evangelist who often appears on sidewalks outside major public events to share his religious views. Olivier was charged in 2019 with violating a Brandon, Miss., ordinance designed to keep protests and demonstrations away from an amphitheater in the city. Rather than engage in a court fight then, Oliver pleaded no contest and paid a $304 fine. But now he wants to evangelize in Brandon at an unapproved site again — so he went to federal court asking for a ruling that the city’s ordinance is unconstitutional so that he can evangelize without threat of prosecution.

The city said such a lawsuit isn’t allowed, and federal district and appeals courts agreed with the city based on a law known as 42 U. S. C. §1983, which gives people the right to challenge certain local and state government actions. But the Supreme Court today determined that the lower courts were wrong, so Olivier can challenge the ordinance.

The high court’s 9-0 decision, written by Justice Elena Kagan, did not give any indication whether the court has an opinion on the preacher’s constitutional claims. The decision said only that he is entitled to a hearing in federal courts.

The lower courts based their decisions in Olivier v. City of Brandon on the Supreme Court’s 1994 decision in Heck v. Humphrey. In that case, a man convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the death of his wife sought a federal review of his conviction under 42 U.S.C. §1983, but the Supreme Court said that particular law did not give him the ability to have his conviction reversed.

In today’s decision, the Supreme Court said that the logic used in Heck v. Humphrey did not apply because Olivier isn’t seeking to get his earlier conviction reversed: He wants only assurance that he won’t be prosecuted in the future if he preaches on the streets of Brandon in places where that isn’t allowed.

“Given that Olivier asked for only a forward-looking remedy — an injunction stopping officials from enforcing the city ordinance in the future — his suit can proceed, notwithstanding his prior conviction,” Kagan wrote.

Olivier claims that the city ordinance violates his right to free speech under the First Amendment.

A federal judge in Arkansas yesterday issued an injunction preventing the posting of the Ten Commandments in several school districts where parents had sued to invalidate a law passed by the state’s Legislature last year.

U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks’s injunction made final a temporary injunction he issued last summer. The Arkansas attorney general’s office, which intervened in the case, has indicated that an appeal is likely.

In his written opinion, Brooks said that the law “serves no constitutional purpose” and would lead to unconstitutional religious coercion of students and interfere with their parents’ rights to direct their children’s religious upbringing:

Act 573’s purpose is only to display a sacred, religious text in a prominent place in every public-school classroom. And the only reason to display a sacred, religious text in every classroom is to proselytize to children. The State has said the quiet part out loud.

Technically, the ruling applies only to the school districts where the parents who filed the school districts lived when they filed the lawsuit: Bentonville School District No. 6, Conway School District, Fayetteville School District No. 1, Lakeside School District No. 9, Siloam Springs School Dist. No. 21 and Springdale School District No. 50. The practical effect of the ruling, however, is to prevent the posting of the Ten Commandments throughout the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.

Similar recent laws are on the books in Louisiana and Texas. So far, none have been approved by courts.

Original article (Aug. 25, 2025): Judge blocks some Arkansas schools from following Ten Commandments law

Calling a new Arkansas law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools an “obviously unconstitutional” attempt to inject Christian doctrine into the school system, a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction preventing some of the state’s largest school districts from complying with that law.

The ruling was made by U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks, a Barack Obama appointee.

Arkansas this year became the second state, after Louisiana, to require the posting of a highly abridged version of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms. Louisiana’s law has been called unconstitutional by a federal judge, a decision that is being appealed. Since Louisiana and Arkansas passed their laws, Texas lawmakers have passed a similar law. Opponents of the Texas law have filed a lawsuit to prevent its enforcement, although no ruling has been made.

Technically, the Arkansas ruling applies only to those school districts that were named as defendants in a lawsuit filed by parents in seven families. They are the Fayetteville, Springdale, Bentonville and Siloam Springs school districts. It is unclear if other districts in the state will comply with the new law or if further legal action will be taken to prevent that.

Brooks’ ruling on the new law was unequivocal:

Why would Arkansas pass an obviously unconstitutional law? Most likely because the State is part of a coordinated strategy among several states to inject Christian religious doctrine into public-school classrooms.

And while the school districts claimed that lawmakers had secular reasons for passing the Ten Commandments mandate, Brooks wasn’t buying that:

Act 573 is not neutral with respect to religion. By design, and on its face, the statute mandates the display of expressly religious scripture in every public-school classroom and library. The Act also requires that a specific version of that scripture be used, one that the uncontroverted evidence in this case shows is associated with Protestantism and is exclusionary of other faiths.

Brooks based his ruling primarily on the obvious Supreme Court precedents dating back more than half a century: Engele v. Vitale, the 1962 ruling invalidating teacher-led prayers in public schools; 1963’s Abingdon School District v. Schempp, invalidating a Pennsylvania law requiring daily Bible readings in public schools; and, most importantly, 1980’s Stone v. Graham striking a Kentucky law similar to the one passed in Arkansas.

While a series of Supreme Court decisions in recent years have seemed to weaken prohibitions affecting the influence of religion on public education, Brooks found that the reasoning of the more recent decisions does not invalidate the basis of the high court rulings in Stone and the earlier cases.

“The case begins and ends with Stone,” Brooks said in his written opinion. While the school districts argued that the 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District decision, one allowing a high school football coach to publicly pray after football games, supported their case, Brooks disagreed:

Kennedy does not alter the reasoning and outcome of Stone — or even mention the case. The Kennedy Court explicitly acknowledged that state-mandated religious displays and practices in the public-school setting are subject to special treatment because public-school children are a captive audience.

And while the Supreme Court in some recent cases has looked to earlier historical practices to understand how to interpret various clauses in the U.S. Constitution, Brooks found that there is “insufficient evidence” of using the Ten Commandments in public education, and that “there is no tradition of permanently displaying the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms.”

Brooks also cited Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case from this year in which the Supreme Court recognized the freedom-of-religion rights of parents to withhold their children from classes in which certain pro-LGTBQ books would be read. Brooks noted that Mahmoud acknowledged “heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools.”

The school districts and the state attorney general’s office, which intervened in the case, are considering an appeal. Arkansas news media quoted the AG, Tim Griffin, as saying: “I am reviewing the court’s order and assessing our legal options.”

The Brownsburg, Ind., school district has agreed to an out-of-court settlement awarding teacher John Kluge $650,000 over a dispute involving his being forced to resign over his refusing to use the names and pronouns requested by trans students. Kluge had claimed that the district’s policy on names and pronouns violated his religious beliefs.

The settlement ended the legal dispute before it could be decided by a jury.

The group providing legal counsel for Kluge, the Alliance Defending Freedom, announced the settlement this week. The Alliance said that as part of the settlement, the school district will train its senior staff on federal law regarding religious discrimination.

Because the settlement included a dismissal of Kluge’s lawsuit against the district, it does not have value as precedent and does not affect similar disputes that may arise in other school districts.

Original article (Aug. 11, 2025): Teacher objecting to use of trans names can make case to jury, appeals panel rules

Was an Indiana schoolteacher entitled to a religious accommodation so that he could keep his job even though he refused to follow a policy requiring him to use the preferred names of trans students? The answer remains unclear and could end up being decided by a jury after a federal appeals court last week ruled that some questions raised in a lawsuit filed by the teacher should be resolved by a trial court, potentially with the help of a jury.

The teacher, John Kluge, lost his job as a music teacher at Brownsburg (Ind.) High School at the end of the 2017-18 school year.1 During that year, Kluge had taught under a signed accommodation allowing him to call students by using their last names — much like some sports coaches do — instead of following the policy that required teachers to call students by the names listed on what was called a PowerSchool list. That list included parent-approved feminine names for some trans girls that Kluge believed to be boys, and vice versa.

Kluge had received the accommodation after telling school administrators that using what he considered to be wrongly gendered names violated his religious beliefs as a Christian. Although Kluge claimed his accommodation had worked out well for both him and students, administrators decided, based in part on complaints that trans students were being stigmatized, that Kluge’s religious practices relating to student names could no longer be accommodated.

Kluge later sued the school district, and the lawsuit so far has followed a somewhat convoluted course. After making a claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which requires most U.S. employers to accommodate the religious beliefs or practices of employees as long as the accommodations don’t cause an “undue hardship” on the employer, Kluge first lost at the trial court level. He appealed to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed with the trial court. But later, the U.S. Supreme Court defined the religious-accommodations law in Groff v. DeJoy, the unanimous 2023 decision siding with a postal worker who sought a religious accommodation so he wouldn’t have to work on Sundays.2 The Supreme Court’s clarification of what an “undue hardship” is forced the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate its ruling in the Kluge case, sending the dispute back to the trial court. But that court again sided with the school district, leading to the appeal that was decided last week.

The appeals court’s ruling in Kluge v. Brownsburg Community School Corp. was made on a 2-1 vote, the majority being two judges appointed by Donald Trump: Michael Brennan and Amy St. Eve. Senior Circuit Judge Ilana Rovner dissented, siding with the school district. She was appointed by George H.W. Bush.

In sending the case back to the trial court, Brennan, writing for the majority, said the factual record needs to be expanded:

Yet whether the accommodation caused the harm is unclear at this point in the litigation. The only fact the parties agree on is that Kluge called students by their last names. There is conflicting evidence whether that act in isolation caused the alleged emotional distress [of the students].

Rovner disagreed. She found no evidence that the school district had acted in bad faith in determining that Kluge’s teaching style with regard to student names helped keep the school district from fulfilling its mission. To bring full details of the teachers job performance to trial would have the effect of turning trial courts into something like “super-personnel department[s]”, she wrote.

The school district has not indicated whether it will appeal. It could allow the case to return to the trial court, or it could appeal to a full panel (rather than three members) of the appeals court or, less likely, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a decision based partly on freedom-of-religion grounds, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday evening issued a preliminary ruling that in effect requires a California school district to inform parents when their children are engaging in gender transitioning at school.

Technically, the ruling does not set a precedent on the contentious issue because it is not a final ruling in the case, which involves a group of parents and teachers who are suing California and school officials to require public schools to inform parents about gender transitioning even when the student does not give a school consent to do so. The ruling only reinstates a low-level federal court injunction while the case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, goes through the appeals process. The decision was made through the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, meaning that oral arguments have not been held and that the case was not fully argued even in written form.

Even so, the Roman Catholic-oriented Thomas More Society, which represents the plaintiffs in the case, praised the decision as a “historic and groundbreaking ruling” and “the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation.”

The 6-3 decision was made along the court’s usual ideological lines, although concurring and dissenting opinions signed by four justices indicated the existence of divisions.

According to the main opinion, the case began in 2023 when two teachers sued seeking an exemption from their school district’s policy that required them to not inform parents when their children were addressed by names and pronouns contrary to their sex designated at birth. Parents later joined the lawsuit. One of the sets of parents, the pseudonymous John and Jane Poe, said that they were not told that their daughter1 was using male names and pronouns at school, and that they did not learn that she had gender dysphoria until after she attempted suicide. Another set of parents, John and Jane Doe, said they were unable to get information from a school principal about whether their daughter was presenting as male at her school. A federal district court sided with the parents with a preliminary injunction, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that injunction. It was an appeal from the appeals court that this week’s ruling reversed.

The Supreme Court majority said it made its decision for these reasons:

🟪 The parents would likely win their case following the precedent set by last year’s Mahmoud v. Taylor decision, which sided with parents objecting to certain uses of pro-LGBTQ storybooks.

🟪 The parents face irreparable harm if their constitutional rights are denied.

🟪 The trial court’s injunction “promotes child safety by guaranteeing fit parents a role in some of the most consequential decisions in their children’s lives.”

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a vigorous dissent based largely on procedural grounds, claiming that the court was abusing its ability to make substantive rulings from its emergency docket. She said that the case presents “thorny issues” but suggested that its decision was made “in a slapdash way.” She said that while the parents may ultimately win their case, any rulings should be made with full consideration of the legal issues involved.

It is too soon to know whether this case will ultimately return to the Supreme Court. But even if it doesn’t, there is at least one other case considering similar issues that is making its way through the court system.

Since President Donald Trump began his second term, many mainline Protestant pastors and denominational leaders have spoken out and even delivered sermons against President Donald’s immigration policies and his efforts that have strengthened presidential power. But not until now have they formally organized in an effort to encourage Christians nationwide to stand up for their vulnerable neighbors and use their influence to strengthen democracy.

“There are moments that call for repentance and resistance, courage and conviction, faith and fortitude,” about 400 organizers said in a statement that they published on Ash Wednesday. “This is one of those moments.” They labeled the statement ”A Call to Christians.”

The statement liberally quoted from the Bible and said that the Christian faith has been “corrupted by the heretical ideology of white Christian nationalism” and that the broader Christian church “has often failed to equip its members to model Jesus’s teachings and fulfill its prophetic calling as a humanitarian, compassionate, and moral compass for society.”

Although they don’t necessarily officially represent their denominations, the leaders who signed the statement included leading figures in the United Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the United Church of Christ, the American Baptist Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church and individual large congregations. Also included are various parachurch organizations such as Sojourners and the Interfaith Alliance.

The statement signatories aren’t limited mainline Protestants. They include a few Roman Catholics as well as two pastors from the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination.

Notably absent are any leaders from two of the largest U.S. denominations, the Southern Baptist Convention and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The fledgling organization is providing pastors and other local Christian leaders with a variety of resources to assist them in meetings the group’s goals. Among them are a liturgy that focuses on justice issues, a songbook drawing from various social-justice movements, and a Bible study focusing on immigration issues. The group also is promoting activities that have been organized by Christian activists throughout the country.

The group’s statement calls the current situation “particularly dire” as the “government-sponsored cruelty and violence we are witnessing stands in total opposition to the teachings of Jesus.” The statement is based largely on Biblical themes, especially ones from the four gospels. Here is one excerpt:

As Christians, we must never preach nationalism as discipleship, confuse American and Christian identity with whiteness, or mistake allegiance to modern-day Caesars for faithfulness to Christ. We must never surrender our prophetic voice by aligning with powers and principalities rather than with the One who calls us to be purveyors of justice and righteousness.

Now is the time to boldly embrace fidelity to the message of Jesus: to defend the image of God in every person; to love our neighbors — no exception; to reject retribution; extend grace, mercy, and compassion; reflect the radical counterculture of the Beatitudes and live out the call of Matthew 25 with special care for persons who are poor, vulnerable and marginalized.

The statement also takes issue with a statement made recently by House Speaker Mike Johnson, in which he said that the Biblical calls to welcome foreigners apply to individual believers, not to the government. The statement said, without mentioning Johnson by name:

Jesus gives His final test of discipleship in Matthew 25:31-46, making clear that the measure of our faith is revealed in how we treat those who are hungry, thirsty, sick, strangers, or imprisoned. To say, as some do, that this passage is only about taking care of fellow Christians is an incorrect theological interpretation. It is for the nations, ethnoi1, for all peoples. This passage names people who are, even now, being directly and deliberately targeted and harmed by those in political power. To serve and defend the most vulnerable is to serve and defend Christ Himself. [Emphasis in original]

Clark Gilbert has been an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints1 less than a week, yet he is already the most controversial person in that position for the past 40-some years.

Gilbert, who as the denomination’s education commissioner has clamped down on nascent pro-LGTBQ activism at the church-run Brigham Young University and required professors and other employees to sign statements of agreement on certain matters of church doctrine related to marriage and the family, was ordained last Thursday as an apostle in the 17.5-million-member church. Gilbert becomes a member of the church’s all-male Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which leads the church in conjunction with its three-member First Presidency, led by Dallin H. Oaks, seen by church members as a prophet2. Apostles hold their positions for life, and an apostle who lives longer than others who were selected before him eventually becomes the church’s prophet.

Although the process of selecting an apostle is opaque, Gilbert presumably was chosen by Oaks with the support of the other leaders. He replaces Jeffrey R. Holland, who died in late December after being an apostle for more than 30 years. Oaks has long been seen as a chief advocate for a rigid church doctrine on LGTBQ matters, which has been codified in a quasi-scriptural document known as the Proclamation on the Family. The proclamation, promulgated in 1995, generally declares doctrine similar to that held by many traditional or conservative Christians, declaring that divinely ordained marriage is limited to one man and one woman. It also declares that gender is an eternal characteristic, a belief that has been used in recent years to limit church involvement by transgender persons.

Although members of the LDS church maintain a high interest who will be named a new apostle after a vacancy occurs, the appointments typically draw little to no controversy. While the appointees are typically men who have slowly risen through the ranks of the church hierarchy, most are little-known even to those who closely follow the inner workings of the church. But Gilbert is different: He began filling a series of highly visible positions starting in 2009 as CEO of church-owned Deseret Digitial Media, following that up as president Deseret News (2010), president of Brigham Young University–Idaho (2015), and inaugural president of the global online offering known as BYU–Pathway Worldwide (2017). And then as the church’s commissioner of the Church Educational System beginning in 2021, he oversaw BYU, BYU–Idaho, BYU–Hawaii, Ensign College, BYU–Pathway Worldwide and Seminaries and Institutes of Religion.

To some extent at BYU–Idaho but more so later when he oversaw all the three BYU campuses, controversy swirled around Gilbert as he became known as an enforcer of what critics see as a narrow version of the church’s family-related doctrines. In 2022, he instituted a sort of “loyalty oath” contract for school employees. Headlines in The Salt Lake Tribune gave a picture of how some BYU faculty reacted to the new policy: Dark days: New rules have BYU professors running scared, the headlines read.

According to the Tribune, the new policy, along with other attempts to restrict the ways students and faculty alike addressed LGTBQ issues, led to plummeting morale on the campus.

According to a Jan. 6, 2025, article in the newspaper:

Today, the threat of retribution apparently is so real that after dozens of interviews with present and former BYU faculty and administrators across many disciplines, not one current professor (including those with tenure, known as “continuing status”) would go on the record for this story.

“Low morale is pretty universal,” said a veteran teacher. “The default position is not to trust anybody.”

Firestorm erupts on social media

In the eyes of progressive LDS activists on social media, Gilbert has became identified with anti-LGTBQ sentiment and extreme efforts to instill some sort of doctrinal purity.

And so it was that when Gilbert’s appointment was announced, social media were quickly abuzz with criticism. “He has tirelessly created an environment of fear among both students and faculty by punishing their livelihoods for holding dissenting opinions,” said one commenter on Reddit. Another on X called him a “racist, sexist, transphobic, gay BYU student witch hunter.” And then there was Gordon Monson, a columnist at the Tribune: “‘Is this some kind of a joke?’” he wrote. “That was my first thought when I heard Clark Gilbert had been selected as the newest apostle for the LDS Church.”

Views by a woman using the name of Candace expressed on a blog of the Exponent II, a feminist Latter-day Saint website, were typical of those expressed by the church’s progressive members:

This is such a divisive choice of apostle to make. I’ve never seen friends and family upset in this way at the announcement of an apostle. The leadership likely realizes that this decision will upset progressive members and that the Church can then judge or condemn them for not sustaining an apostle, which is of course is treated like an obligation and test of faithfulness. It’s such a permanent, irreversible choice too. He’s only 55 and we’ll be dealing with this dude for the next 40 odd years. He could be the president. And which apostles will feel safe seeking greater kindness and inclusion for the marginalized in the church with this dude around? He may have impressive degrees, and I guess he must be intelligent, but he has shown that he is the evil, oppressive, controlly and proud kind of smart, not humble, kind, let me acknowledge how much I don’t know and raise useful questions smart. I’m really angry. Angry at Oaks, who should know better, angry about our corrupt and broken leadership system, and how it’s failing us.

... Here we are on the Exponent blog, boldly “speaking evil” [of] a newly minted apostle, and in my book it’s what God would have us do. This is a completely unsuitable leader for us; he has already lost our trust.

Of course, church members supportive of the church’s leadership just as quickly responded in defense of Gilbert. Among those was Christian Cardell, who frequently posts on Facebook:

As president of BYU–Idaho; as a primary architect and inaugural president of BYU–Pathway Worldwide; and as Commissioner of Church Education, Elder Clark Gilbert has already been an instrument in the Lord’s hands in an important dimension of the kingdom of God on the earth. Large and remarkable innovations are blessing tens and hundreds of thousands of lives across the globe, and small but consequential adjustments bringing greater alignment with Church teachings and practices are furthering the Lord’s purposes with regard to education for time and eternity.

And unlike some with academic pedigrees, Elder Gilbert evinces not the least inclination to innovate away from basic principles that the Lord has clearly revealed and established through the united voice of his servants, and seems perfectly happy to absorb the resulting incoming fire. May God bless him and his family in his new calling as an apostle of Jesus Christ. I look forward to his ministry and am pleased to sustain him.

And so the LDS version of the culture wars was in full force. However, ultimately there is no determinative battle, for church members have no formal voice in apostolic selection.

The last time the LDS church had a controversial apostle was when Ezra Taft Benson held the office beginning during World War II and continuing through 1985. He was the secretary of Agriculture during the Eisenhower administration and a supporter of the John Birch Society, rankling many members and even some men in church leadership with more moderate political views. Benson eventually became the church president, although he generally steered away from political topics when he held the church’s top post.

At last week’s National Prayer Breakfast, President Donald Trump told the crowd and video audience that he was protecting the right to prayer in the nation’s public schools — and, in essence, that he would face serious opposition for doing so:

And today, I’m also pleased to announce that the Department of Education is officially issuing its new guidance to protect the right to prayer in our public schools. That’s a big deal. Now the Democrats will sue us, but we’ll win it, we’ll win it. They’ll sue us, they sue us for everything.

But chances of such a lawsuit is extremely unlikely: The fact is that this month’s new guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Education regarding prayer and other religious practices in public schools offer very little that wasn’t in the guidelines issued by the Joe Biden administration in 2023.1

The guidelines, officially titled Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer and Religious Expression in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, of the two administrations do differ significantly in tone. The 2023 rules emphasize how students are entitled to pray and engage in religious activities in essentially the same way they can discuss or carry out secular activities, while the 2026 guidance puts a strong rhetorical emphasis on how public schools are required to protect student and teacher religious rights without hostility to religion. But both sets of guidelines appear to accurately convey the state of constitutional law at the time they were written.

The 2023 guidelines were written partly as a response to Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the 2022 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of a football coach to pray in a public location after a football game. And the new guidelines were written partly as a response to Mahmoud v. Taylor, the 2025 case in which the court recognized the religion-based right of parents to opt their children out of some instruction that involved LGTBQ-themed storybooks.

The new guidelines see Mahmoud as one in a long line of decisions that protect the religious rights of both parents and teachers:

These cases [including Mahmoud], although not directly about school prayer, clarify the larger legal framework governing the relationship between public schools and matters of religious faith. First, the Court has, over eighty years, steadily upheld the constitutional rights of parents and their children to participate in public schooling (or not) in ways consistent with those parents’ and students’ sincere understanding of what their religious faith requires. This includes instances when the accommodation conflicts with ordinary school policy or curriculum and thus requires significant effort on the part of the school. Second, the Court has consistently required public schools to justify their burdens on religious faith under the strict scrutiny rubric, and has regarded many asserted state interests — including saluting the flag, getting an education through age sixteen, avoiding disruptions related to opt-outs, and providing a supportive environment to one group of students — as insufficient under that rubric. Third, the Court has consistently regarded the rights in question as belonging both to children and to their parents. Fourth, the Court has protected children’s and parents’ religious interests not only from direct coercion but also from indirect burdens, both curricular and cultural, on children’s development and the religiously inflected values of their faith. Fifth, a public school may never force or pressure a child to declare or affirm something contrary to his or his family’s religious beliefs.

New advice puts more emphasis on teachers

The main substantive difference between the old guidelines and the new ones is that the most recent guidelines are more explicit about the religious rights of teachers. For example, while the old guidelines said that school districts may not “prohibit those employees from engaging in prayer merely because it is religious or because some observers, including students, might misperceive the school as endorsing that expression,” the new guidelines explicitly state that a teacher can publicly say grace before lunch with students joining her in doing so, “but she may not instruct her class to pray with her, pressure them to pray with her, or create an atmosphere in which students are favored if they pray with her.”

The new guidelines also state that teachers may “dress in accordance with their religious faith,” while the old guidelines are silent on that issue. Both sets of guidelines state that students may dress according to their faith on the same terms that they can decide to wear clothing without religious meaning.

Key guidelines

Among the other faith-related guidelines for public schools, which generally echo those of the Biden administration:

🟪 Schools must permit students to pray privately and quietly by themselves while at school or on school activities. Students may also pray in a speaking voice on the same terms as any other student might engage in nonreligious speech. But schools to not have to allow students to pray in ways that violate ordinary class rules or interfere with instruction.

🟪 Student organizations with a religious purpose must be allowed to operate on the same terms as student organizations with secular purposes.

🟪 Schools may not sponsor or organize compulsory prayer at official events such as ceremonies, assemblies, graduations or sporting events. No person may deliver such prayers on behalf of the school or in such a way that attendance at the prayer is mandatory.

🟪 Teachers may not require students to pray or otherwise affirm religious beliefs as part of classroom instruction or written or oral assignments, even if it is part of an otherwise secular lesson.

🟪 Teachers must allow students to discuss their religious beliefs in presentations, homework, exams, or other assignments free from discrimination based on the student’s religious perspective or lack thereof. Such home and classroom work should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the school.

🟪 Public schools are entitled to maintain ordinary discipline and are required to protect students from targeted harassment, even when the harassing student or students claim a religious basis for their actions.