FFRF: New White House report twists religious liberty into Christian privilege
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is condemning the Trump administration’s newly released Religious Liberty Commission report as a roadmap for dismantling the constitutional separation between church and state and replacing it with government favoritism toward Christianity.
Rather than protecting religious liberty for all Americans, the commission’s 224-page report repeatedly attacks the Establishment Clause, dismisses decades of settled constitutional law and recommends policies that would entangle government with religion on an unprecedented scale.
“This report has almost nothing to do with protecting religious liberty,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It is a political manifesto that attempts to redefine religious freedom as a special privilege for conservative Christianity.”
The commission was established by President Trump in May 2025 and chaired by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. During its hearings, commissioners repeatedly attacked state-church separation and promoted Christian nationalist arguments. The final report simply codifies those views into official recommendations for the federal government.
Among its most troubling recommendations, the commission urges the Department of Justice to reject the longstanding understanding of the Establishment Clause, Congress to repeal the Johnson Amendment, the creation of “religious liberty” hotlines and a Religious Liberty Task Force, judicial appointments aligned with the commission’s ideological vision, and restored military benefits to individuals who refused COVID-19 vaccines on asserted religious grounds.
The report repeatedly claims that the constitutional principle of church-state separation is a “myth” and argues that religious liberty should instead function as a “bridge” between church and state.
“That is exactly backward,” says FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. “The Establishment Clause exists precisely because the government must remain neutral on matters of religion. Religious liberty flourishes when the government neither favors nor disfavors religion.”
The commission’s central premise rests on a false dichotomy. Although the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear verbatim in the Constitution, it has long been understood as shorthand for the First Amendment’s prohibitions on establishing religion and interfering with its free exercise.
The report also presents a profoundly distorted account of religious liberty in America.
Although it claims to defend “all Americans,” the report overwhelmingly centers alleged grievances involving conservative Christians while paying scant attention to the religious discrimination routinely experienced by atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Native American practitioners, Sikhs, minority Christian denominations and the religiously unaffiliated. Even its discussion of antisemitism is framed almost entirely through the commission’s preferred political lens while ignoring the broader reality that religious freedom belongs equally to every American.
“The commission defines religious liberty almost exclusively as the right of conservative Christians to receive exemptions from laws they dislike,” says Gaylor. “True religious liberty means the government cannot pick winners and losers among religions or between religion and nonreligion.”
The report repeatedly portrays routine constitutional limits on government religious endorsement as examples of anti-religious hostility. It criticizes restrictions on religious displays in public schools, calls for expanded government support for religious education through school choice programs, urges greater government accommodation of religious expression by public employees and proposes new federal mechanisms to encourage complaints whenever individuals believe their religious expression has been limited.
Many of these recommendations would invite constitutional violations rather than prevent them.
Public school students unquestionably possess the right to pray voluntarily, discuss religion with classmates and express their personal beliefs. The Constitution prohibits government officials from using public schools to promote or endorse religion. Teachers, principals and other government employees have constitutional obligations that differ from those of private citizens because they wield the authority of the state.
Likewise, churches and religious organizations already enjoy broad constitutional protections under the Free Exercise Clause, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and decades of Supreme Court precedent. The commission offers virtually no evidence that these existing protections are inadequate. Instead, it seeks to transform religious liberty from a shield protecting conscience into a sword allowing religious entities to receive preferential treatment.
One of the report’s most dangerous recommendations is the repeal of the Johnson Amendment. Eliminating that safeguard would effectively convert tax-exempt churches into taxpayer-subsidized political-action committees, allowing houses of worship to endorse candidates while continuing to receive the substantial benefits of tax-exempt status.
The report also urges presidents to nominate judges who share the commission’s preferred constitutional approach rather than emphasizing judicial impartiality.
Equally revealing is what the report omits.
The commission expresses virtually no concern about increasing efforts to impose religion in public schools, to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings, to inject prayer into official government functions or to use public funds to advance religious education. Nor does it meaningfully address discrimination against the growing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans, who now comprise nearly one-third of the U.S. population.
“The commission starts from the assumption that Christianity deserves a privileged place in public life,” Gaylor says. “That is not religious liberty. It is government favoritism.”
The First Amendment guarantees every American the right to practice any religion, or none at all, without government interference or favoritism. That constitutional promise has made the United States one of the world’s most religiously diverse nations.
FFRF is encouraging Americans who value genuine religious freedom to submit comments opposing the commission’s recommendations before the public comment period closes.
The commission has opened its draft report for public comment through Monday, July 12, 2026. Comments may be submitted by email to RLC@usdoj.gov using the subject line:
PUBLIC COMMENT – [TOPIC OR CHAPTER NUMBER] – [NAME]
The Department of Justice notes that all comments are public records. Commenters should avoid including personally identifiable information, such as home addresses, in their submissions.
“This report does not speak for the millions of Americans who understand that religious liberty depends on government neutrality,” says Barker. “We urge everyone who values the First Amendment to make their voices heard before this report is finalized.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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FFRF condemns Trump’s “godless” rhetoric targeting millions of patriotic Americans
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is condemning President Trump’s inflammatory remarks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority Conference, where he smeared political opponents as “godless communists,” falsely cast Christianity as the foundation of American identity and warned supporters that Democrats “will close your churches.”
“The president of the United States has no business telling Americans that patriotism depends on belief in God, much less demonizing millions of nonreligious citizens as threats to the country,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
Speaking to religious-right activists in Washington, D.C., Trump repeatedly portrayed Christianity as the defining force behind the United States. “Our founders invoked the Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence. Four times. I wasn’t mentioned once, I’m very upset,” he joked before asserting that “faith built this country into the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.” He also claimed that “Americans have always deeply believed in the promise of Christ’s words in the Gospel of Matthew. With God, all things are possible.” Trump went on to declare that America has “always” been and “always will” be “one nation under God,” while touting his administration’s White House Faith Office, Religious Liberty Commission and Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.
“The United States was not founded as a Christian nation,” Gaylor explains. “The Declaration of Independence reflects the deistic beliefs of its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, but it is the Constitution, our governing document, that establishes our system of government. It is intentionally secular, contains no reference to Christianity and explicitly bars religious tests for public office. America’s strength comes from protecting every citizen’s freedom of conscience, not elevating one religion above all others.”
Most disturbingly, Trump described his political opponents as “hardcore godless communists,” called them the “most serious threat” to the country since its founding and warned that they “want to end religion.” This rhetoric is reckless, divisive and deeply hostile to the constitutional promise that Americans are equal citizens regardless of religious belief or disbelief.
FFRF notes that atheists, agnostics, humanists and other nonreligious Americans serve in the military, teach in public schools, hold public office, pay taxes, raise families and contribute to their communities. They are not enemies of the nation. They are part of its fabric.
Trump’s attempt to merge Christianity with national identity also rewrites American history. The United States was founded on a secular Constitution that contains no references to God, Jesus or Christianity. Its genius lies in preventing the government from taking sides in religious matters, ensuring that religion remains voluntary rather than state-sponsored.
The danger is not a secular government. The danger is a president using government power to privilege one religious viewpoint, vilify dissenters and turn religious identity into a partisan weapon.
FFRF urges Americans to reject this dangerous rhetoric and recommit to the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. No president or religious faction owns the United States. It belongs equally to all of us.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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Religiously motivated Supreme Court ruling harms transgender students
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
Becky Pepper-Jackson has spent years running alongside her classmates while her legal challenge worked its way through the courts. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may bar her and other transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling today against transgender students in two consolidated cases will cause immediate and lasting harm to vulnerable children across the country.
The cases, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., challenged Idaho and West Virginia laws barring transgender students from girls’ and women’s sports teams in public schools and colleges. In upholding the bans, the court accepted sweeping generalizations about sex and gender while disregarding the real-world impact on individual students.
“This decision confirms what was evident at oral argument: These laws are not about fairness in sports, but about enforcing a particular religious ideology through state power,” says Deputy Legal Director Liz Cavell. “Public schools should be places of inclusion and equal opportunity, not testing grounds for religious dogma that harms children.”
FFRF notes that both cases were advanced with the direct involvement of Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nationalist legal organization that has made restricting LGBTQ+ rights a central part of its mission. ADF attorneys represented and supported Idaho and West Virginia throughout the litigation, underscoring that these cases are part of a broader religious campaign rather than a genuine effort to regulate athletics.
In its decision, the court adopted the states’ framing that athletic eligibility must be determined solely by sex assigned at birth, rejecting arguments grounded in medical evidence. The majority minimized the relevance of gender identity and dismissed evidence showing that many transgender girls, particularly those who have undergone estrogen-driven puberty, do not possess the athletic advantages the laws purport to address.
FFRF warns that although the court framed its analysis as one of statutory interpretation and equal protection, the ruling will inevitably be embraced by religious organizations that have spent years seeking to codify their theological views about sex and gender into civil law. The decision removes an important constitutional safeguard for transgender students while advancing a legal agenda long championed by religious-right advocacy groups.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concurring in part and dissenting in part, criticized the majority for cutting off factual development before lower courts could fully evaluate whether transgender girls like Becky Pepper-Jackson actually undermine the states’ asserted interests. Joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent on the Equal Protection Clause issue, Sotomayor wrote: “These circumstances demand exercising judicial restraint, not rushing to answer conclusively difficult questions without sufficient evidentiary development.”
Becky Pepper-Jackson is precisely the kind of student Sotomayor said deserved that opportunity. Now 15 years old, the West Virginia transgender girl was preparing to enter middle school when the state enacted its ban in 2021. Becky has lived as a girl for years and has undergone an estrogen-driven puberty. She was allowed to compete on her school’s cross-country and track teams while her case was pending, participation that her doctors say was vital to her well-being.
Supporters of transgender athlete bans often argue the laws are necessary to “save women’s sports.” Yet lawmakers have routinely failed to identify instances of transgender girls dominating K–12 athletics in their states. The harm to transgender youth, by contrast, is well documented. Transgender adolescents face significantly elevated risks of depression and suicide, risks that are reduced when they are supported and included in school communities. For most students, school sports are about participation, belonging and personal growth, not podiums or scholarships.
FFRF notes that support for restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights is highest among the country’s most religious populations, while religiously unaffiliated Americans consistently express the strongest support for LGBTQ+ equality. Acceptance drops sharply among evangelical Protestants and frequent churchgoers. Religious beliefs have historically been used to justify discriminatory laws, from bans on interracial marriage to the criminalization of same-sex relationships, and now reappear in legislation targeting transgender youth.
“Given the court’s recent record, it is sadly not surprising to see religious ideology once again outweigh the rights and well-being of students,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “When discrimination is treated as reasonable and religious motivation is brushed aside as legally irrelevant, vulnerable children pay the price.”
FFRF supports the full equality and dignity of transgender people and opposes the use of government power to deny a vulnerable minority equal participation in public life. The Constitution requires government neutrality on matters of religion.
Today’s ruling will have far-reaching negative consequences for transgender students nationwide, signaling that laws rooted in religiously informed views of sex and gender may now withstand constitutional scrutiny. But FFRF remains committed to defending the constitutional rights and dignity of all students, and will continue fighting to ensure that public schools remain places of equality, inclusion and freedom from religiously driven discrimination.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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