FFRF appeals court brief backs religious classroom display restrictions

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a friend-of-the-court brief defending a Connecticut school district’s ability to prevent teachers from religious classroom displays.

The case before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals involving the Consolidated School District of New Britain centers around a crucifix hung on a classroom wall by middle school teacher Marisol Arroyo-Castro. The crucifix was placed in plain view of Arroyo-Castro’s students and among relevant classroom displays, such as computer operation instructions, a student daily schedule, and a poster for a social studies textbook. When the district asked her to remove the crucifix from the classroom wall and move it to a location where it would not be visible to students, Arroyo-Castro refused. After trying to work with Arroyo-Castro to find a suitable accommodation, the district issued a letter of reprimand and then a two-day suspension. The district ultimately placed Arroyo-Castro on paid administrative leave due to her insistence upon leaving the crucifix in a visible location on her classroom wall. She then filed suit in the Connecticut Federal District Court, arguing that the district’s request to remove the crucifix violated her First Amendment Free Speech and Free Exercise rights.

In her opinion denying Arroyo-Castro’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the district, Judge Sarah F. Russell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut applied the Supreme Court’s Garcetti test to Arroyo-Castro’s Free Speech claim. The “Garcetti test” is what courts use to determine if a government employee’s Free Speech rights are violated. Under the test, the district court said that Arroyo-Castro was not entitled to Free Speech protection because the display of the crucifix on her classroom wall was speech made as part of her official duties as a government employee.

The district court also applied the Garcetti framework to Arroyo-Castro’s Free Exercise claim.

“Ms. Castro’s Free Exercise and Free Speech claims fully overlap in the sense that the religious exercise that Ms. Castro says is infringed is necessarily communicative,” the judge wrote. “Under these circumstances, the Free Exercise Clause does not compel the district to communicate a religious message.”

FFRF’s brief argues that the district court correctly applied Garcetti’s official duties test to Arroyo-Castro’s Free Exercise challenge. The Court of Appeals shouldn’t grant government employees, including public school teachers, carte blanche to say, do or display anything they want on government property so long as it’s in the name of their religion.

“Speech does not cease to be speech simply because its topic concerns religion,” the brief reads. “To apply the ‘official duties’ test to Arroyo-Castro’s Free Speech claim and not her Free Exercise claim would allow subversion of this doctrine if — and only if — the speech in question is religious.”

Should the 2nd Circuit decline to apply Garcetti to the Free Exercise claim, FFRF points out the dangerous precedent that ruling would set: “Under such a rule, a teacher would be permitted to tell their students that Muhammad is the one true prophet or that they should fast during Ramadan, but could be fired for sharing who she thinks is the best political candidate in an upcoming election.”

“This is a straightforward case,” says FFRF Senior Litigation Counsel Sam Grover. “The school district, not Arroyo-Castro, gets to decide what messages are communicated on classroom walls. Arroyo-Castro should lose simply because she wants to promote her personal religious beliefs on government property. No teacher has that right.”

FFRF Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal Fellow Kyle Steinberg drafted FFRF’s brief and Senior Litigation Counsel Sam Grover served as Counsel of Record.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 41,000 members nationwide, including nearly 500 members in Connecticut. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The post FFRF appeals court brief backs religious classroom display restrictions appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Freethought Radio – June 25, 2026

We first get the lowdown on the back and forth that Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has gotten into with the Freedom From Religion Foundation regarding our objection to the Auburn University men’s baseball program being suffused with religion. Then, we listen to writer Chrissy Stroop talk about her journey from evangelical schools to leading counternarratives about the Christian right.

The post Freethought Radio – June 25, 2026 appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The 11 CRAZIEST Things Mormons Are Taught

Sen. Tuberville mistakes religious privilege for religious freedom

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has recently bad-mouthed the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s criticism of the Auburn University baseball team coach leading players in prayer and the inclusion of crosses and the phrase “Jesus won” on team gear. FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor have released the following statement in response:

Sen. Tuberville’s comments demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of both the Constitution and FFRF’s mission. The First Amendment protects every American’s right to practice their religion — or no religion at all — free from government coercion. It does not permit public university employees to use their official positions to promote Christianity to student-athletes.

FFRF has never objected to private religious expression by Auburn players, coaches or anyone else. What we object to is a public university baseball program using its official authority to organize team prayer and promote sectarian religious messages through university-sponsored athletics. Student-athletes come from a variety of religious backgrounds — and public university officials have a duty to respect that diversity rather than use their positions to advance a particular faith. Student-athletes should never be made to feel that participation on a public university team requires conformity to a coach’s religious beliefs.

Sen. Tuberville is also mistaken when he claims the United States was founded on “freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” The Founders deliberately rejected religious establishments and created a secular Constitution that guarantees freedom of conscience for believers and nonbelievers alike. Religious freedom necessarily includes freedom from government-imposed religion.

As for the accusation that FFRF “hates God and America,” such rhetoric is as tired as it is false. FFRF’s members include patriotic Americans from every walk of life who are dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of church-state separation. We will continue standing up for the rights of all students, including Auburn’s Christian students, to make their own religious choices free from pressure by government officials.

The issue here is not whether Auburn players may pray or otherwise express their faith. They absolutely may. The issue is whether public university employees may use their positions of authority to promote Christianity through official team activities. The Constitution’s answer is: No.

Religious freedom means every student gets to decide for themselves what to believe. It does not mean government officials get to decide for them.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America, is a national nonprofit organization with about 41,000 members nationwide, including hundreds of members in Alabama. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The post Sen. Tuberville mistakes religious privilege for religious freedom appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The 11 CRAZIEST Things Mormons Are Taught

A Christian school that tried to shame a gay student just admitted defeat

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In a stunning turn of events, a Christian high school in Tennessee has agreed to pay a former student $10,000 after denying her the chance to walk at graduation, which they did after she publicly came out as a lesbian and suggested some of her more conservative/Trump-y relatives may not take the news well.

I first wrote about Morgan Armstrong last year, but the story is so damn amazing, I’m reposting it here with relevant updates.

Morgan was a high school senior and star basketball player last year, but just before she was set to graduate, administrators told her family they needed to have a meeting.

Turns out they had seen a public post on Morgan’s Facebook page highlighting her same-sex relationship. She posted it shortly after turning 18.

Administrators had also seen a private message posted for her Snapchat friends asking them to “like” her post because she had a lot of Trump-supporting acquaintances. That message, which one student must have leaked to school officials, said: “Go like and comment on my post guys bc if no one on my socials knew i was gay then they sure as hell do now so this is a big thing tbh, also i’m kinda scared about the facebook comments bc i have some ruthless trump supporting ‘jesus’ mfs on there.”

It was clear what she meant by that. There are a lot of conservative Christian bigots who might respond to her post by telling her she’s some kind of sinner who needs Jesus. Not all Christians are bigots, obviously, but the Trump-supporting ones? Gotta watch out for them. And she had people in her life who fit that description.

I knew what she was saying. You knew what she was saying. But why did the school give a damn what she was saying?

Simple: Morgan attended Tennessee Christian Preparatory School, one of those schools where “homosexual behavior” is not allowed. But that’s not why she was in trouble, apparently. According to the adults at the school, the problem was acknowledging the open cruelty of Trump supporters. They said she violated their Social Media Policy by disparaging those bigots… because she was effectively disparaging them.

Armstrong and her father said they met with principal Kylie Machacek and head of schools Jared Tilley.

Armstrong said the school presented the family with a letter, referring to the post and the private message that they had obtained. That letter read, “Morgan posted on social media platforms, such as Instagram, a disparaging remark, reflecting the people at Tennessee Christian. The comment reflected on the institution, facility, staff, alumni and students in the most negative possible way.”

If you read a post calling out conservative Christian bigots and your first response is, “How dare she talk about us like that?”… then maybe you’re the problem.

She didn’t mention the school, or any of her teachers, or any of her classmates in any of those posts. She correctly pointed out there were assholes out there—there are!—and the school overreacted by assuming she was targeting them.

The school’s policy says students cannot post anything that’s “threatening, harassing, illegal, obscene, defamatory, slanderous, harassing, bullying, or hostile towards any individual or entity.” But she wasn’t “defamatory” or “slanderous” or even “hostile” regarding what bigots do; she described them accurately! So what was the big deal?

In any case, because of their overreaction, the school officials banned Morgan from attending graduation as well as any end-of-season athletic banquet.

They also told her they’d mail her the diploma in a month because they refused to give it to her on stage.

Then they threatened to sabotage her future by sending proof of her posts to her prospective colleges, like some kind of bizarre academic blackmail.

Morgan will not comment about the school or people associated with the school. If online slander continues, records of posts and messages will be forwarded to colleges and universities as part of a comprehensive student file.

Again, she never slandered the school or anyone in it. But if she continued, the school insisted, she wouldn’t get her diploma at all.

Her parents, who were both openly in support of their daughter, couldn’t believe it:

“I was shocked and then I went to anger,” said Monica Armstrong, Morgan’s mother.

I want to reiterate that the school didn’t comment on her relationship—even though, deep down, you just know that’s what this was all about. They focused on her (honest) admission that conservative bigots wouldn’t like it… which they took as a personal insult for some reason. Because of that interpretation, they were threatening to punish her with whatever leverage they still had.

But the school made a huge mistake.

While private Christian schools have every right to set their own ridiculous policies, the expectation is that they’re at least going to honor what both sides agreed to in writing.

That created a problem for administrators. Because even if you believe Morgan violated the school’s rules, the school’s handbook said a first-time violation for breaking their Social Media Policy was, at worst, a one-day in-school suspension. Not banning someone from attending her own graduation and refusing to hand over the diploma she earned.

By going from 0 to 60 at the first sign of pushback, the school was ignoring its own stated rules.

That’s why Morgan’s family filed a lawsuit against the Christian school. They said the letter she received “falsely” stated she was insulting people at the school.

Nothing in Morgan’s public post was vulgar, disrespectful, or slanderous, and the post does not refer to the Defendant in any respect.

They said the same thing about her private Snapchat request—she wasn’t talking about the school or the people in it. She was referring to bigots in her extended family, not good kind Christians. (And surely the folks at Tennessee Christian Preparatory School are good kind Christians, right?)

Instead, Morgan’s statement describing “some ruthless trump supporting ‘jesus’ mfs” referred to members of Morgan’s own family with whom she was connected on social media—people who, in Morgan’s view, profess but do not practice Christian principles of love, acceptance, and compassion.

This section, in my mind, is what everything boiled down to:

52. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Morgan actually violated the Defendant’s Social Media Policy (she did not) and was not disciplined pretextually for being gay (she was), because Morgan had never before been disciplined for violating the Defendant’s Social Media Policy, the maximum consequence that the Defendant could permissibly impose for a first-time Social Media Policy violation was “minor”—a “1 day in-school suspension.”

53. Nevertheless, in its haste to suspend Morgan for being gay, the Defendant violated its own Disciplinary Policy and summarily imposed a “Long-term suspension (more than 10 days)” instead.

54. As a result, Morgan was forbidden from attending school from that point forward, and she was not permitted to take final exams.

You have to wonder what the school thought it would accomplish by punishing one of its best students for something so harmless. Instead of giving her the sendoff she deserved, they ruined what should have been highlights of her high school experience.

The lawsuit ended with a request that, if the school lost the case, they remove the suspension from her record, allow her to take her final exams, give her the damn diploma, stop threatening her college prospects, and pay any associated legal costs. (The school said she didn’t have to take the final exams, and they wouldn’t hold it against her grade-wise. Still, if she scored well on them, it could have improved her grade point average. That’s why she really wanted a chance to show what she could do.)

At the time, the school issued a press release “firmly [rejecting] the misleading allegations outlined in a recent lawsuit supposedly filed against the school.”

The irony in all this was, by punishing Morgan over nothing, the administrators confirmed what critics of Christian schools often say: These institutions are hotbeds of bigotry. They have no love for LGBTQ students. They pressure students to suppress their emotions. They make a big deal over little things while ignoring much more serious problems.

It’s mind-boggling that any private school would rather withhold a student’s diploma for expressing genuine concern about the inevitable reactions to her relationship than just let it slide because no reasonable person would actually give a damn.

The silver lining to all this was that there was an overwhelmingly positive response on behalf of Morgan. News outlets covered the story and any neutral explanation of what happened made the school look absolutely horrible. But they brought this upon themselves. That’s the price you pay when bigotry is your biggest selling point.

Meanwhile, Morgan’s family held a small protest/celebration on the day she was supposed to be graduating with her classmates:

When I spoke to Morgan last year, I learned a lot more about her situation than the media coverage revealed.

For example, the biggest question I had was why she ended up going to a conservative Christian school in the first place. If she and her parents were relatively progressive on LGBTQ issues, what drew them there? That answer was extremely straightforward: The school offered Morgan a spot on their basketball team back in middle school along with a partial scholarship to go with it, and her family decided that was an offer they couldn’t turn down. While they are Christian, they didn’t see their values as clashing with the school’s idea of religion… until now. When it came to how she felt about Christianity, Morgan told me, “this situation definitely didn’t help.”

I also wondered why she decided to post the pictures of her and her girlfriend in the spring instead of just waiting a month or two until she was finally done with high school. Morgan said she did that on purpose. She had known for years that she’s attracted to other girls, and she’s also known her school disapproves of that, and “I didn’t want that fear to hold me down anymore.” Plus, she added, her straight friends posted pictures with their boyfriends and girlfriends all the time. So why couldn’t she?

That’s also why she filed the lawsuit. Even if the school won’t change its stance on homosexuality, she didn’t want them to target anyone else in the future like they did to her. In fact, she received so many messages and calls of support from former students at her school who are now openly LGBTQ. She wanted the “continuous cycle” of shame and hate to end.

It wasn’t all supportive, though. Morgan said her friends at school mostly blocked her on social media after this controversy went public. Maybe that’s to avoid the wrath of the school’s prying eyes, but it’s not like they contacted her privately either to let her know they were still on her side.

The irony, she said, was that many of them had known she was gay for years. It was only after this story went viral that they decided to cut their ties. Her girlfriend Sophie, however, was right there with her. (It must have been hard to watch Morgan go through all this, but the two were still as close as ever.)

When we spoke, Morgan didn’t know where she’d go to college. She figured she wouldn’t be playing basketball anywhere, but for her sake, I hoped she would end up in a place where she would be accepted and not treated as some kind of outcast.

I had mostly forgotten about this story, assuming nothing much would come of it. I figured Morgan would go to college, the school wouldn’t admit any wrongdoing, and both sides would move on.

I was wrong.

This week, her attorney Daniel A. Horwitz announced that the two sides had reached a settlement. While the two sides “disagree” on whether Morgan violated school policies, the school has retroactively rescinded her suspension. Administrators also said they never trashed Morgan to any of her prospective colleges and promise never to do so in the future.

And the school said they’d pay her $10,000. Which is essentially the amount for tuition for a single year (even though Morgan had received at least a partial scholarship).

In an interview Horwitz told me “this is as good a result as—perhaps an even better result than—the court system could have provided in a litigated judgment. Paired with the rescission of her suspension, her receipt of her diploma, and the permanent injunction involved, this was a total, spectacular win.”

Horwitz, who worked on this case pro bono, added in a press release:

… “School is a place where every student is entitled to feel welcome, accepted, and supported.”

Horwitz continued, “It is not a place where any administrator should feel comfortable disciplining or threatening kids for being gay. We were proud to represent Morgan and her family in this righteous lawsuit, and we are thrilled to have prevailed on their behalf. We hope Morgan’s bravery will inspire others to stand up for themselves the way that she did.”

I also had a chance to catch up with Morgan yesterday. She told me she was just glad everything was over since this issue had taking up a lot of space in her brain over the past year.

She’s currently attending a college online while working a full-time job, making a clean break from her high school and the area where she grew up. And she’s still with Sophie, who’s been supportive throughout this whole ordeal.

When we spoke last year, she told me she was on the fence about her Christian faith, saying “this situation definitely didn’t help.” So where was she on that now? “I’m still questioning,” she told me, adding that she was probably “leaning to the not-believing side.” When so many of your interactions with Christians are as negative as the ones she’s had, it’s hard to argue with that.

It’s also the same reason she’s not particularly close to the people she attended high school with. Many of them had blocked her on social media last year when everything went down. I figured some of them would come around after the controversy subsided… but they didn’t. Morgan said they still have her blocked and the feeling is mutual. “At first, it was a bad thing,” she said, but these days, she’s “made peace with it. What’s done is done.” (She’s building a new life in a new city, and that may be the healthiest option.)

The biggest thing she wanted to say was that she had seen chatter on social media that she did this for attention or money. But no one asks for this kind of attention, and she never wanted money from the school anyway. (Remember, it was the school that offered money as part of the settlement.) There was only one reason Morgan wanted to go through with this lawsuit, she explained: “It was about standing up for what happened. My only goal was to clear my record.”

FFRF commends MLB for rejecting baseless religious discrimination claims

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is applauding Major League Baseball for reportedly standing firm against politically motivated accusations of religious discrimination.

Several San Francisco Giants players were warned recently for writing spiteful bible verse citations on their caps during a Pride Night game. In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, FFRF has commended the league for standing by its neutral uniform policies and resisting efforts by politicians and government officials to portray routine workplace rules as anti-Christian discrimination.

“Religious liberty is a fundamental American value, but it does not entitle individuals to disregard neutral workplace rules or demand preferential treatment,” FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker write. “By maintaining that distinction, MLB has demonstrated that it is possible to respect religious freedom while also preserving an inclusive environment for all.”

The controversy stems from the San Francisco Giants’ annual Pride Night game on June 12. During the event, players wore caps featuring a rainbow-colored Giants logo. Several Giants pitchers reportedly wrote bible verse citations on those caps, including references to Genesis 9:12-16, a passage that discusses God’s covenant after the flood and describes the rainbow as a sign of that covenant.

Major League Baseball subsequently warned the players that adding unauthorized messages to league-issued uniforms violated league rules.

That decision drew criticism from several conservative elected officials and political appointees, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who have characterized MLB’s actions as religious discrimination. Dhillon has reportedly asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate the matter. FFRF says those claims fundamentally misunderstand both religious liberty and anti-discrimination law.

“The issue is not whether the players are Christian or whether they quoted scripture,” FFRF writes. “The question is whether individual players may alter league-issued uniforms to display personal messages in violation of league policy. The answer is plainly no.”

The state/church watchdog notes that employers routinely distinguish between official organizational messaging and unauthorized personal expression. A player would not be entitled to add political slogans, ideological messages or other personal statements to league-issued apparel — and religiously motivated messages are no different.

“Religious belief does not confer a right to disregard neutral workplace rules,” FFRF explains. “An employee does not gain a special exemption from generally applicable policies merely by invoking religion.”

FFRF also rejects the claim that enforcing a neutral uniform policy constitutes religious discrimination.

“Anti-discrimination laws protect employees from adverse treatment because of their religion,” the letter states. “They do not require employers to grant special privileges to religiously motivated expression or exempt religious employees from workplace rules that apply equally to everyone else.”

The organization expressed particular concern over reports that the Department of Justice has asked the EEOC to investigate MLB.

“The Civil Rights Division exists to combat genuine discrimination, not to transform religious liberty into a weapon against organizations that seek to create welcoming environments for historically marginalized communities,” FFRF writes.

FFRF notes that Pride Night events are intended to ensure that LGBTQ+ fans, players and families feel welcome in a sport that has not always been inclusive.

“Such initiatives are not anti-Christian, anti-religious or discriminatory,” the letter states. “They simply reflect the principle that every person deserves equal dignity, respect and inclusion.”

Read FFRF’s full letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred here.

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.

The post FFRF commends MLB for rejecting baseless religious discrimination claims appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The 11 CRAZIEST Things Mormons Are Taught

SCOTUS says Rastafarian can’t sue prison guards who violated his faith and cut off his dreadlocks

This week, Metro Weekly cited my reporting in a piece about a Christian family’s lawsuit over a transgender wrestler. They said, “As reported by Hemant Mehta in his The Friendly Atheist Substack, multiple wrestlers, coaches, and parents of youth wrestlers who reviewed the video said they saw nothing abnormal.” The work you support is helping change the narrative about controversial issues. Please help me continue doing it via Patreon or the Subscribe button below! You can also make one-time donations through Venmo or PayPal.

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The Supreme Court has made it official: Religious freedom only applies if you’re a conservative Christian. The conservative super-majority ruled 6-3 on Tuesday, along partisan lines, that a Rastafarian man whose hair was cut off against his will—violating his religious beliefs—had no legal remedies available to him.

The case centered around Damon Landor, who hadn’t cut his hair in decades because he follows the Nazarite vow—which includes a reference to Numbers 6:5: “… No razor may be used on their head… they must let their hair grow long.”

He continued that vow even after entering two Louisiana jails in 2020, for a five-month sentence over a drug-related charge. When he was transferred to a third facility—the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center—Landor worried they might try to cut his hair to fit in with inmate grooming policies, so he showed officers paperwork that said federal law was on his side: The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) basically says prisons that receive federal funding can’t violate someone’s religious beliefs unless there’s a really good reason for it.

The officers didn’t care. They threw his paperwork in the trash, handcuffed him to a chair, and shaved off his hair.

He later sued, seeking damages from both the prison and the individual officers for violating his rights. The lower courts ruled against him, but the Supreme Court took up his case. Unfortunately, the conservatives have now also dismissed his arguments, leaving him with no more recourse.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the individual officers never consented to following RLUIPA, so they couldn’t be held accountable for what they did… as if it was okay for them to violate the law because they didn’t know any better. Even though the state-run prison received federal funding and essentially agreed to follow federal law as a result, he argued, the same couldn’t be said of the employees.

In this case, Gorsuch continued, the Louisiana Department of Corrections “does not dispute that it is a recipient of federal funds” and “that it has agreed” to be sued by private plaintiffs under RLUIPA “as a condition of accepting those funds.” But Landor does not contend that the prison officials who are the defendants in his lawsuit have “voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer private suits under RLUIPA,” Gorsuch noted, and therefore his lawsuit against them cannot go forward. Gorsuch wrote, for example, that it did not matter that the prison officials received paychecks from the Louisiana Department of Corrections, which in turn received federal funding, so that they “should be deemed to have implicitly consented to RLUIPA liability.”

If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. Alexis Romero and Mark Joseph Stern of Slate couldn’t believe that line of reasoning:

… the state officials in this case arguably did agree to be bound by federal law. After all, they signed an employment contract with a prison that receives federal funding by virtue of RLUIPA. State officials are trained on their inmates’ rights, and prison litigation has been around for centuries, under RLUIPA and other statutes. There’s no serious argument that these state officials were blind to the consequences that might come from violating the rights of the prisoners they’re in charge of.

The liberal justices said as much in their dissent, adding that the majority just gave federal employees permission to ignore RLUIPA whenever they want.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. She argued that, as a result of the majority’s ruling, “[p]risoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons—no matter how blatant—will often be left remediless. And encroachments on prisoners’ statutory rights are likely to happen with fair frequency, as state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law, even if it is handed to them on a piece of paper.”

To get a little more technical, Gorsuch justified his decision by saying his issue was with the way Congress worded RLUIPA, but with a dysfunctional Congress run by Republicans, there’s no quick fix even if the correction is obvious. (Ian Millhiser of Vox notes that this could have a serious effect on women who need emergency abortions in red states.)

What makes this decision all the more infuriating is that everyone seems to agree that Landor’s rights were violated. The conservatives on SCOTUS said it. The state admitted it, too, even saying they had changed their rules to prevent this kind of incident in the future. But the ruling still means Landor can’t receive any sort of compensation for what he went through.

“We condemn the conduct as alleged in this case and have taken steps to prevent this problem from recurring, but we are grateful the court agreed with the state in this matter,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, said in a statement.

She added that religious rights are “deeply important” but that the state has its own laws that protect them.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State had filed an amicus brief in this case on Landor’s behalf, saying RLUIPA permitted lawsuits against individual officers. They even said, “Without the possibility of individual liability, officers (and institutions) can blatantly and/or repeatedly violate RLUIPA with few to no consequences.” They were, of course, disappointed with Tuesday’s decision:

“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision endangers the religious freedom of incarcerated people, like Damon Landor, who are particularly vulnerable to abuse and having unnecessary burdens placed on their religious exercise. Once again, we see a court that will bend over backward for the religious freedom of Christians, but allows the government to trample the religious freedom of non-Christians. We can only hope this faulty decision doesn’t embolden more prison officials to ignore the religious-freedom rights of incarcerated people to observe their faith as long as they don’t harm others.”

That’s really the big takeaway here. The Supreme Court has rewarded Christians who filed religious freedom lawsuits even when the facts were not on their side (like Joe Kennedy) or when they suffered no actual damages (like the wedding website creator). Here’s a Rastafarian whose story is not in dispute and who actually suffered, and the Supreme Court’s conservatives are giving him a pat on the back and nothing of value. Hell, Gorsuch, who went out of his way to give Kennedy a victory by lying about the nature of his case, is the same person now saying there’s nothing he can do for Landor.

This man literally waved the law in front of the officers but the Supreme Court insisted those officers can’t be held accountable for not following the rules. What else could Landor have possibly done?

Even more concerning is how this decision gives a green light to other officers who may want to sidestep the law when it involves a non-Christian inmate, according to Elizabeth Reiner Platt, the director of the Law, Rights & Religion Project.

Without any threat of financial punishment, employees of state jails and prisons can trample inmates’ religious rights with impunity. And while courts may still order prisons to accommodate incarcerated people’s religious beliefs — such as by providing halal meals — this means little in cases like Landor’s, when the damage has already been done.

Landor can still theoretically pursue damages through the state courts, but the bottom line is that the Supreme Court used this case to make it even harder for a non-Christian to receive justice even when there’s no dispute about what happened to him. It’s fair to wonder if the outcome would have been different here if a Christian—specifically a white Christian—prisoner was on the receiving end of a faith-based infraction.

If there are no punishments for violating someone’s rights, they’re not really rights at all.

Heretic on the Hill: Me Settling a 250-Year-Old Argument

With less than two weeks to go before the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re in the home stretch of hearing “America was founded as a Christian nation and the Declaration proves it.” The Religious Liberty Commission report is due any day. So, one more time, I’m going to knock that statement down and then I’ll move on;

• The Declaration of Independence was a break-up letter with England, not the establishment of a new country or government. It says the separate colonies are now independent, not that they are a new nation, Christian or otherwise.
• The Declaration primarily includes 27 grievances with England. None of them mention religion or even the powerful Church of England.
• The Declaration mentions “the Creator” and “Nature’s God” which many cite as proof of the Christian nation claim. But that evidence alone is just too flimsy when you read it.
• One year later, in 1777, the states agreed to the Articles of Confederation which set up a government without mentioning Christianity, God, the Bible, and which mentions religion only once briefly in a section on trade. No Christian nation evidence there.
• Twelve years later the Articles were replaced by the Constitution which again did not in any way set up a Christian government for a Christian country. The word ‘religion’ is only mentioned one time when it says there will be no religious test for any public office. The Constitution does not mention God or Christianity. It’s really the opposite of saying, “This will be a Christian nation.”

• The pro-Christian nation side points out correctly that the Constitution does not include the phrase “separation of church and state.” It also doesn’t mention AR-15s and a thousand other questions that have come up. So for 250 years people have been inferring what the Constitution and Bill of Rights mean based on the text and on outside information from the Founders. That’s where Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state” statement comes in. We infer that 18-year-olds can own AR-15s. We infer that there should be a wall of separation between church and state. (Boosted by the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”.

Finally, how important is this whole argument 250 years later? Yes the nation was founded by Christians who were almost entirely Protestants. There were hardly any Catholics then and even fewer Jews and members of other religions. Today we know that 63 percent of the current population is Christian, six percent other religions, and 28 percent people with no religion. The real question isn’t how we were  founded, it’s how religious freedom should be applied to today’s population. 

Should tax dollars go to support schools that are mostly Christian? Should churches that get a tax exemption be allowed to support political candidates? Should the Ten Commandments be required to be posted in every public school classroom? Can Christian organizations that receive a federal grant proselytize while helping people in need with that grant money? These are the real-life questions that determine whether America is a nation that respects the rights of people from all religions and no religion at all, or whether it gives preference to Christians based on who is in power now.

We know where Jefferson stood on these issues. Madison said religion and government exist in “greater purity, the less they are mixed together”. John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which explicitly declared that the United States is “not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” I think the Founders would be appalled at where we are on these issues now and they would be on social media explaining that this is far from what they envisioned 250 years ago. 

The post Heretic on the Hill: Me Settling a 250-Year-Old Argument appeared first on Secular Coalition for America.