The Senate Finance Committee just released its text for the budget reconciliation bill, a.k.a. the One, Big, Beautiful Bill. The text (see p. 168) builds upon the provisions the House passed a few weeks ago for a national federal scholarship, the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).

The Senate language creates $4 billion a year in permanent tax credits that grant 100 percent, non-refundable credits against individual income taxes for donations to qualified scholarship granting organizations. These scholarships would be available for student families to pay for private-school tuition, books, and teaching materials for home schooling expenses, and educational therapies for children with disabilities.

“Credit goes to all the energetic supporters of this bill in the Senate Finance Committee, including Finance Chairman Mike Crapo and the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Bill Cassidy and Sen. Tim Scott,” said Bob Goodlatte, Senior Policy Advisor to Protect The 1st and former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “Of course, the Senate and the House will need to work out a few differences. Then the way should be clear to get it to the president’s desk.
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“Those who support this bill will be aligning themselves with the supermajorities of Americans of both parties who want families to have options in the quality and character of their children’s education,” Goodlatte said. “Abundant evidence shows that competition in education is proven to improve the quality of public schools, and it is certainly in the best interests of America’s schoolchildren.”

​The Babylon Bee has a knack for predicting the future. In 2021, they joked that Kamala Harris was taking likability lessons from Hillary Clinton – weeks before reports confirmed Clinton allies were advising Harris’s team. They parodied Trump claiming to have done more for Christianity than Jesus, and two years later, he said nearly the same thing. They mocked economic spin with “9 Reasons Not to Worry About the Tanking Economy” – just before The Washington Post published “7 Ways a Recession Could Be Good for You Financially.”
 
What is their latest prophecy come true? Hawaii just made it a crime to joke about politicians online.
 
In July 2024, Gov. Josh Green signed Senate Bill 2687 into law. It criminalizes online content – particularly satire and parody – that could be considered “materially deceptive” and harmful to a candidate’s reputation or campaign. The law mandates disclaimers on satirical posts and threatens violators with fines and jail time.
 
Alliance Defending Freedom, representing The Babylon Bee and Hawaii resident Dawn O’Brien, is challenging the law in federal court. ADF attorney Mathew Hoffmann called it “censorship, pure and simple,” and warned that satire is among the most protected forms of speech under the First Amendment.
 
“We’re used to getting pulled over by the joke police, but comedy isn’t a crime,” said Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon. “We’ll never stop fighting to defend that freedom.”
 

• O’Brien, who says the law stifles her ability to share political humor, explained: “‘Hawai’i’ and ‘Aloha’ are both rooted in ‘ha’ – the breath of life. No ‘ha’ means no aloha and no Hawai’i. Our lawmakers are trying to steal inalienable rights from our ‘ohana’ [friends].”

 
The Hawaii Office of the Public Defender warned that the bill would chill free speech. The Motion Picture Association requested an exemption for parody and satire. Despite these objections, the legislature passed it nearly unanimously.
 
While this might sound like a one-off overreach, the path Hawaii is treading is familiar—and dangerous.
 

• In Germany, people are criminally prosecuted for memes, fake quotes, or insulting politicians. Authorities call it protecting democracy; in reality, it stifles dissent. That’s what laws like S.B. 2687 do. They weaponize vague language to intimidate people into silence. If the government decides what counts as a joke or what harms a candidate’s image, it holds veto power over speech itself.

 
The First Amendment protects offensive jokes, political parody, and even biting satire – not because they’re always tasteful, but because they keep power in check.
 
This case is about far more than internet humor. It’s about the freedom to criticize, to joke, and to laugh at those in charge. If this law stands, it won’t stop at memes. It’ll spread. And the joke will be on us.

​Is teaching yoga on the beach a protected First Amendment activity? Yes, according to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed a lower court’s ruling and found that banning group yoga classes on the beach was an unconstitutional restriction on protected speech.
 
This case centered on Steven Hubbard and Amy Baack, yoga instructors who teach free classes in San Diego's shoreline parks. A 2024 city ordinance banned “teaching yoga” to groups of four or more in these parks, labeling it a prohibited “service” and excluding it from the city’s definition of “expressive activity.” This targeted restriction meant that yoga classes – even donation-based ones – were criminalized on the beach, while other forms of teaching or performance were permitted.
 
The Ninth Circuit firmly disagreed with the city’s claim that yoga instruction wasn’t expressive. The court recognized that yoga classes often involve the communication of philosophy and spiritual practice. As Buddha said, it is one way through which “peace comes from within.” The Ninth ruled: “A person who teaches yoga is communicating and disseminating information about this philosophy and practice through speech and expressive movements.”
 
The court found San Diego’s ordinance was “not content neutral” and therefore “presumptively unconstitutional.” Judge Holly Thomas wrote: “The Ordinance defines regulated speech by particular subject matter, drawing distinctions based on the message a speaker conveys.” That’s the very definition of a content-based restriction that must face strict scrutiny.
 
The city failed that test. It offered no credible reason why yoga posed a special threat to public safety or enjoyment. “The City has provided no explanation as to how teaching yoga would lead to harmful consequences,” the court stated, adding that “the Ordinance fails as hopelessly underinclusive” since it allows many similar group activities, from tai chi practitioners to actors performing Shakespeare.
 
The ruling is a reminder that expressive conduct isn’t limited to marches or speeches. It includes shared mindfulness, physical conditioning, and philosophical reflection – even on a beach. As the opinion explained, “The loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”
 
The City of San Diego sought to narrowly define what counts as protected expression. The Ninth Circuit refused. And in doing so, it affirmed that public spaces are meant to be alive with diverse forms of expression – including yoga mats in the sand and sun salutations by the sea.
 
So, San Diego – you need to be more flexible!

The great German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that if you board the wrong train, it is no use running down the corridor in the opposite direction. More than a few influencers, international organizations, and commentators need to change trains on the subject of religious freedom in Ukraine.
 
It all began with criticism of Ukraine President Zelenskyy’s restrictions imposed on the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and on some clergy and activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). In August 2024, Zelenskyy formalized these restrictive policies by signing amendments to a law that allows his government to ban religious organizations in Ukraine. In December, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized Ukraine for establishing “disproportionate restrictions on the freedom to manifest one’s religion or belief.” In April, the U.S. Commission on International Freedom chimed in, calling on Ukraine to “ensure that enforcement of the amendments comply with international human rights standards.”
 
Earlier this year, President Trump – perhaps misled by commentary in the blogosphere – called Zelenskyy a “dictator.” This leaves many Americans to wonder: Have the United States and NATO been supporting a dictator and what one podcaster calls a “very dark force” that delights in persecuting Christians?
 
This is a good time to take a deep breath and reassess what is really going on in Ukraine. It is time to recognize where the real dark forces are located in this war zone.

• The Ukrainian law is partially a response to the ROC, led by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, a former Soviet-era KGB operative who propagandizes for his close ally and patron, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kirill echoes Putin’s imperialistic Russky mir ideology, which blends nationalism with religion, asserting a civilizational right to control neighboring countries. Kirill has even dispatched priests to sprinkle holy water on Russia’s nuclear-tipped ICBMs.

Russians refer to the fusion of this state and the church as symphonia, in which the two play a supporting and complementary tune. If ever there was a good argument for the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the establishment of an official religion, it is Patriarch Kirill and his cheek-by-jowl connection to the Kremlin.
 
The Ukrainian law affects the UOC, which the ROC considers to be a branch of its church. When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, many clergy and laity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Moscow Patriarchate severed relations with Moscow, but some ambiguity remains. The Ukrainian law asserts authority to regulate religious organizations with ties to foreign powers with which the country is at war. Unlike the Russian-occupied eastern portion of the country, no churches have been closed, and no worship ceremonies invaded by soldiers wielding truncheons.
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• In contrast, the ROC’s fellow travelers in Ukraine are wedded to a Russian regime that crushes churches in the occupied parts of Ukraine, murdering, torturing, and imprisoning Evangelical Christian Baptists, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, and Muslims. According to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, 67 clergy members of several faiths have been murdered in Ukraine’s occupied eastern provinces, along with the destruction of 640 places of worship.

 

• This is the “Christian” faith that operated as a fifth column of spies and propagandists within Ukraine. We are rightly proud as Americans of our commitment to religious freedom. But a country being bombed and torn apart cannot be expected to tolerate those who use religion as a shield for espionage and enemy propaganda.

President Trump took a commendable risk for peace in the early days of his second term by reaching out to Putin. Rather than seize this opportunity to solidify his position, however, Putin met the president’s open hand with a slap in the face. The Russian president violated his own Easter ceasefire, firing rockets into city centers in Ukraine, targeting civilians.
 
Ukraine is a country that protects religious diversity. The free expression of religion is enjoyed by Eastern Orthodox worshippers, Ukrainian Greek Catholics and Protestants, Muslims, and Jews, one of whom is now the nation’s president. In other words, it shouldn’t be confused with Russia.

You might support or loathe the views of the Family Research Council, which advocates traditional marriage and gender roles. But does its advocacy of traditional values make it a “hate group” worthy of being lumped in with the Klu Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party? And if it is, could the same be said for the Roman Catholic Church? How about two Catholic men from the American heartland, one of them now the Vice President of the United States and the other Pope Leo XIV? Are they terrorist adjacent?
 
These far-out assertions are natural conclusions of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which produces a “hate map” that was helpful to an outraged man who took a gun in 2012 to the headquarters of the Family Research Council with the intention, he told prosecutors, of killing as many staffers as he could. Thanks to the heroic intervention of one security guard, the gunman only managed to wound that one person. The SPLC has since designated a number of conservative, but by no means radical, organizations and people as “hate groups.” Now Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) are appealing to the FBI to direct field offices to not rely on the characterizations of the SPLC.
 
Thanks to the efforts of Sen. Grassley and the forthcoming response from FBI Director Kash Patel, we now know the role that SPLC played in inspiring the infamous memo from the Richmond, Virginia, field office that targeted “radical traditional Catholics.” The FBI’s assessment of traditional Catholics was rooted in smears from the SPLC, which Sen. Grassley correctly calls “thoroughly discredited and biased.”
 
A public release of internal FBI documents by Sen. Grassley undercuts dismissive statements from former FBI Director Christopher Wray that the Richmond memo was the product of one field office. Documents unearthed by Sen. Grassley reveal that the Richmond field office consulted with Bureau offices in Louisville, Portland, and Milwaukee to paint Catholics who adhere to “conservative family values/roles” as being as dangerous as Islamist jihadists. There were similar efforts in recent years in Los Angeles and Indianapolis.
 
The original memo from the Richmond field office found SPLC as a trustworthy enough source to assert that there will be a “likely increase” in threats from “radical traditional Catholics” in combination with “racially and ethnically-motivated violent extremism.”
 
Another memo produced by Sen. Grassley reveals the conclusion of the FBI’s Directorate of Intelligence after the memo was revealed and the Bureau found itself mired in a scandal. The FBI concluded: “The SPLC has a history of having to issue apologies and retract groups and individuals they have identified as being extremist or hate groups.” But this should have been clear to the FBI for years.
 
It is helpful, at least, that an FBI assistant director wrote that since the Richmond memo implicated First Amendment rights by targeting “a branch of a religious group,” that “there should have been more care to caveat this information.” Another memo from a leader of the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division added that the FBI does not now use the phrase “radical traditionalist Catholic” and that “the FBI does not open investigations based upon First Amendment-protected activities … Political or religious affiliations (such as ‘far-right’) are not used to describe or identify violent extremists.”
 
Those critiques are welcome, although they might be seen as institutional posterior coverage in light of the firestorm ignited by the Richmond memo.
 
Let us hope that this searing moment for the FBI serves as a permanent reminder to take great care in surveilling Americans for the free exercise of religion and political expression, whether of the left or the right. Partisans may throw around loose accusations about their ideological opposites (and certainly some on the right do that), but the loose standards of the blogosphere make for poor criteria in terrorist threat assessments.
 
And above all, it is time for the FBI to end its reliance on the characterizations of the scandal-ridden Southern Poverty Law Center as a source of reliable information.

Protect The 1st has followed the long, sorrowful saga of the Illinois Invest in Kids scholarship program, a lifeline for very low-income families to escape failing and dangerous public schools with scholarships to quality private schools.

This 75 percent tax credit served kids whose families were below 300 percent of the poverty level. When the public teachers union flexed its muscle, however, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) and state lawmakers bowed to the union’s raw political power and let the program die.

The Chicago Tribune writes: “Now these kids have reason to hope.”

What is that hope? The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), which passed the House and is now a part of the reconciliation bill before the Senate. The ECCA would provide $5 billion a year in tax credits for donations to scholarship-granting organizations for disadvantaged students nationwide to attend quality private schools.

The Tribune writes:

“Opponents of school choice believe that education is a zero-sum game, and that private schools are a threat to the public system. We believe the opposite – that a thriving private and charter system and a strong traditional public system create an educational ecosystem that can serve everyone’s needs. There are things private schools can do that public ones can’t, and the same is very much true in reverse.

“School choice remains popular in Illinois, with a clear majority of residents supporting the concept. More importantly, choice introduces accountability into a system that, for decades, has faced little real competition. When parents have options, schools must respond – whether by improving curriculum, addressing student behavior issues more effectively, or offering stronger support for struggling learners.”

The Tribune concludes:

“Springfield has moved on from the thousands of low-income students it left behind a year and a half ago. Now, the ECCA is their best shot. We hope that the Senate passes a version of the reconciliation bill that includes this program.”

Jesus told his followers that whatever “you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do for me.” He didn’t specify anyone who might be outside of the orbit of care, be they Samaritans or Greeks. Nor did he say that one must proselytize while providing food, clothing, or shelter to the needy.

It is on that basis that the Catholic Charities Bureau, the social ministry of the Catholic Diocese in Wisconsin, provides services for the disabled, the elderly, and the impoverished regardless of their faith. This generous, ecumenical care may square with Jesus, but it fell short of the high standards of Wisconsin regulators and the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The state court ruled that because the charity’s care was given to people of all faiths, it is not inherently religious. For that reason, the charity was forced into the state unemployment compensation system instead of being allowed, as other religions are, to pay into its own more efficient network.

The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court – from one end of the ideological spectrum to the other – did not hold back in forcefully overturning this Wisconsin ruling on Thursday. “It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain ‘neutrality’ between religion and religion,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the Court. “There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one.”

Justice Sotomayor found that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had engaged in “denominational discrimination” for holding that Catholic Charities was not religious in character because it serves people of all faiths. The state, she wrote, had wrongly imposed “a denominational preference by differentiating between religions based on theological choices.”

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion criticizing the state court for ruling that the Catholic charity is a “distinct organization” from the Diocese.

“Both the basic principles of church autonomy and the history of religious corporations establish that religious institutions are more than the corporate entities that they form,” Justice Thomas wrote. “It follows that the government may not use such entities as a means of regulating the internal governance of religious institutions.” He added: “The First Amendment’s guarantee of church autonomy gives religious institutions the right to define their internal governance structures without state interference.”

Justice Sotomayor made a key distinction sure to resonate:
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“When the government distinguishes among religions based on theological differences in their provision of services, it imposes a denominational preference that must satisfy the highest level of judicial scrutiny. Because Wisconsin has transgressed that principle without the tailoring necessary to survive such scrutiny, the judgment of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is reversed.”

​Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Christian-owned, women-only spa in Washington State must serve biological males if they identify as transgender. That means, dissenting judge Kenneth Lee wrote, that “under edict from the state, women – and even girls as young as 13 years old – must be nude alongside patrons with exposed male [parts] as they receive treatment.”
 
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling is as constitutionally suspect as it is nonsensical. Olympus Spa is a Korean business drawing from a centuries-old cultural heritage. Such spas “require their patrons to be fully naked, as they sit in communal saunas and undergo deep-tissue scrubbing of their entire bodies in an open area filled with other unclothed patrons.” As such, they separate patrons by sex in accordance with their religious beliefs – which merits protection under the U.S. Constitution.
 
The facts of the case are fairly straightforward. When a pre-op transgender woman was apparently denied entry into Olympus Spa, she filed a discrimination complaint with the state’s Human Rights Commission. Eventually, Olympus brought suit on First Amendment grounds, arguing that the state’s enforcement action violated its free speech, free exercise of religion, and free association rights.
 
The Ninth Circuit dismissed the case, finding that the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) “did not impermissibly burden” those rights. The court majority asserted that the law is both neutral and generally applicable, and that the burden imposed was “no greater than was essential to eliminate discriminatory conduct.” The court further found that the spa’s activities did not constitute expressive activity.
 
Judge Lee, a Korean American, took issue with the majority’s findings – and particularly with its statutory interpretation of WLAD. The plain text, as Lee points out, bars discrimination based on “sexual orientation” and not gender identity. Moreover, he writes, the majority’s broad reading of the statute has the effect of discriminating against other protected classes – in this case, a discrete racial group of practicing Christians.
 
Lee writes:
 
“The Washington Human Rights Commission threatened prosecution against a protected class – racial minority members who want to share their cultural traditions – to favor a group that is not even a protected class under the statute. To be clear, transgender persons, like all people, deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. But showing respect does not mean the government can distort the law and impose its will on the people the law was intended to protect.”
 
Legitimate questions of statutory interpretation aside, we agree with Olympus Spa that it has strong First Amendment claims in need of recognition. Businesses, like individuals, have First Amendment rights (see Masterpiece Cakeshop). If this case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, it is likely these principles will be applied.
 
Protect The 1st will report on any further developments in this case.

​It was bound to happen. Is AI-generated content “speech” for the purposes of the First Amendment? A federal district court in Florida, for now at least, says “no.”
 
The circumstances surrounding Garcia v. Character Technologies are tragic. Here’s the background.
 
Character Technologies is an AI software company that allows users to interact with anthropomorphic chatbots, whose conversational abilities are designed to mimic those of real people on traditional messaging apps. The company does this using the same technology underlying products like ChatGPT – namely, large language models. In fact, the company’s founders first developed the application while working for Google on its LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) program.
 
Character Technologies became available to the public in late 2022. Two years later, the app had been downloaded more than 10 million times.
 
One of those 10 million users was 14-year-old Sewell Setzer. Just weeks after downloading Character AI, Setzer became outright addicted, spending more and more time with the chatbot characters, including a version of Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen. He withdrew from social interactions, quit his basketball team and began exhibiting signs of mental illness. Setzer’s parents eventually confiscated his phone, but as many children often do – he found it.
 
On February 28, 2025, Setzer sent the following messages:
 
Sewell: I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany.
 
Daenerys Targaryen Character: I love you too, Daenero6. Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.
 
Sewell: What if I told you I could come home right now?
 
Daenerys Targaryen Character: ... please do my sweet king
 
He shot himself shortly thereafter.
 
Character Technologies sought to defend itself against the Setzer parents’ lawsuit by invoking the First Amendment. The company argued that its output constitutes speech that its users have a constitutional right to receive.
 
In an order ruling on Character Technologies’ motion to dismiss, Judge Ann Conway accepted the defendants’ argument that Character Technologies can assert the First Amendment rights of its users, noting that “Courts regularly recognize the First Amendment rights of listeners.” (see: Citizens United) But Judge Conway also rejected the argument that “words strung together by an LLM are speech.”
 
Courts have recognized film, music, video games and even social media content moderation as forms of protected speech because they are inherently expressive. Character Technologies analogizes itself to these mediums and activities. But, as Conway points out, the “Court’s decision as to the First Amendment protections Character A.I. receives, if any, does not turn on whether Character A.I. is similar to other mediums that have received First Amendment protections; rather, the decision turns on how Character A.I. is similar to the other mediums.”
 
One way it is not similar is that your average movie was scripted, acted, and directed by humans. A chatbot is programed by people, but its responsive calculations are not the result of sentience. It therefore cannot engage in “expressive” activity.
 
Extending speech rights for a coded product – devoid of any directed, active expression – is ludicrous on its face; but there’s no doubt we’ll see this sort of thinking again as AI becomes more versatile. Are the rights of people behind this technology implicated? Justice Amy Coney Barrett has already raised questions about this stance. In her Moody v. NetChoice concurrence, she asked:
 
“What if a platform’s owners hand the reins to an [A.I.] tool and ask it simply to remove ‘hateful’ content? If the [A.I.] relies on large language models to determine what is ‘hateful’ and should be removed, has a human being with First Amendment rights made an inherently expressive ‘choice . . . not to propound a particular point of view?’”
 
Courts will no doubt continue to grapple with the legal status of AI-generated content. In litigating outcomes, product creators should vigorously invoke and defend their constitutional rights. Their products probably cannot.

​Steven Greenhut in Reason cautions those on the left and right who want to call a Constitutional convention to revamp our founding document that anyone “who has watched the moronic sausage-making in Congress and state legislatures should be wary of opening Pandora’s Box.”
 
Greenhut points to the United Kingdom to get a sense of where we’d be if the Bill of Rights were up for grabs. Every year, thousands of Britons are detained, questioned, and prosecuted for online posts. Greenhut recounts the story of a 74-year-old grandmother who was arrested by four police officers for holding a sign in proximity to a Glasgow abortion clinic reading, “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.’”
 
He writes that in contrast to the “Congress shall make no law” clarity of the First Amendment, the British speech code allows such quashing of speech to “protect national security,” “territorial integrity” “public safety,” “disorder or crime,” “health or morals,” etc., etc.
 
“A constitutional amendment stating, ‘no law’ is more protective than a statute with asterisks and exceptions,” Greenhut concludes. “With the political Left devoted to limiting speech based on its fixations on race and gender and the political Right's willingness to, say, deport students who take verboten positions on the war in Gaza and malign reporters as enemies of the people, I'd hate to see how speech protections would fare in a refashioned constitution. Traditionally, the Left has taken a ‘living and breathing’ approach, insisting its plain words and founders' intent are up for reinterpretation.
 
“Sadly, modern conservatives, who previously defended originalism, seem ready to ditch the Constitution when it hinders their policy aims.”
 
He quotes Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis from a 1927 free-speech case, Whitney v. California, who noted that the founders, who had won a violent revolution, were not cowards who wanted order over liberty. The Justice wrote: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
 
Greenhut concluded: “We don't need to revisit the Constitution, but to uphold the protections already within it.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Apache Stronghold v. United States, about which we’ve written at length. But the Court also denied review in another important First Amendment case on the same day: L.M. v. Town of Middleborough, which concerns the limits of student self-expression in schools.
 
The case involves a student at Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts, who was prevented by faculty from attending class when he wore a T-shirt that read, “There Are Only Two Genders.” According to the facts of the case, Nichols Middle School actively encouraged student expression when it came to endorsing the view that there are many genders, but would not tolerate the opposing view. 
 
The student, known as L.M., brought suit, alleging First Amendment violations based in part on viewpoint discrimination. The critical precedent for student expression in schools is Tinker v. Des Moines, a Vietnam-era case that firmly established the principle that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
 
Tinker involved students wearing black armbands as a form of silent protest against the Vietnam war. Whatever your beliefs about the gender identity debate, it is similarly an issue of intense discussion throughout the media and larger public. As such, similar legal reasoning – that prohibited student expression must “materially and substantially interfere” with the functioning of the school to warrant censorship – should apply.
 
Using the Tinker test, however, both the federal district court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied relief. The lower courts followed the judgment of school administrators that this passive speech could trigger and cause harm to other, vulnerable students, demonstrating the inherent subjectivity of this area of law. Justice Samuel Alito called this standard “vague” and sure to be “permissive” of censorship.
 
Indeed, in an impassioned dissent from the Supreme Court’s certiorari denial, Justice Alito (joined by Justice Clarence Thomas) took heated issue with the lower courts’ findings, particularly as they relate to the First Circuit’s dismissal of LM’s viewpoint discrimination claims. He wrote:
 
“The court below erred, and badly so: the rule that viewpoint-based restrictions on speech are almost never allowed is not a new principle ... To the contrary, viewpoint neutrality has long been seen as going to ‘the very heart of the First Amendment.’ The First Circuit was wrong to expel this bedrock constitutional safeguard from our schools.
 
“The First Circuit also watered down the test adopted in Tinker for determining whether a school’s restriction of student speech is allowed. Because free speech is the default and censorship the exception, Tinker set forth a ‘demanding standard.’ We held that a school can restrict speech when it has ‘evidence’ that such restrictions are ‘necessary’ to ‘avoid material and substantial interference with schoolwork or discipline.’ Thus, absent a ‘specific showing’ of such a disruption – like ‘threats or acts of violence on school premises’ – this justification for suppressing student speech does not apply. Under this standard, NMS (Nichols Middle School) had no right to censor L.M.” [Citations omitted.]
 
We agree with Justice Alito that the Court should have granted review in this case – if for no other reason than to clarify the Tinker ruling, which has been subject to wildly divergent interpretations over the years.
 
The First Circuit’s rewriting of the Tinker test leaves a lot up to speculative faculty opinions. As Justice Alito writes, it “demands that a federal court abdicate its responsibility to safeguard students’ First Amendment rights and instead defer to school officials’ assessment of the meaning and effect of speech.”
 
In an increasingly censorious world, that seems an insufficient safeguard.

​When a federal judge this week struck down President Trump’s executive order targeting the WilmerHale law firm, ruling the order unconstitutional, it was the third recent slap-down of his efforts to punish individual firms. It also brought into stark relief how rapidly this administration is moving in two radically different directions on the First Amendment.
 
On the positive side, the president issued on day one an executive order reaffirming this administration’s commitment to the First Amendment. That order fairly criticized the Biden administration for “exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”
 
Following up on that order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged to “close the book” on “the weaponization of America’s own government to silence, censor, and suppress the free speech of ordinary Americans.” He fulfilled this promise by shuttering the agency’s Global Engagement Center, which secretly tried to kill conservative publications and served as a Trojan horse for filtering content moderation requests to social media platforms.
 
On the other hand, Trump has repeatedly used executive orders to go after past political opponents, putting law firms they had been associated with in the crosshairs for their political leanings.
 
This week, Senior Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia essentially said “enough.” He granted summary judgment in favor of WilmerHale, finding the president’s order violated key First Amendment protections and constituted an improper attempt to punish WilmerHale for its legal advocacy.
 
As with other executive orders, this one had barred WilmerHale lawyers from federal buildings, ordered a review of client contracts, and suspended the firm’s security clearances. Any of these measures alone would have been enough to make it impossible for WilmerHale’s 1,100 lawyers to represent many of their clients, hobbling the careers of those lawyers and the cases of their clients.
 
Judge Leon found these measures retaliatory, noting they stemmed from the firm’s representation of clients and causes President Trump dislikes, especially WilmerHale’s long association with former special counsel Robert Mueller.
 
Judge Leon rejected the administration’s effort to defend its order piece by piece, but instead compared it to “gumbo” with the opening section condemning the firm for the hiring of Robert Mueller to justify the later “meaty ingredients – e.g., the Andouille, the okra, the tomatoes, the crab, the oysters.” But, Judge Leon wrote, it is the opening section that vents on Robert Mueller, “the roux” which “holds everything together. A gumbo is served and eaten with the ingredients together, and so too must the sections of the Order be addressed together … this gumbo gives the Court heartburn.” 
 
One doesn’t have to be a fan of the lengthy Mueller “Russian collusion” investigation to share Judge Leon’s heartburn. Leon warned that upholding the order would betray the vision of the Founders. Judge Leon’s opinion finds the executive order to be a grand tour of violated First Amendment rights – from retaliation for speech, to viewpoint discrimination, interference with petition rights, and infringement of free association. The judge wrote: “The Order shouts through a bullhorn: If you take on causes disfavored by President Trump, you will be punished!”
 
The parallels to the administration’s enjoined orders against Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling are equally clear. Judge John Bates, in blocking an action against law firm Jenner & Block, quoted the Supreme Court in a major precedent, National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo (2024), one that ought to make it clear to conservatives what it would feel like if the shoe were on the other foot. Judge Bates wrote:
 
“More subtle but perhaps more pernicious is the message the order sends to the lawyers whose unalloyed advocacy protects against governmental viewpoint becoming government-imposed orthodoxy. This order, like the others, seeks to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers. It thus violates the Constitution, and the Court will enjoin its operation in full.”
 
Especially concerning to these jurists was the orders’ use of federal contracts to coerce firms and clients. As Judge Leon wrote, that is coercion, not policy. The adversarial system depends on lawyers being free to take on controversial cases without fear of retribution. Nine firms settled to avoid similar orders. WilmerHale chose to fight – and won a sweeping ruling for the First Amendment and for the principle that legal advocacy must remain free from political interference.
 
With these precedents in place, we hope it is clear to President Trump that attacks on law firms are going to continue to hit a brick wall, one that likely extends all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.
 
A better way forward is to drop this fruitless campaign of harassment and return to what worked so well for President Trump early on – defending the First Amendment.

​The U.S. Supreme Court today denied the Western Apache’s last appeal to protect their sacred lands from being transformed into a copper mine. The way is now clear to transfer this parcel of the Tonto National Forest, Oak Flat, from the federal government to a multinational mining company, Resolution Copper.

Justice Neil Gorsuch was joined in an impassioned dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas. It is masterfully reasoned, leaving one to wonder not just about the blatant injustice of this land deal for the Apache, but the implications for the religious freedom of other Americans in the future.

The Background

Gorsuch goes into great detail explaining the history of the Apaches’ connection to Oak Flat and its central place in their religion. He quotes the cert petition explaining the importance of Oak Flat:

“Western Apaches believe that the site is the dwelling place of the Ga’an – ‘saints’ or ‘holy spirits’ that lie at ‘the very foundation of [their] religion … ‘They come from the ground,’ and they serve as ‘messengers between Usen, the Creator, and [Apaches] in the physical world.’

“Faithful to these beliefs, tribal members have worshipped at Oak Flat for centuries, conducting there a number of religious ceremonies that cannot take place anywhere else.”

Justice Gorsuch goes into detail about Apache ceremonies, including three-day coming-of-age-rituals for Apache girls, in which they gather plants while covered in white clay. This mirrors the Apache creation story in which a white-painted woman came out of the earth. Gorsuch quotes the plaintiff, the Apache Stronghold, which wrote that the white clay is meant to “imprint” the spirit of Oak Flat in the young women.

Now, Justice Gorsuch writes, tribal members believe the destruction of Oak Flat “will close off the portal to the Creator forever and will completely devastate the Western Apaches’ spiritual lifeblood.”

The Law

Gorsuch details obligations in an 1852 treaty between the Apaches and the government to recognize the sacred status of Oak Flat. Those obligations were overturned when legislators attached an 11th hour rider to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, hiding it in a bill that was 698 pages long.

Justice Gorsuch proceeds to dissect and expose the illogical Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that will now allow the multinational mining company to destroy Oak Flat. Today’s motion puts at risk the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was passed by Congress in 1993 to protect the free exercise of religion from “substantial burdens” by the federal government.

The Ninth Circuit got around RFRA by turning to a precedent, Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Assn. (1988) that involved a First Amendment challenge to a plan to construct a road on federal land near sacred tribal sites. Gorsuch writes:

“On the Ninth Circuit’s telling, Lyng set forth a special test for analyzing whether the government’s ‘disposition’ of its real property runs afoul of the Free Exercise Clause … That test, the Ninth Circuit said, permits the government to do as it pleases with its property as long as it has no ‘tendency to coerce individuals into acting contrary to their religious beliefs’ and does not ‘discriminate against or among religious adherents.’”

The Result

Justice Gorsuch notes that courts have had no qualms upholding other laws restricting the government’s power to dispose of its real property. The Endangered Species Act, for example, required the halting of a federal dam to protect the “snail darter.” But no such protections can be afforded to the religion of the Apaches.

The way is now clear for Resolution Copper to blast tunnels that will result in a crater 1,000 feet deep and nearly two miles wide. While courts have acknowledged that this will permanently destroy the Apaches’ historical place of worship, preventing them from ever worshipping there, it does not – according the Ninth Circuit opinion now upheld –amount to a “substantial burden” of the First Amendment religious freedom rights of the Apache. Justice Gorsuch writes:

“Just imagine if the government sought to demolish a historic cathedral on so questionable a claim of legal reasoning. I have no doubt we would find the case worth our time. Faced with the government’s plan to destroy an ancient site of tribal worship, we owe the Apaches no less. They may live far from Washington, D.C., and their history and religious practices may be unfamiliar to many. But that should make no difference.”

He ended his dissent with a quote from the Court’s 2018 opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop:

“Popular religious views are easy enough to defend. It is in protecting unpopular religious beliefs that we prove this country’s commitment to … religious freedom.”

In his conclusion, Justice Gorsuch writes:
​
“While this Court enjoys the power to choose which cases it will hear, its decision to shuffle this case off our docket without a full airing is a grievous mistake – one with consequences that threaten to reverberate for generations."

​Zooey Zephyr and Laurel Libby could not be more different. Zephyr is a transwoman and activist for trans rights. Libby is an acerbic critic of allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports.
 
Zephyr is a Democratic state representative in bright-red Montana. Libby is a Republican state representative in bright-blue Maine. But they do have one significant thing in common: both were forcibly silenced by their respective legislatures.
 
In 2023, during a debate on restricting gender-affirming care for minors, Zephyr claimed that such a move would exacerbate the high rate of suicide among transgender teens. When she claimed that those who voted for the bill would have “blood on your hands,” Zephyr was expelled, banned from the House chamber for the remainder of the legislative year. This made her absent from the discussions, deliberations, and horse-trading that occurs as Montana passed a housing bill and the state budget.
 
“There will be 11,000 Montanans whose representative is missing,” Zephyr said. She took legal action to restore her right to appear in the chamber, but her legal move became moot when the legislative year ended.
 
Why was Laurel Libby silenced? She put up a social media post showing a transgender high school athlete who had come in fifth place in pole vaulting last year in a boys’ event, only to win first place a year later in the girls’ state championship. When she refused a demand by her Democratic colleagues to remove the post, Libby was censured and denied the right to vote.
 
You might love, loathe, or be indifferent to either legislator and her cause. But both were commenting on an issue that is inherently political and can only be settled in our society by political means. With such an emotional issue, this is sure to entail some hot words. That’s democracy.
 
What’s not democracy is that in both Montana and Maine – where one party controls the governorship, the state House, and Senate – a member of the opposing party, and therefore her constituents, were silenced.
 
This was so egregious that last week, the U.S. Supreme Court used its emergency docket to issue a stay in the expulsion of Rep. Libby from the Maine chamber. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson protested in a dissent that the Court had come to rely too much on the “short fuse” of the emergency docket. When dealing with the rights of legislatures, the Court has reason to move carefully. But if the Court had not acted, how many more months or years would Libby be forbidden from representing her constituents?
 
And without a temporary restoration from the Court, if Libby were to ultimately win her lawsuit, how would she then be compensated for lost votes and a ruined term in office?
 
Legislatures do have a right – and sometimes good reason – to punish and even expel members for extreme behavior. But the same government that cannot silence one individual should not be allowed to silence a legislator and the thousands she represents.
 
The Court made the right call in favor of the First Amendment.

​Sen. Tim Scott’s latest legislative effort – the High-Quality Charter Schools Act – should be welcomed by anyone who values liberty, educational opportunity, and the full expression of our First Amendment rights. The South Carolina Republican is introducing a 75 percent federal tax credit for charitable donations to nonprofit charter school organizations with proven excellence. The aim is clear – to break down the financial barriers that prevent communities from opening the schools their children need.
 
“No matter their background, race or zip-code, every child deserves access to a good school,” Sen. Scott said in his introduction of this bill. “Millions of families – including thousands across South Carolina – choose charter schools for the high-quality education they provide.” He said that this bill will strengthen the best educational opportunities for families that need it the most.
 
For Protect The 1st, this bill isn’t just sound policy. It is a way to fulfill the promise of the First Amendment. Parents have a right, grounded in part in that Amendment, to guide their children’s education in ways that reflect their values and beliefs across generations. School choice empowers families to act on that right, whether through religious schools, charter schools, or other educational models.
 
The First Amendment protects both free speech and religious liberty. School choice legislation like this honors both. It enables families to seek out educational environments – secular or religious – that align with their convictions, without government interference.
 
We’ve seen this principle in action with the Educational Choice for Children Act. That measure, now part of the reconciliation package before the Senate, would offer similar tax credits for donations to organizations that fund scholarships for private and religious schools. It’s about using private donations to give families more options and students better chances. In Sen. Scott’s bill and the ECCA, money comes from voluntary donations, not state tax dollars.
 
Moreover, contrary to arguments by critics, there is abundant evidence showing that competition from school choice actually improves public schools. Out of 28 studies that explored the causal relationship between school choice and the performance of public schools, 25 found that school choice improves educational attainment in traditional school systems. “In terms of social-scientific validity, that’s a slam dunk,” writes Alexander William Salter, economist at Texas Tech University. When families have options, everyone wins.
 
Sen. Scott’s focus on charter schools adds another dimension, supporting schools that often serve low-income and minority students. It offers alternatives where the public system has failed. Sen. Scott’s bill respects American pluralism and helps close the gap between educational ideals and the lived reality of American families. Perhaps most important, it gives parents greater control over the destiny of their children. It does this by supporting institutions – charter, religious, and independent – that reflect America’s diversity while enabling the fullest exercise of the First Amendment.

​Protect The 1st is disappointed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 4-4 deadlock that blocks public funding of a religious charter school in Oklahoma.
 
The ruling, composed of only two sentences, leaves in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision to deny St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School its prospective status as the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school.
 
This dispute started in 2023, when Oklahoma’s charter school board okayed an application by the archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the diocese of Tulsa to create St. Isidore. The school’s plan centered around online learning to address the demand for quality instruction across the Sooner State’s charter school network.
 
Soon after, Oklahoma attorney general Gentner Drummond went to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, asking it to invalidate the charter board’s contract with the school. In a 7-1 opinion, the court ruled against allowing public charter funds to support St. Isidore, holding the funding of online religious schools by the state to be unconstitutional.

In her lone dissent, Justice Dana Kuehn made the compelling point that taking the state’s money would make St. Isidore a publicly funded school, but not a “public school.” Judge Kuehn wrote:
 
“St. Isidore would not become a ‘state actor’ merely by contracting with the State to provide a choice in educational opportunities. By allowing St. Isidore to operate a virtual charter school, the State would not be establishing, aiding, or favoring any particular religious organization. To the contrary: Excluding private entities from contracting for functions, based solely on religious affiliation, would violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
 
Indeed, as long as a religious school meets the state’s teaching requirements for math, science, English and other core subjects, it should be eligible for any public benefits made available to any other private school. Oklahoma’s rejection of this common sense, guiding principle is based on the antiquated Blaine Amendments – anti-Catholic laws passed largely in the 19th century to prevent Catholic schools from receiving public funding. These laws, which exist in 37 states, remain in force as living relics of anti-Catholic bigotry from a bygone era.
 
Moreover, the Supreme Court of the United States has effectively ruled in three recent cases that “a State violates the Free Exercise Clause when it excludes religious observers from otherwise available public benefits.”
 
In Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, the Court ruled that a Missouri policy denying religious organizations access to playground resurfacing grants violated the Free Exercise Clause. In Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue, the Court held that a Montana state constitutional provision barring aid to any school “controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination” was similarly unconstitutional. And in Carson v. Makin, the Court found that Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement for otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments also failed to pass constitutional muster.
 
Attorney General Drummond, the de facto victor in this case, seems to believe that contracting with the state makes a charter school a public school, a position with far-reaching implications for future state contractors of any religious affiliation. We heartily agree with Justice Kuehn – and so apparently does at least half of the Supreme Court (Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself due to a likely conflict emanating from her former position at Notre Dame).
 
As the Alliance Defending Freedom – representing the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board – said in its certiorari petition:
 
“The Oklahoma Supreme Court’s conclusion that Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson ‘do not apply to the governmental action in this case’ fails along with the state-action premise on which it rests … St. Isidore is not a state actor, so the lower court’s talismanic invocation of the phrase ‘governmental action’ does not distinguish this Court’s cases.”
 
But there is good news amid the bad news – the recusal of Justice Amy Coney Barrett almost certainly tilted the balance against St. Isidore. This augurs well for future cases on the equal treatment of religious based schools, as the Court has already done in Carson v. Makin.
 
States should take this opportunity to repeal prejudiced Blaine Amendments, and maybe find another, future opportunity for action that doesn’t trigger a recusal. 

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), passed in 1993 with overwhelming bipartisan support, was crafted to provide a strong shield for religious liberty. It requires that any government action that substantially burdens religious exercise must be the least restrictive means of advancing a compelling government interest. This principle was not meant to expire or be casually overridden.
 
In a recent Supreme Court filing, the Biden Administration asserted that RFRA can be silently displaced by later statutes, even if Congress says nothing about overriding religious liberty. In a brief footnote, the government argued that if a later statute mandates action – even if it burdens religious exercise – it must override RFRA by default.
 
Perhaps that was to be expected from the Biden Administration, which did not make the freedom of religious exercise a priority. More troubling is that the current administration’s Solicitor General, Dean John Sauer, echoed this view in a letter to the Supreme Court in Apache Stronghold v. United States. Sauer reaffirmed the notion that the land-exchange statute at the heart of the case supersedes RFRA, simply because it came later and is “more specific.”
 
This theory invites the piecemeal erosion of civil liberties. If accepted, it would allow Congress – or perhaps even regulatory agencies – to nullify fundamental rights like religious freedom without ever saying so explicitly. All it takes is a newer law or rule that conflicts with RFRA, and the protections vanish.
 
That logic assumes Congress fully weighs the consequences for religious liberty every time it enacts a new law. It presumes that federal agencies act with constitutional clarity. In truth, lawmakers are not always so meticulous, and regulators have been known to ride roughshod over constitutional protections.
 
This framework has already emboldened efforts to undercut conscience protections in healthcare. Under this view, statutes that promote access to abortion or gender-transition procedures can override RFRA by mere implication – forcing doctors and hospitals to act against their beliefs, without any serious effort to reconcile those conflicts.
 
It is disappointing, to say the least, that a Trump Administration lawyer would continue this Biden-era legacy. Conservatives, especially those with commitments to religious liberty, should reject any legal doctrine that grants Congress or regulators an easy path to nullify core civil rights.
 
RFRA was designed to stand as a bulwark, not a speed bump. Allowing it to be bypassed by silence or implication is not just bad legal reasoning – it undermines a law that reinforces the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court declared in 2020 that “RFRA operates as a kind of super-statute, displacing the normal operations of other federal laws.”
 
The Supreme Court should now again affirm that RFRA remains fully in force.

​Under the leadership of Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the House Ways and Means Committee approved the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) on Wednesday as part of the tax package in President Trump’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill. This measure provides $20 billion in tax credits over the next four years to non-profit Scholarship Granting Organizations to pay private school tuition and educational materials for children throughout the United States.
 
“This is hopeful news for millions of American students and their parents,” said Bob Goodlatte, former Congressman and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Senior Policy Advisor to Protect The 1st. “Giving parents the ability to choose the best school for their children is a powerful expression of the First Amendment across the generations. Whether parents choose a private school that specializes in the sciences and technology, or the arts, or a religious school, they are free to make the best choice for their children.
 
“Our gratitude goes to Chairman Smith and all of his colleagues who stood behind the ECCA,” Goodlatte said. “We are also grateful to the followers of Protect The 1st who answered our call to let House Members know how important this legislation is to the families and children of America.
 
“We urge more Members to get behind the passage of this bill by the full House and the Senate, and its delivery to the president’s desk.”

​A federal court has blocked the government from transferring Oak Flat to a foreign-owned mining company, preserving the sacred Apache site while the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to hear the case. The ruling is a powerful rebuke of the federal rush to transfer the land, which Western Apaches consider a portal to the Creator and the center of their religious life.
 
Judge Steven P. Logan concluded that “there is no close question in this matter,” finding it “abundantly clear that the balance of equities ‘tips sharply’ in Plaintiff’s favor.” He emphasized that the Apaches face “a likelihood of irreparable harm should the transfer proceed” and that the case presents “serious questions on the merits that warrant the Supreme Court’s careful scrutiny.”
 
Oak Flat, which sits within Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, has been central to Apache religion for centuries. For 70 years, it has been protected from mining, until a 2014 defense bill provision set the stage for its transfer to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of a multinational firm partially owned by a Chinese corporation.
 
If the mine goes forward, the Apache will forever lose their ability to perform ceremonies tied to the land. Resolution Copper plans to turn Oak Flat into a two-mile-wide, 1,100-foot-deep crater. That devastation would be irreversible, a loss equal in scale to dynamiting the Vatican or using the stones of the Wailing Wall as a quarry.
 
Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. of Apache Stronghold responded bluntly: “The federal government and Resolution Copper have put Oak Flat on death row – they are racing to destroy our spiritual lifeblood and erase our religious traditions forever.”
 
The injunction prohibits the federal government from publishing its environmental report or finalizing the land transfer until the Supreme Court either denies review or issues a final ruling. That decision halts Resolution Copper’s plans to turn Oak Flat into a massive copper mine.
 
The court rejected the argument that Apache rituals could simply be relocated, stating it was “disinclined to minimize the importance of Oak Flat to the Apache’s belief system.” As previously noted by the court in 2021, the mine would “close off a portal to the Creator forever and will completely devastate the Western Apaches’ spiritual lifeblood.”
 
Judge Logan also dismissed the mining company’s claims about financial harm, noting they had invested in the land years before Congress authorized the transfer and did so “voluntarily.” In contrast, the Apaches risk losing access not just to land, but to their religious future: “They cannot choose to practice their religion at all once their sacred religious site is completely ‘obliterated,’” as one dissenting judge previously wrote.
 
Oak Flat is more than a legal fight. It’s a test of whether the U.S. government will honor its promise of religious liberty when it matters most – not just in speech, but in action. The Apache’s sacred ground deserves the same protection any church, synagogue, or mosque would be afforded. If the Apache lose, Americans of all faiths will lose as well.

​The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a civil rights investigation into Washington State Senate Bill 5375, a new law that forces Catholic priests to break the seal of confession or face criminal consequences. Signed into law on May 2 by Gov. Bob Ferguson (D-WA), the bill mandates that clergy report suspected child abuse, even if the information is obtained during a sacramental confession. The investigation focuses on whether the law violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom by criminalizing a practice that has been protected under both religious doctrine and U.S. legal tradition for more than two centuries.
 
SB 5375 adds clergy to the list of mandatory reporters of child abuse but does so with one key difference: it refuses to honor the long-standing legal and religious protection for confessional secrecy. Unlike doctors or lawyers, clergy are denied any exemption.
 
“This law demands that Catholic priests violate their deeply held faith in order to obey the law,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, calling the law a violation of the First Amendment. The Catholic Church, for its part, has warned that any priest who complies will be automatically excommunicated, reinforcing the absolute nature of the confessional seal in Catholic doctrine.
 
While the law is presented as a measure to protect children, its specific targeting of clergy reveals a more troubling agenda. Other professions maintain their confidentiality rights. Only clergy are denied theirs. That double standard invites constitutional scrutiny and raises the question of whether the law was crafted not just for protection, but for punishment. And it destroys any semblance of either religious neutrality or general applicability in the process.
 
Proponents argue that the law is necessary. But even if the goal is admirable, the means are unlawful. No predator will confess if he knows it will lead to arrest. The practical result is a law that does nothing to prevent abuse and everything to trample religious rights.
 
Gov. Ferguson dismissed the federal investigation as political. Yet it is the state’s law that politicizes religion, forcing clergy to choose between faith and compliance. That’s not accountability – it’s coercion.
 
The law is set to take effect on July 27. Unless blocked in court, priests in Washington State will soon face an impossible choice: obey the law and betray their faith, or uphold their faith and face legal punishment. That’s a choice no free society should ever demand of its citizens.

​Georgia Dillane did not attend the pro-Palestinian sit-in at Barnard College in March. She wasn’t out in the crowd; she was in the school’s WKCR radio studio anchoring a broadcast. Yet weeks later, she found herself accused by Barnard of “disorderly conduct, disruptive behavior, failure to comply, unauthorized entry, threatening behavior, and theft, vandalism or damage to property.” All for doing her job as a journalist.
 
Her colleague, Celeste Gamble, was at the scene, but only as a credentialed student reporter. She left when told by police to evacuate. There is no reason to believe she was anything but professional in her role as an objective observer. Yet, like Dillane, Gamble received emails from Barnard’s CARES (Community Accountability, Response, and Emergency Services) office demanding she meet without legal counsel to “refute any suggestion” of wrongdoing. Neither student had been disruptive. Neither had committed any known infraction. Yet they were treated as suspects.
 
Dillane’s offense appears to be little more than journalism. Her real “crime” was that a man later arrested by immigration authorities could be heard in her audio report. That connection, however tenuous, was enough to get her flagged as a potential wrongdoer just weeks before graduation, which had temporarily been put in jeopardy.
 
This is not an isolated incident. As we’ve noted in our coverage of Tufts Ph.D. student Rumeysa Orturk, moral panic over campus protests is now being weaponized against students with the flimsiest of links to the turmoil. Orturk, too, was no ringleader – just a signatory to a student op-ed, sober and serious, that was critical of Israel. Orturk was arrested and nearly deported before a judge intervened.
 
The recent spike in antisemitism on college campuses is real, troubling, and must be countered and kept from happening again. Hate speech and threats of violence must always be taken seriously by college administrations. But the solution cannot be to launch witch hunts against students who write, report, or question. Colleges and universities are where the principle of free inquiry – so foundational to our democracy – is meant to be practiced.
 
If journalism is rebranded as “disruption,” and if signing an op-ed becomes a pretext for arrest, we risk sliding from law enforcement into the realm of viewpoint persecution. Institutions like Barnard should be defending their students’ right to report and speak freely, not joining in the chorus of overreaction.
 
Even though New York’s shield law provides strong protections for journalists, including an absolute privilege for confidential sources, it doesn’t cover unpaid student reporters. Still, courts in the Second Circuit have found that student journalists can claim a qualified First Amendment privilege if they gather news for public distribution. Undermining their independence betrays both press freedom and the core mission of higher education.
 
In this age of guilt by association, the pursuit of actual wrongdoers can give way to the harassment of innocent people, even those who (unlike the two student journalists) have opinions we detest. We should remember freedom means protecting dissenters we disagree with, and standing up for process even when we’re angry. Otherwise, we lose not only our cool, but our constitutional compass.

​Quick, fill in the blanks below.
 
There is no God but _______ and _________ is his messenger.
 
At a loss? Here is some Q&A guidance:
 
“Who Is Allah?” Answer: “Allah is the one God who created the heavens and the earth, who has no equal and is all powerful.”
 
And this:
 
“Who is Muhammad?” Answer: “Muhammad (Peace be upon him) is the last & final Messenger of God. God gave him the Noble Quran.”
 
The above comes from a lesson plan from a class in Chatham Middle School in New Jersey. This and other material prompted a lawsuit by Libby Hilsenrath on behalf of her minor son when he was exposed to these questions and prompts in a seventh-grade World Cultures and Geography class.
 
In addition, Hilsenrath’s son was exposed to videos alternating between quotations from the Quran and a series of questions and answers about Islam. The course included an animated cartoon explaining the “Five Pillars of Islam.”
 
Hilsenrath sued, claiming that her son’s right to free expression of religion under the First Amendment were violated by this outright proselytizing of Islam. The teachings amounted to a government establishment of religion. A federal district court disagreed. Now the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has just upheld the ruling of the lower court.
 
Protect The 1st agrees with the Third Circuit’s opinion. The reasons why are critical to making the distinction between government establishment of a religion and teaching about a religion.
 
The Chatham Middle School’s World Cultures and Geography class included units focused on six different regions of the world. Students not only studied the history of these regions, but also their religion(s).
 
As we’ve long noted, schools cannot properly teach American history without examining the motivations and beliefs of Christians, from the Puritans to the Great Awakening, the abolitionists and the civil rights movement. Similarly, in class Chatham students were taught about the basic tenets of Christianity and its missionary impulse when studying Latin America, about Hinduism and Buddhism in Asia, and about Islam when studying the Middle East.
 
The curriculum referred to “what Muslims believe” instead of what students should believe. It was a respectful deep dive into Islam that will help any of the non-Muslim students in the class who might later travel to a Muslim country to understand the beliefs and sensibilities of their hosts.
 
In recent decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has looked back to history as a guide to what an actual establishment of religion – forbidden by the First Amendment – would look like. It would include government control over the doctrine and personnel of a religion. It might mandate attendance at worship and sanction those who did not. It might punish dissenters and restrict their political participation. It might provide support for the favored religion and give it a monopoly over certain civic functions.
 
The lesson plan of Chatham Middle School did not include any of these hallmarks of a religious establishment.
 
Just as it is wrong to use the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to shut down the teaching of the role of churches in American history, it also should not be used to keep children ignorant about the role of world religions. There is literally no way to understand modern Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, or Indonesia without reference to their Islamic heritage. 
 
In many secular contexts, there is a growing impulse – one could call it theophobia – regarding any reference to religion, or inclusion of religious schools or organizations in public programs or venues, as an automatic constitutional violation. But this is not the law.
 
The Establishment Clause means what it says, but it does not require religion to be handled as if it were radioactive.
 
Parents do have a role in imparting religious beliefs. “The United States of America is not Sparta,” the Third Circuit declared, “where children were considered wards of the state. Parents are the first and foremost teachers of their children.” When a school board elected by parents decides to teach children about the world and its many beliefs, however, that is also the First Amendment in action.

​Elite universities have undeniably become academies of progressive ideology, in dire need of diversity of thought and opinion. They have also become bastions of racial discrimination, as the Supreme Court found in its 2023 opinion, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, ruling that Harvard’s admissions policy violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With President Trump announcing on Friday that he will revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a court might well decide that Harvard’s admissions and hiring policies, and its tolerance of antisemitism on campus, make it a legitimate target for tough action.
 
But the order to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and the administration’s April 11th letter to Harvard setting conditions for continued federal funding raise other concerns that should trouble defenders of academic freedom, especially those who are conservatives.
 
The administration tied further federal funding to reforms to the school’s curriculum and culture. Whether or not Harvard needs reform, this plainly infringes on Harvard’s First Amendment rights, endeavoring to trade Harvard’s progressive “ideological capture” for a different kind of capture – outright government control. And if successful, subsequent efforts to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status will open the floodgates to future abuses of power that conservatives will live to regret.
 
This is the inherent danger of the administration’s desire to create a superhighway for federal control of academic freedom. In Harvard’s complaint filed in federal court in Massachusetts, the university quoted the Supreme Court’s Moody v. Netchoice (2024) decision that “The First Amendment does not permit the government to ‘interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance.’”
 
Harvard didn’t have to look far for that precedent. The U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed it in 2024, when it found that government cannot suppress disfavored speech by threat of sanctions. Based on the plain text of the government’s letter, that seems exactly the administration’s aim here. 
 
New questions will arise now that President Trump is ordering the IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out in a recent editorial, some precedent exists that could support such an action. It is true that in 1983 the Supreme Court upheld the IRS’ revocation of Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status based on its overtly racially discriminatory practices. The Court at that time reasoned that “an institution seeking tax-exempt status must serve a public purpose and not be contrary to established public policy.” But many critics of Bob Jones were still concerned about such policies being made by the IRS on the basis of no law.
 
Beyond the legal and constitutional questions, there are more practical reasons why the administration’s actions are dangerous. Remember when the IRS targeted conservative groups for enhanced scrutiny, seemingly based on ideology? IRS official Lois Lerner catalyzed a furor among the right when emails revealed her antipathy towards conservative groups she targeted for investigation. Conservatives should also remember the many times the government has attempted to overrule traditional religious beliefs, from the FBI’s targeting of “radical, traditional Catholics,” to management of the conscience rights of religiously oriented healthcare clinics.
 
Should this administration prevail in its effort to subjugate Harvard’s academic freedoms in accordance with its own ideological preferences, a precedent will be set for future administrations to control speech in other directions. Expanded powers of the presidency don’t just go away when a president leaves. They stay with the office, accumulating over time.
 
There are any number of less constitutionally dubious means of working with colleges and universities to introduce more heterodoxy into academic circles. And Harvard, for your part, you ought to respond to this moment by hiring at least a few conservatives – intellectuals who represent a large plurality of this country and, recently, a majority of its voters.