​Sarah Palin’s long-running defamation suit against The New York Times came to an end last week, with a federal jury again ruling against her claims. The jury found, after just two hours of deliberation, that The New York Times had not defamed the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate by mistakenly linking her political action committee’s rhetoric to the mass shooting in Arizona in 2011 that killed six people and severely injured then-Rep. Gabby Giffords.
 
Of course, the media landscape today is fragmented and biased in ways that can frustrate fair public discourse. Outlets across the spectrum cater to their audiences’ ideological appetites, much as newspapers did in the early Republic. This partisanship is far from ideal, but the First Amendment still steadfastly protects it – even when bias tilts against conservatives.
 
In Palin’s case, The New York Times made an undeniable error when it published a 2017 editorial implying a link between the Arizona shooting and a map distributed by Palin’s PAC that contained congressional districts with stylized crosshairs. The mentally ill shooter had, in fact, a long-standing grudge against the congresswoman that predated the map. But mistakes, even careless ones, are not the same as “actual malice,” the standard set in New York Times v. Sullivan for public figures like Palin to prevail in libel suits.
 
The Times moved quickly, issuing a public correction less than 14 hours after publication and clarifying that there was no established connection between Palin’s map and the shooting. James Bennet, then-editorial page editor, tearfully apologized to Palin in court, acknowledging the mistake and his efforts to fix it. These actions matter. Corrections are not only an ethical obligation for journalists; they help defray the risk of defamation liability by showing good faith and a commitment to accuracy.
 
If Palin had prevailed in court, that ruling would have made corrections meaningless. Rather than encouraging media outlets to promptly and transparently acknowledge their errors, a Palin victory would have discouraged self-correction and made the political climate far more hostile to the open debate the First Amendment is designed to protect.
 
There is legitimate debate to be had about whether the Sullivan standard needs adjustment. There is clearly room in for more journalistic accountability in cases in which an untruth leads to the loss of an election or the termination of a contract. Courts and commentators alike have argued whether the line between public and private figures has blurred too much, making it unreasonably difficult for individuals to defend their reputations. Some argue that the precedent could use fine-tuning to address egregious falsehoods that are not caught by today’s high bar. But as this case shows, even high-profile plaintiffs can win under the current doctrine when facts warrant it – as Dominion did against Fox News.
 
Conservatives are right to be concerned about media bias. It is real and often glaring. But the answer cannot be to dismantle the constitutional protections that allow ideas – good, bad, and ugly – to compete in the marketplace. As we have written before, the solution lies not in empowering judges and juries to police editorial decisions, but in cultivating a discerning public that reads broadly and thinks critically.
 
The First Amendment guarantees a free press, not a fair one. Palin’s loss, while surely disappointing to her and her supporters, is a victory for that freedom, and for the principle that honest mistakes must not become fatal mistakes for a free and independent press.

​George Leef on National Review criticizes a federal court in New Hampshire for upholding restrictions on a protest over transgender players at a high school soccer match. He warned the court was accepting the dangerous notion that “speech is violence,” suggesting that this ruling is a broad erosion of First Amendment protections.
 
The case involved parents wearing pink wristbands marked “XX” to protest a transgender athlete’s participation in that game. NR sees this as censorship of symbolic speech. We disagree – and the reasons why are instructive. While we share NR’s vigilance in protecting free expression, not every speech regulation is an assault on liberty. A school official has the right to manage a limited public forum like a school-sponsored event, where viewpoint-neutral rules serve to safeguard students’ rights without silencing legitimate public debate.
 
As the court carefully explained, the soccer field during a school event is just such a limited public forum. In such spaces, schools may impose reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions without engaging in viewpoint discrimination​.
 
The key fact in this case is that the pink wristbands were not an abstract statement of policy, but a comment on a specific student playing in that game. The judge found that the wristband display was not a broad policy statement but a targeted message aimed at that student. As he explained: “Context is everything,” and school officials could reasonably interpret the message as “demeaning, harassing, and psychologically injurious” toward that transgender student​.
 
Critically, the court did not suppress the parents’ views on transgender participation. It enforced neutral rules that barred targeting any individual student at school events. Schools, the judge emphasized, have a “special interest in regulating speech that materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.”
 
This is in keeping with Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), a Vietnam-era case in which the Supreme Court rightly protected silent protest but also recognized that schools may intervene when speech substantially invades the rights of other students. Here, the court relied on concrete evidence, not ideological disagreement, to uphold a narrowly tailored restriction.
 
Free speech advocates must be wary of censorship dressed up as protection. But not every regulation is censorship. Sometimes it reflects the school’s duty to ensure that all students can participate safely and fully in public life. In defending free speech, we must also defend the simple, sensible rules that preserve limited public fora.
 
The First Amendment’s promise endures because it balances robust freedom with careful stewardship. Protecting it requires vigilance – and precision – in telling the difference.

​The Department of Justice has rescinded its policy shielding journalists from being compelled to produce records or testify in federal leak investigations. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo that the move is needed for “safeguarding classified, privileged, and other sensitive information.” The memo also reportedly discusses the danger of leaks that “undermine” the president’s agenda.
 
This is a step in the wrong direction. DOJ’s former policy was a laudable and necessary bulwark against government meddling in the collection and dissemination of free information. It is an own-goal for conservatives feeling wronged by lawfare and official censorship. The confidence of sources to expose secret transgressions made it easier for conservative journalists to reveal the IRS campaign to harass conservative non-profits during the Obama administration, for The New York Post’s to stand by its brave and lonely investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop, for the independent reporting of Catherine Herridge, and for Matt Taibbi’s exposure of the extent of social media censorship.
 
In recent years, we’ve seen federal intrusion into the records of the AP, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and even morning raids to confiscate the phones of activist journalists. For decades, journalists have been held in contempt and jailed for refusing to reveal their confidential news sources.
 
As a result, almost every state in the country has a “press shield” law that protects journalists’ sources and notes, with reasonable exceptions. But the federal government has no such law.
 
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press president Bruce Brown said in response to the decision: “Some of the most consequential reporting in U.S. history – from Watergate to warrantless wiretapping after 9/11 – was and continues to be made possible because reporters have been able to protect the identities of confidential sources and uncover and report stories that matter to people across the political spectrum. Strong protections for journalists serve the American public by safeguarding the free flow of information.”
 
That’s why there has been strong bipartisan support in the House of Representatives for the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (PRESS) Act, passing it twice. The PRESS Act would prohibit federal authorities from spying on journalists through collection of their phone and email records while imposing strict limitations on when the government can require a reporter to give up their sources. It reasonably grants exceptions for emergencies.
 
In the Senate, the PRESS Act has strong bipartisan support, including from Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), as well as Democrats Sen. Ron Wyden (R-OR) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). But it has yet to make it out of committee.
 
Congress must act now. Enshrining protections for journalists is a logical policy fix designed to protect newsgathering, which is our primary means of directing the disinfecting rays of sunlight towards government corruption and malfeasance. Doing so would be consistent with the aims of the founders, who took great pains to ensure the First Amendment had a place of primacy in the Bill of Rights. And it would protect against increasing constitutionally illiterate, illegal acts by government officials against reporters. 
 
General Bondi promises that warrants should “limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities.” That is a subjective and potentially politicized assessment. We need a brightline rule. Laws to protect journalists’ notes and sources have worked well across America’s red and blue states. The PRESS Act will work just as well in Washington, D.C.

​In a recent op-ed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio promises to “close the book” on “the weaponization of America’s own government to silence, censor, and suppress the free speech of ordinary Americans.” It’s a laudable objective and one for which Protect The 1st is immensely grateful. But Secretary Rubio and his colleagues should take into account the dangers that arise from the tendency to explore new ways to punish the speech of political opponents and media critics.   
 
Rubio’s choice of venue, The Federalist, was a shrewd one. This publication was one of ten “riskiest online news outlets” identified by the Global Disinformation Index, a British organization funded in part by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC). The intent was to discourage companies from advertising in these publications and platforms. Rubio announced the closure of the GEC in his editorial.
 
GEC’s efforts, as we’ve written, tried to kill conservative publications. It also constituted a “black box” that allowed federal agencies to filter content moderation requests to social media platforms under the guise of combating “disinformation.” We have no problem with official efforts to identify the propaganda of foreign terrorists and hostile regimes so long as officials are willing to make their case in public. But GEC was un-American, both in conception and in operation. It would be no less concerning if the government was policing liberal outlets like Mother Jones or The Nation.

So, good riddance to the GEC. But just because Secretary Rubio shut down one illiberal outfit doesn’t get the administration off the hook for its own efforts to coerce news outlets and organizations into toeing the official line.
 
This was brought to light in the controversy over 60 Minutes, facing a lawsuit from President Trump over alleged “voter interference” owing to its allegedly duplicitous editing of an interview with candidate Kamala Harris. CBS, the network which airs the show, is owned by Paramount Global – a company currently in merger negotiations with Skydance Media. Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has urged a settlement with Trump, no doubt to pave the way for eventual FTC approval of the deal. In turn, Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes last night addressed the resignation of executive producer Bill Owens and admitted on his show that it is losing some of its journalistic discretion. By holding a lawsuit over the heads of a major media conglomerate, this administration has successfully exerted control over a formerly independent, and historically vaunted, news program. One may fairly judge CBS to be biased, but it is not the business of government to police speech, biases included.
 
Similarly, the Federal Communications Commission is taking jawboning to its extremes, threatening Comcast (owner of MSNBC) and Warner Bros. Discovery over coverage of the deportation of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.    
 
The administration would do well to remember that the First Amendment protects the people from government action – not the other way around. Conservatives would do well to continue to dismantle the censorship apparatus, not pioneer new forms that could, once again, be used to throttle conservative speech by the next administration. While we applaud Secretary Rubio for ridding us of the GEC and all its poisoned fruit, everyone who takes the First Amendment seriously should be willing to call out the current administration when it engages in the same sort of harassment it opposes.

​It was reading time at the U.S. Supreme Court today, though the oral argument in Mahmoud v. Taylor did not end with milk, cookies, and a nap. It did indicate, however, a likely victory for the plaintiffs.

Much of today’s oral argument centered around the storybooks included in the pre-K to 6th grade curriculum in Montgomery County schools. One such storybook, Prince & Knight, factored into the discussion.

Here’s a summary of that book written for children ages 4 to 8: Once upon a time, there was a prince who was urged by his royal parents to visit neighboring kingdoms to find a suitable bride. But the prince did not find the woman he loved. While on his journey, the prince was informed that a dragon was attacking his kingdom. He joined forces with a dashing knight, who used his shield to blind the monster. This allowed the prince to successfully ensnare the dragon. When the prince tripped, the knight came to his rescue and caught him in his arms. That’s when the prince realized that he was, in fact, in love. And soon prince and knight were warmly received into the kingdom, which joyfully celebrated their royal wedding.

Another such book, Love Violet, tells the story of a girl who harbors a secret crush for another girl in her class.

In the eyes of many, Prince & Knight and Love Violet spin tales that help children to grow up with respect and acceptance. In the eyes of families that are adherents of great world religions – from Roman Catholicism to Christian evangelicalism, to Islam and Orthodox Judaism – these stories indoctrinate children into celebrating relationships that their religions reject as sinful. Forcing this instruction, therefore, is a violation of the First Amendment rights of the parents’ free exercise of religion.

No one in this case is seeking suppression of these books and teachings. Religious parents of Montgomery County school children are merely seeking the right to opt out their children from the books and its related curriculum. The Montgomery County school board at first allowed such opt-outs, then denied them, claiming that allowing them would be impractical to manage. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the school board’s decision, finding that “simply hearing about other views does not necessarily exert pressure to believe or act differently than one’s religious faith requires.”

In today’s oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito pushed back on that notion. Given that these books are read to children as young as age four, he said many will lack the faculties to dispute or disagree with what they are being told.

“I don’t think anybody can read that and say, ‘Well, this is just telling children that there are occasions when men marry other men,” said Justice Alito. “It has a clear moral message, and it may be a good message. It’s just a message that a lot of religious people disagree with.”

Justice Elena Kagan acknowledged that what some Montgomery County principals had flagged – regardless of gender, the storybooks’ focus on romantic relationships was a questionable choice for children as young as four. “I too, was struck by these young kids picture books and, on matters concerning sexuality, I suspect there are a lot of non-religious parents who weren’t all that thrilled about this.”

But Justice Kagan stuck to the notion that if opt-outs are allowed in this instance, they will have to be allowed for a host of other objections, perhaps even to the teaching of evolution in biology class. Justice Kagan said: “Once we articulate a rule like that, it would be like opt-outs for everyone.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s questions centered around the point that an opt-out rule would “constitutionalize” local decisions on curricula best left to the communities. “Maybe in one community, one set of values, these books are fine, but in another community with a different set of values, they’re not,” she said.

Justice Alito returned to the point that the plaintiffs were not asking that the books be removed. “What’s the big deal about allowing them to opt out?” he asked. “I am not understanding why it’s not feasible,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Overall, the tone and tenor of today’s oral argument indicates a solid majority will come down on the side of observing the right of religious parents to opt-out their children.

Two minutes into this two-and-a-half hour-long hearing, Eric Baxter of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the parents, drew on Protect The 1st’s own amicus brief for his presentation. In that brief, Protect The 1st declared: “Properly understood, the First Amendment forbids the government from imposing such coercive choices on parents as a precondition to participating in a public benefit, including public education.”
​
Though we rarely make predictions about how the Court will decide, we believe that will be the likely stance the Court majority will take.

​Many of the great warriors of history had beards. In the modern era, however, clean-shaven faces became the hallmark of the modern military. This is a problem for American men of the Sikh faith, who are forbidden to shave. Many Jewish and Muslim men are similarly required to maintain beards as an outward sign of their faithfulness.
 
In 2021, Edmund Di Liscia, a Hasidic Jew assigned to the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, testified before a federal judge that his beard is “a religious requirement and an expression of obedience and fidelity to God.” For years, many Americans adherents of several faiths were forced to choose between expulsion from military service or to violate their most closely held religious beliefs.
 
Thanks to the good work of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, federal courts have stayed military orders to force religiously observant men to shave off their beards. The military has also shown flexibility, allowing religious accommodation for servicemen who demonstrate the sincerity of their faith and are willing to accept limitations on their assignments.
 
This tolerance is now at risk. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered the Pentagon to conduct a review of military standards related to health and appearance across the services. His memo pointedly noted that this review “includes but is not limited to beards.”
 
It is understandable – even commendable – that Secretary Hegseth wants to level up the fitness and appearance requirements of the services. But we hope that in this review, a line is drawn to protect beards as expressions of faith.
 
The Trump administration has shown great sensitivity to protecting religious liberty, including the establishment of a White House Faith Office to work with the Justice Department to protect the freedom of religious expression. As the Pentagon drafts new rules, the religious expression of Americans in uniform should also be respected.

​Kansas lawmakers have overridden Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto to enact a new law defending the rights of religious foster and adoptive parents. Effective immediately, the state can no longer deny licenses to families simply because they won’t affirm gender ideology or same-sex relationships. The law stops bureaucrats from turning personal belief into a disqualifier, and it sends a clear signal: faith-based convictions don’t bar you from opening your home to a child in need.

This victory for religious liberty won’t make headlines in major media, but it should. It directly answers a troubling trend where belief in traditional marriage or gender roles becomes an automatic disqualifier for otherwise qualified parents.

Kansas is an encouraging story, for similar religious discrimination against adoptive parents is happening around the country. In Massachusetts, Mike and Kitty Burke – a Catholic couple with years of experience caring for children – were denied the chance to foster because they wouldn’t recite the state’s preferred catechism on sex and identity. “Their faith is not supportive and neither are they,” wrote a social worker, as if belief in Christian doctrine was evidence of neglect.

That mindset is spreading. Oregon, Vermont, and other states are testing policies that require prospective foster parents to parrot gender orthodoxy before they can bring a child into their home. These policies don’t protect kids – they punish adults with unapproved beliefs. More to the point, these policies violate the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment. The state cannot make religious adherence a liability for civic participation. It cannot force a person to say what they do not believe. And it cannot close the door on loving homes simply because a couple affirms, as generations have, traditional religious beliefs.

That’s what makes Kansas so important. It stops the government from forcing people to either lie or lose out for holding traditional religious beliefs. Opponents say the bill opens the door to discrimination. It merely allows people to hold different beliefs without punishment. That’s not discrimination – that’s pluralism. You might disagree with traditional views on sexuality. But we all have a stake in this debate: A society that can’t handle differing views on sexuality has already lost its way.

There’s an old joke about a couple that was so progressive that they adopted a gay baby. Today, we’re watching the inverse: systems so rigidly ideological they’ll leave kids in hospitals and public homes rather than place them with a conservative family.
​
Kansas said no.

​A bill moving through the Illinois legislature has sparked fierce opposition from parents, educators, and civil liberties advocates across the state. Known as the “Homeschool Act,” House Bill 2827 would require families to register their homeschool with local districts, hand over teaching materials upon demand, and face criminal charges for paperwork violations. Critics say it’s not about oversight – it’s about control.
 
Registration isn’t just a formality. It would empower the state to monitor, investigate, and potentially prosecute families who choose to educate at home. Under HB 2827, if parents don’t file the required form within ten days, their children are labeled truant, and the parents could face jail time. That registration triggers new powers for school districts and truancy officers: they could demand educational portfolios, interrogate children without parental presence, and determine whether the family’s curriculum, potentially including religious content, is acceptable. It invites a regime of constant oversight, not based on any wrongdoing, but simply because a family chose to homeschool.
 
Lawmakers like Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat, are sounding alarms. He called the bill a “pipeline to the criminal justice system for parents.” Others warn it would overwhelm child welfare agencies without helping at-risk children.
 
Backers point to cases of abuse in homeschool settings, but those tragedies were already known to state authorities. This bill doesn’t solve system failures. It punishes law-abiding families instead.
 
The opposition isn’t coming from one political camp. Tens of thousands of witness slips were filed. Between 5,000 and 8,000 people showed up at the state capitol. Homeschooling advocates point out that today’s homeschoolers come from across the political and socioeconomic spectrum, black, white, Republican, Democrat, low-income, and post-COVID converts. The message is simple: Our freedom is not up for negotiation.
 
Perhaps it’s no surprise that 33 counties in Illinois have voted to explore breaking away from the state. Proposals like HB 2827 only deepen the divide between urban lawmakers and rural families who feel increasingly sidelined and targeted.
 
HB 2827 is a line in the sand. Either lawmakers reject this overreach, or they invite a broader erosion of parental rights and educational freedom. The First Amendment demands more than lip service. This bill must be stopped.

Imagine you run a tax-exempt charity that houses, feeds, and cares for the poor and the homeless, or perhaps educates children from low-income families. You have the resources to operate your charity through the kindness of your donors. You also are grateful that your tax-exempt status helps you stretch those donor dollars for your social mission.

Then one day you begin to receive demands from the government to certify compliance with myriad federal regulations. The cost of painstakingly documenting compliance would make a huge dent in your budget. Worse, if you are found to be out of compliance with the bureaucracy’s elaborate standards, your tax-exempt status will be revoked.

This is the implied threat of the 2022 rulings by two federal district courts that held that the tax-exempt status of charities means that they should be considered recipients of federal financial assistance. One of these cases, Buettner-Hartsoe v. Baltimore Lutheran High School Association d/b/a Concordia Preparatory School, went to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Last year, the Fourth reversed the lower court’s ruling:

“Tax exemption is not ‘Federal financial assistance.’ This is not a novel concept. Indeed, since Title IX’s inception over fifty years ago, it has never been applied to organizations based solely on their tax-exempt status. And for good reason … Tax exemption, however, is the withholding of a tax burden, rather than the affirmative grant of funds. Thus, tax-exemption is not ‘Federal financial assistance.’”

You might brush your hands and say, ‘all well and good and that is that!’ But in American law these days, that is never that. The appetite for government control is as strong as ever. All it takes is the right case and the right judge to set this precedent on its ear and bind charities across the land to burdensome regulation.

We have certainly seen at the state level, from Wisconsin to Maine to California – a desire by regulators to treat charities, especially religious-based charities, in discriminatory ways. This impulse was occasionally on display during the previous administration in regulatory lurches toward increasing government control of charities.

To forestall this movement once and for all, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) have introduced the Safeguarding Charity Act to clarify that tax-exempt organizations should not be treated as recipients of federal financial assistance.

“Tax-exempt status is not the same as receiving federal funding, and it should be not used as political leverage against the nonprofits that feed, clothe, house, and counsel those in need in Oklahoma and across the nation,” Sen. Lankford said. “We should be focused on enabling the work of these organizations – not burdening them with unnecessary and costly federal requirements.”

“Radical judges should not have the authority to twist federal law and force religious institutions to choose between their convictions and their compliance,” Rep. Steube said. “This bill is about protecting churches, religious schools, and charities from federal overreach.”
​
Though prior versions of this bill failed to pass, the stars may be lining up for the 119th Congress to pass this bill and to put this question to rest for all time.

​Bangor, Michigan, population 2,113, bills itself as “The Gateway to the Lake.” But the town is anything but laid back lately. Local government officials are speaking loud and clear – prosecutions will continue until morale improves.
 
In January, the Bangor City Council unanimously approved a motion to allow “City Attorney (Scott) Graham to file charges with the court against all parties involved in statements that have caused harm to the city.”
 
The controversy apparently stems from accusations that Bangor resident Justin Weber is receiving two paychecks by virtue of his dual role as city manager and chief of police. City officials deny that this is happening. “This is America,” Bangor Mayor Lynne Farmer said. “You’re free to have your own opinion. But in America, you are not free, under the First Amendment, to keep repeating something that’s false that you knowingly know is.”
 
The city is merely targeting “known untruths,” she said. 
 
Why do so many Americans these days in positions of authority lack an understanding of the First Amendment? Mayor Farmer’s statement should be in law school textbooks as a classic example of getting the First Amendment wrong. As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote in a letter to the city, “The First Amendment flatly prohibits government entities from bringing defamation actions, even against speakers who make knowingly false statements.” If it didn’t, as the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1972, “every criticism of public expenditure, policy, management or conduct of public affairs would place its utterer in jeopardy. It is difficult to imagine anything more destructive of democratic government than the power in the hands of a corrupt government to stifle all opposition by free use of the public treasury to silence critics by suit.”
 
If this standard were overturned, any bureaucrat could decide what is truth and a “known untruth.” If Bangor city officials want redress, they can always file a defamation lawsuit for themselves. But they cannot have the city lean on their critics for them.
 
The Bangor City Council should revoke Graham’s authority to bring suits against its citizens for speaking their mind. Not long ago, Police Chief Weber was caught on camera calling upset residents “pansies.” It should be enough to dismiss that slur as offensive. But if the city council has its way, the prosecutor could go after the police chief because humans, after all, aren’t flowers; therefore, that characterization is knowingly false. Or we could all just take a civics refresher and step away from the ledge.  

On Thursday, in a rare sign of political health, the House managed to squeak out a budget resolution, 216-214. Producing this blueprint was a monumental lift for the Republicans’ razor-thin majority, but they achieved it just the same. Big challenges remain. In coming weeks, the majority in Congress must now agree on balancing the budgetary costs of President Trump’s proposed tax cuts against spending in defense, border control, and other major priorities.
 
Amid these gigantic programs, there is a smaller one that must not hit the cutting room floor – the well-being of children and the future of American education. Congress should make sure that two relatively small items, the Educational Choice for Children Act and the Student Empowerment Act, are kept in the coming budget reconciliation bill.
 
Urgent action is needed to address the nation’s near-catastrophic, not-very-good report card on education. The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests American students every two years. It found that the average reading scores for fourth- and eighth-grade students fell by 2 points since 2022. Math proficiency for fourth graders fell by three percent from 2019. For American eighth graders, it fell by a whopping 9 percent. There are bright spots, with improvement for students in the top tier of performance. Overall, American education saw a continuation of a decline that preceded the pandemic.
 
Clearly, traditional public-school systems in many parts of the United States need help. America’s educational mediocrity has been a crisis since the 1980s, although mediocrity might be an improvement over current performance in some school districts. A large body of research shows that educational choice can help improve the performance of public schools, as well as students overall. We’ve previously reported that economics professor William Alexander Salter of Texas Tech University has demonstrated that on the question of the impact of school choice: “Out of 28 studies that explore this question, 25 found that school choice improves educational attainment in traditional school systems. In terms of social-scientific validity, that’s a slam dunk.”

• The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) would improve both public and private schools in this way, providing tax credits for charitable donations to expand choices in quality education. Introduced by Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE), Rep. Burgess Owen (R-UT) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the ECCA permits tax-free private donations to help students, especially low-income ones, to take advantage of quality private education, including both secular and religious schools.

The ECCA offers $10 billion in tax credits to be divided among the states, surely an amount that can fit into this budget. Speaking to the need for this bill, Sen. Cassidy said: “More freedom empowers parents and allows American children to thrive in school.”
​

• The Student Empowerment Act, sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) would expand school choice by increasing the availability of 529 Education Savings Plans to include not only K-12 elementary and secondary school tuition, but also many K-12 educational expenses for public, private, and homeschool students.

“The Student Empowerment Act is commonsense legislation that will expand access to 529 savings accounts and empower American families to best meet their children’s learning needs,” Sen. Cruz said.
 
Both programs would respect American pluralism, allowing parents to make choices for their children and to express their values across generations by choosing secular or religious schools consistent with broader First Amendment protections. Amid hundreds of billions of dollars spent on other programs, these two bills are small but impactful. Kept in the budget for the president to sign, the ECCA and Student Empowerment Act will generate benefits that will resonate for the rest of the century.

​The U.S. Supreme Court will soon weigh in on Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case that could reshape the boundaries of parental rights in public education. At stake is a basic but powerful question: Can the state force parents to expose their children to teachings that contradict their deepest moral and religious beliefs? A win for the parents wouldn’t just vindicate religious freedom – it could also throw a lifeline to secular and non-Christian families in red states, where public school curricula are starting to blur the line between education and religious endorsement.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, parents were initially allowed to opt out of new “LGBTQ+-inclusive” texts introduced in 2022. These included books such as Pride Puppy, with some curricula introducing drag queens and leather fetish gear to pre-K students. Born Ready presents gender transition as a personal decision that doesn’t need to “make sense.” Then the school board reversed course, eliminating the opt-out and mandating full participation, even for families whose religious teachings directly conflict with these lessons.

Protect The 1st filed an amicus brief urging the Court to recognize this as a violation of the Free Exercise Clause. This case echoes the foundational rulings in Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which the Court affirmed that the right to direct a child’s moral and religious upbringing rests with the family – not the state.

What is often missed in media commentary is how a win in Mahmoud would also defend secular families and minority faiths in red states from forced exposure to Christian-centric teachings. Consider Texas. The state’s new Bluebonnet Learning curriculum is approved for adoption in 2025 and incentivized with $60 per student. While it claims to be academically neutral, watchdog groups have documented how some lessons treat the Bible as literal history and ask students to repeat phrases from Genesis​.

Texas Education Agency officials insist these materials are educational, not devotional, and that schools may use or omit parts as they see fit. But once a district accepts this curriculum, parents will be allowed no opt-out for their children. That’s cold comfort to Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or secular families in districts that decide to lean hard into biblical framing. What’s being described as “contextual” exposure often amounts to uncritical celebration of one religious tradition. At minimum, there is no need to push this curriculum without parental opt-outs for their children.

We ardently agree that you cannot teach American history without appreciating the role of religion, from the Pilgrims to the civil rights era. But you can – and must – do it without crossing the line into indoctrination. The same principle that protects a Muslim family in Maryland from state-imposed gender ideology also protects a secular family in Texas from state-imposed Christianity.
​
A ruling in favor of the Mahmoud plaintiffs won’t just be a win for religious liberty. It’ll be a win for pluralism – ensuring that no matter where you live or what you believe, the public school system doesn’t get to decide what your child’s faith tradition will be.

​Is a Georgia statute, which imposes a special assessment on strip clubs, a restriction on expressive activity? This law provides that “adult entertainment establishments” must each year remit a “state operation assessment equal to the greater of 1 percent of the previous calendar year’s gross revenue or $5,000.” The state argues – and the Georgia Supreme Court agrees – that the tax is not a content-based restriction on speech because it endeavors to address these business’ negative “secondary effects.”
 
The Georgia Association of Club Executives, which represents the Peach State’s adult entertainment establishments, begs to disagree. The association argues that the tax directly targets their expressive content, and should thus be subject to strict scrutiny – among the most exacting standards of legal review.
 
Unfortunately, resolving these conflicting arguments will require some legal acrobatics rivaling those of any stage show. But the resolution could clarify the law for a range of First Amendment concerns.
 
At issue is a distinct split in legal thought surrounding content-based restrictions on speech. In Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015), the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the longstanding principle that content-based restrictions on speech are subject to strict scrutiny, and that content-neutral justifications for a law implicating the content of speech do not suffice to remove that law from strict scrutiny analysis.
 
But in City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres (1986), the Court found that regulations implicating content may be treated as content-neutral “time, place, and manner” restrictions subject to intermediate scrutiny where they are justified without reference to content. That case, like the present one, dealt with adult establishments. But in Hill v. Colorado (2000), the Court’s holding was expanded to other areas such as permitting a prohibition against family counseling or any other message to persons within 100 feet of a healthcare facility.
 
Over the years, courts have performed ever more convoluted jurisprudential dance routines when it comes to the clear conflicts between these two doctrines. And even if cases like Renton and Hill remain good law, the Court has never clarified where the line is when it comes to applying Reed versus Renton/Hill.
 
Under Reed, the content-based restrictions at issue in Renton/Hill might very well have been considered content-based and therefore subject to strict scrutiny. Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Barrett have, for example, called Hill “defunct.”
 
That’s why the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is weighing in on the case in an amicus brief supporting a certiorari petition to our nation’s highest court. When it comes to First Amendment jurisprudence, clarity in the law is critical, and uncertainty can chill speech just as thoroughly as any naked prohibition.
 
FIRE argues that the Georgia statute directly targets “adult entertainment establishments” based on their expressive content. It does so not through zoning or buffer regulations (as in Renton and Hill), but through a special tax on the economic activity associated with the expressive content in question. Further, it must be enforced by government officials who must examine (regrettably, we’re sure) whether the “dancing is nude, whether movements are sexual in nature, and whether these elements constitute ‘entertainment.’” As FIRE points out, this is a decidedly different proposition that broad, content-neutral laws against public nudity.
 
FIRE writes:
 
“The Court should end the confusion and clarify that Reed means what it says: laws that distinguish based on content are content-based, regardless of the government’s purported intent or justifications. The Court should in doing so explicitly acknowledge and resolve in favor of Reed the doctrinal inconsistencies that Renton and Hill introduced.”
 
Protect The 1st is inclined to agree with FIRE that the Court should resolve the divergent lines of caselaw at issue here. Coming to such a resolution need not be a Dance of the Seven Veils.

​You can get arrested in Moscow, Idaho, where one Rory Wilson was convicted for posting stickers opposing the city’s COVID-19 response without first getting official approval.
 
Moscow City Code Section 10-1-22 prohibits anyone from posting a “notice, sign, announcement, or other advertising matter” on public property “without prior approval, in writing” of the “governmental entity owning or controlling such property.”
 
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that such schemes are inherently suspect. In City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Company (1988), the Court held that when the government has “unbridled discretion” to grant someone the right to speak, it constitutes a “prior restraint” that “may result in censorship.” It may also result in self-censorship out of fear of an adverse government action, which should be as much of an anathema to principles of free speech as any overt prohibition.
 
Here, we have an example of a local government blatantly weaponizing the law to crack down on disfavored speech. Prior to Wilson’s arrest, the City of Moscow had never before enforced the code provision in question, and Moscow police admitted they were doing so in this case because they did not “agree” with the stickers’ “messaging.” Prior to the incident with Wilson, government officials had also repeatedly criticized his church for advocating against the city’s COVID-19 restrictions. The city prosecutor, specifically, called Wilson’s fellow congregants “religious idiots.”
 
The Supreme Court has repeatedly addressed similar discretionary permitting schemes. In Saia v. People of State of New York (1948), the Court found unconstitutional an ordinance requiring government permission before relaying “news and matters of public concern” over sound amplification equipment. In Largent v. State of Texas (1943), the Court likewise overturned an ordinance that required the mayor’s approval to sell certain books. And in Kunz v. People of State of New York (1951), the Court struck down an ordinance making “it unlawful to hold public worship meetings on the streets without first obtaining a permit from the city police commissioner.”
 
All of these schemes constituted prior restraints on speech. The present controversy in Moscow is no different. Unfortunately, Idaho courts didn’t see it that way, upholding Moscow’s law in contravention of well-established precedent. As a result, Protect The 1st will file an amicus brief in support of Wilson’s certiorari petition to the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 
U.S. citizens have the right to voice their views in the public square without government approval. It is one of our nation’s longest held traditions, a defining principle of our democratic traditions. Giving the government discretionary power to approve or deny the exercise of that right is an affront to the First Amendment.
 
We’ll follow up soon with our brief.

​It is considered bad form and bad luck to anticipate how the U.S. Supreme Court will decide a given case. But Adam Liptak of The New York Times just went ahead and called it: “The Supreme Court on Monday seemed ready to rule that a Catholic charity in Wisconsin was entitled to a tax exemption that had been denied by a state court on the grounds that its activities were not primarily religious.”

To say that Colin T. Roth, lawyer for the state, had a rough morning would be an understatement. It was Roth’s task to defend the Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, which found that Catholic charities that serve the poor are not exempted from state unemployment taxes as a religious organization.
 
The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the flawed reasoning that Catholic Charities – which has provided aid to the disabled, the elderly, and the poor for over a century – is not operated primarily for religious purposes because it provides services to people of all faiths.
 
When asked what it would take for Catholic Charities to be considered religious, Roth replied they might say the Lord’s Prayer when spooning soup. We’ll be sure to pass that advice along to the Catholic lay volunteers, nuns, priests, bishops, cardinals, and the Pope. Thanks, Wisconsin!
 
“Isn’t it a fundamental premise of the First Amendment that the state shouldn’t be picking and choosing between religions?” Justice Neil Gorsuch asked. “Doesn’t it entangle the state tremendously when it has to go into a soup kitchen, send an inspector in, to see how much prayer is going on?”
 
“Some religions proselytize, other religions don’t,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “Why are we treating some religions better than others based on that element of religious doctrine?”
 
Justice Amy Comey Barrett followed up by asking if a Jewish charity would be disqualified given her understanding that Judaism is largely a non-proselytizing religion. Roth replied that such a Jewish charity would have to engage in worship or religious education.
 
What the Wisconsin Supreme Court overlooked is that in Judaism and Christianity, as well as in Islam and Eastern religions, charity is a religious obligation. Jesus said we should feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and clothe the naked. He did not add, “unless, of course, they’re not members of your congregation. Then they’re on their own.”
 
An adverse ruling for Catholic Charities would enable government inspectors and bureaucrats to decide which religious practices are religious. Based on the tenor of today’s oral arguments, that does not seem likely. This was a good day for religious liberty.