​Can a state decide that religious schools are welcome to participate in a public program, but only if they set aside their core religious beliefs?

That is the question before the U.S. Supreme Court in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy. Protect The 1st provides answers to that question in our amicus brief on the merits of this case. We urge the Court to reject Colorado’s attempt to exclude religious preschools from that state’s universal preschool program because they adhere to traditional religious teachings.

At first glance, this may appear to be another dispute over government funding and religious schools. It is much more than that.

Protect The 1st demonstrates that the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion means little if government officials are free to decide which religious beliefs are acceptable and which are not. A state may not condition participation in a public benefit on abandoning sincerely held religious convictions. Nor may it redefine “religion” so narrowly that only a faith stripped of its actual doctrines qualifies for constitutional protection.

The danger of such government overreach extends far beyond Colorado.

If government can require a Catholic preschool to disregard Catholic teaching in order to participate in a generally available public program, the same principle could be applied to Orthodox Jewish schools, Muslim schools, Protestant ministries, or any religious institution whose beliefs fall out of political favor. Today’s disagreement may concern sexual ethics. Tomorrow it could involve environmental stewardship, immigration, medical ethics, or any number of contested public issues.

Protect The 1st’s brief reminds the Court that religious liberty protects the freedom to live one’s faith, not merely to profess it. The Constitution does not permit government to reward religious organizations only after they surrender the religious practices that define them. The First Amendment was adopted precisely to prevent government from becoming the nation’s theological referee.

That principle should unite Americans of every faith and those of no faith at all. Once government acquires the authority to decide which religious beliefs are acceptable, every religious community becomes vulnerable to the political fashions of the day.

The Supreme Court now has an opportunity to reaffirm a foundational constitutional principle – government may regulate conduct within constitutional limits, but it cannot manipulate religious belief by attaching ideological conditions to public benefits.

The Free Exercise Clause protects religious diversity precisely because it denies government the power to choose which faiths – or which doctrines within those faiths – deserve equal treatment.
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We look forward to hearing robust oral arguments on these points in the Court’s upcoming October Term.

​When Rights Have No Remedy

A right without a remedy is no right at all. That is why Protect The 1st is disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court last week did not uphold the right of a Rastafarian prison inmate to seek damages after Louisiana prison officials forcibly shaved off his dreadlocks.

The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), shorn of such a remedy, will now offer less than full protection for profound violations of the free exercise of religion for people of all faiths – Jews, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and others.

“Looking at the broader defense of religious freedom, however, PT1st remains optimistic,” said Gene Schaerr, PT1st general counsel. “Today’s opinion is unfortunate, but this Supreme Court has been the strongest ever in supporting the free exercise of religion. Protect The 1st looks forward to advancing the cause of religious freedom in future cases.”

Prison officials threw the law into a trash bin

The case arose from the experience of Damon Landor, a devout Rastafarian who had grown his dreadlocks for nearly two decades as an expression of his faith. After being transferred to a different Louisiana prison only weeks before his release, Landor explained that his religion prohibited him from cutting his hair. He even presented prison officials with documentation showing that courts had already recognized his right to maintain his dreadlocks under RLUIPA.

Instead, officers threw the court decision into the trash, restrained Landor in a chair, and forcibly shaved his head. 

Turning the law into an unenforceable “parchment promise”

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, Protect The 1st noted that RLUIPA was enacted to ensure that incarcerated Americans do not surrender their religious liberty at the prison gate. Congress recognized that prisoners are uniquely vulnerable to arbitrary government action and therefore provided robust protection for their sincerely held religious beliefs.

The issue before the Court was whether those protections include the ability to recover damages from officials who knowingly violate the law. Without that remedy, many violations will never receive meaningful judicial review. Sometimes, prisoners’ rights are violated before courts can issue injunctions, leaving no practical consequence for officials who disregard religious rights. That, of course, is what happened to Landor. And, as we warned when the Court accepted this case, legal protections risk becoming little more than a “parchment promise” if they cannot be enforced retroactively through monetary relief. 

The Court has now concluded that RLUIPA does not authorize damages against individual state officials. As a practical matter, that means many future victims of similar violations will have little recourse once the immediate injury has passed. 

Yet this decision should not obscure the larger trajectory of religious liberty at the Supreme Court. Over the last decade, the Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that government must respect the free exercise of religion, whether the claimant is a church, a religious school, a family-owned business, or an individual seeking to live according to conscience.
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Protect The 1st will continue advocating for Americans of every faith and no faith to ensure that the First Amendment’s promise of religious liberty remains meaningful. Even after this setback, we remain hopeful that the cause of religious freedom is moving forward, one case at a time.

​The Unitarian Universalist Association is currently developing a theological statement about the use of AI, one of many religious institutions that are no doubt doing so in the wake of Pope Leo’s encyclical – notably the first of his papacy – On Safeguarding The Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.

Writing for Business Insider, Sarah Needleman notes that both of these currents may have influenced software engineer Erin Maus, a Unitarian Universalist who lives in North Carolina, to seek a religious exemption from using AI in her work (an exemption her employer subsequently granted without fanfare). On the basis of Needleman’s reporting, Maus may be the first person to raise a faith-based religious objection to AI, but she certainly won’t be the last. This means that, from the standpoint of the First Amendment and the free exercise of religion, we should consider this a developing story.

In the years to come, numerous lawsuits about various aspects of AI will be filed and heard in the courts. And that’s as it should be in any free society, especially given that AI potentially augurs the most significant social change in more than a century.

So we will have to see how the ever-evolving debate over the Free Exercise Clause plays out in the age of AI. The courts have historically shied away from considering or evaluating the validity of a person’s religious beliefs (or objections on that basis). Instead, the measure is sincerity, a principle that has been in place at least since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1944 Ballard decision.

In his encyclical, the pope acknowledged the need for “robust legal frameworks” to regulate AI. But the emergence of new, unorthodox religious beliefs might yet force courts to find some way to draw a reasonable line on what constitutes a sincere religious belief.

It is easy enough to see how an employer might suffer from employees who assert a religious objection to AI. What if someone asserts a religious objection to walking an upswept floor? A strict adherent of Jainism, seeking to avoid stepping on a tiny creature, might well do so and would likely prevail in court. But what if some new faith instills a religious objection to answering phones? Or to entering data? Or to smiling at customers?
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Difficult deliberations await the courts, with the First Amendment front and center. We can only hope that the government will always “err” on the side of requiring a high standard of proof when it comes to imposing a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion.

​When the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the nation, employers and governments faced difficult decisions. But difficult circumstances do not erase constitutional principles. That is why Protect The 1st has filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Petersen v. Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue, a case involving firefighters who sought religious accommodations from a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. 

At stake is a fundamental First Amendment freedom – the free exercise of religion.

The firefighters in this case did not refuse to work. They sought accommodations that would allow them to continue serving the public while remaining faithful to their sincerely held religious beliefs. For roughly 20 months, the department allowed safety measures such as testing, masking, distancing, and other precautions. Then, despite those accommodations, the firefighters were placed on leave. 
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Protect The 1st’s brief argues that lower courts have drifted away from the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Groff v. DeJoy (2023), which strengthened protections for religious employees under federal law. Under Groff, employers must show that a requested accommodation would impose a substantial burden on their operations. Mere speculation or generalized concerns are not enough. 

That standard matters because the facts surrounding COVID-19 changed rapidly. By the time many vaccine mandates were being enforced, enough Americans had received vaccinations or acquired immunity from prior infection to bend the herd-immunity curve and significantly reduce the risk of catastrophic spread. The nation was no longer in the desperate early days of the pandemic.

Protect The 1st’s brief points to expert testimony showing that vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals could both transmit the virus, that natural immunity provided substantial protection, and that alternative mitigation measures remained available. 

None of this means vaccines lacked value. Millions of Americans chose vaccination, and those decisions helped protect vulnerable populations and reduce severe illness. But the existence of broad public compliance is precisely why reasonable religious accommodations were often possible. When most of a workforce is vaccinated and additional safeguards are available, granting a limited exemption to a small number of religious objectors is far less likely to impose a substantial burden on an employer.

The First Amendment has always protected minority beliefs. Religious liberty would mean little if it applied only when a person’s beliefs aligned with popular opinion or government policy.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that government may not treat religious exercise as a second-class right. Whether the issue involves houses of worship, religious schools, or employees seeking accommodations in the workplace, the principle remains the same: Americans should not be forced to choose between their faith and their livelihoods unless the government or employer can demonstrate a truly compelling need.
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Protect The 1st’s brief asks the Court to ensure that religious Americans receive the protections Congress intended and that the Supreme Court recognized in Groff. Emergencies may require extraordinary measures. They do not suspend legal protections for religious liberty.

​When College Democrats invite speakers to campus, they usually aren’t forced to include Republicans for “balance.” Nor are conservative campus groups generally required to include liberals in their discussions. Yet the Catholic University of America is imposing this oppressive standard on its Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter (hat tip to Sara Weissman at Inside Higher Ed).

SSI tried twice to invite speakers Catholic University apparently considered too controversial and had their requests for an event on campus denied. In each instance, the group was told the university would reconsider approval “for this topic and speaker as long as there is a balanced presentation,” and asked SSI to kindly “restructure the event and resubmit a request to have speakers representing both sides of this issue.”

How many “sides” must a pro-Israel student group be required to invite to its pro-Israel – and by definition anti-antisemitic – event? And what exactly are the other “sides” that need consideration? A pro-Hamas speaker, many of whom defend the barbarity of Oct. 7?

For what it’s worth, it would be just as obnoxious for an event critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza or the West Bank to be forced to include speakers defending Israel’s current policies.

Whatever happened to free expression on campus, including the right to ask any invited speaker really tough questions? Or to protest peacefully outside the event? That’s the American way. And that’s exactly what happened last fall when the university approved SSI’s request to bring two Israeli Defense Force soldiers to campus. Difficult questions were asked and peaceful protesters showed up.

Catholic University’s new approach is now as inconsistent as it is capricious, which makes its administrators’ rationalizations in this case read more like recriminations. The university’s vice president for communications told Inside Higher Ed that the school wanted to hear from a greater variety of voices about how to fight antisemitism – beyond the ones that SSI chose to invite.

Fine, if so, then the university should sponsor its own event.
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In an interview with Jewish News Syndicate, SSI chapter president Felipe Avila discussed the letter to CUA that the organization sent in response. It’s a refreshing (and much-needed) crash course on the First Amendment and we’ll close with one line from it. The university’s decision, it reads, is “not an exercise in academic freedom. It is forced speech.”

​Oak Flat in Arizona has been a sacred site for Apache people for centuries – a place of worship, ceremony, and spiritual connection with the Creator. Now the federal government has transferred the land to Resolution Copper, the foreign-held Rio Tinto-BHP mining venture that will turn the site into a crater nearly two miles wide and as deep as two Washington Monuments stacked end to end.

That destruction would permanently prevent Apache believers from practicing their religion at a place that is essentially their Vatican, their “Wailing Wall.”

Protect The 1st last week filed an amicus brief urging the federal Ninth Circuit to rehear this case en banc (before eleven of its judges), demonstrating that the court’s earlier decision in Apache Stronghold v. United States fundamentally misread federal religious-liberty law. That decision also failed to resolve contradictory understandings of the law within different rulings of that same en banc panel. 

Our brief explains how the court effectively held two irreconcilable ideas at once:

• First, that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) should be interpreted consistently; and

 

• Second – “substantial burden” on religion – means something entirely different depending on which of these two statutes applies. 

That legal contradiction matters because RFRA and RLUIPA are considered “sister statutes” enacted precisely to provide broad protection for religious exercise against government interference. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly said these laws should be interpreted broadly in favor of religious exercise. And if RFRA cannot protect against the complete destruction of a sacred site central to Apache worship, then one must ask: What exactly can it protect?

The Ninth Circuit previously insisted that – in the land-use context – a “substantial burden” exists only when the government coerces believers into violating their faith or discriminates among religions. Our filing points to two recent Supreme Court decisions that further undermine this reasoning.

• In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court held that parents challenging mandatory exposure of their children to school materials conflicting with their religious beliefs were likely to succeed under the Free Exercise Clause – even absent direct coercion.

 

• Likewise, in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the Court sided with parents objecting to California school policies involving gender identity and parental notification, again recognizing a significant burden on religious exercise without requiring outright coercion. 

If parents can establish a substantial burden because school policies threaten to undermine religious teachings, surely Apache worshippers can establish a substantial burden when, as Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a dissent, “the government’s plan” will permanently destroy the Apache’s historical place of worship.

Again, if that is not enough to describe a burden on the free exercise of religion, it is hard to imagine what would be. Most important of all, the impact of this case defines the rights of all minority religions.

If the government can knowingly destroy a sacred Native American religious site while claiming no “substantial burden” exists, then all religious-liberty protections become hollow promises – especially for minority faiths lacking political power.

Protect The 1st believes religious liberty is indivisible. The rights of all Americans are strengthened when courts protect the faith practices of minority communities, including Native Americans whose sacred places have too often been treated as expendable.
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Our brief concludes with an undeniable fact – the Ninth Circuit’s decision is “at war with Supreme Court precedent, at war with the text of RFRA, and at war with itself.” 
The court should grant rehearing en banc and give the Apache people – and their First Amendment rights – the protection these American citizens deserve.

The closest thing the United States has to a monarchy is the American courtroom.

The berobed judge enters with great solemnity while the bailiff says, “All rise.” The judge sits elevated above all others and is addressed as “Your Honor.” The courtroom is separated from the observing hoi polloi by a thick, wooden bar. The whole setup smacks of a medieval court.
But it isn’t. The procedure, the statements of law put forward by counsel, the jury, and traditions and procedural restraints render it a very democratic institution. The judge has the last word in the courtroom, but he or she is subject to reversal on appeal.

How absurd, then, would it be for a judge to don a different set of robes, the papal vestments of of the Roman Catholic Church, to sit figuratively on the Throne of St. Peter – making tedious distinctions in theology and setting church policy.

Yet that will happen if the U.S. Supreme Court does not grant a review in United States Conference of Catholic Bishops v. O’Connell. This case borders on the satirical but carries serious constitutional weight: Can a federal court sit in judgment over what a priest says from the pulpit – and how the Roman Catholic Church spends and invests its religious offerings?

The case began when a Rhode Island parishioner claimed he was misled about the use of “Peter’s Pence,” a collection made since the 7th century to support charitable activities and evangelism overseen by the Holy See. The plaintiff seeks damages – and more strikingly, an order requiring courts to oversee how the Church describes and administers this offering. 

The U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., should have immediately recognized this as a First Amendment claim concerning the free exercise of religion. Instead, that court allowed the case to proceed without first examining its impact on vital First Amendment rights.

Asking Judges to Wield the Staff of St. Peter

The lawsuit alleges fraud and unjust enrichment, arguing that some of the donations were placed in investment funds that, in turn, were invested in luxury properties and even a Hollywood movie. For those with a passing familiarity with charitable operations, the investment of funds is a standard practice – one that enables compounding returns, to the benefit of the poor. (If you have any doubt that making good investments is a sound practice for a Christian, we refer you to the ultimate authority on that question.)

The fraud claim is that the plaintiff’s priest did not enumerate the investment allocation from the pulpit when appealing for donations.

If courts are allowed to proceed on this case without giving primary consideration to its First Amendment implications, they will put judges in the position of parsing sermons, evaluating religious communications, and second-guessing how a global church allocates charitable funds. 

That is precisely the kind of entanglement the First Amendment was designed to prevent. The “church autonomy” doctrine – rooted in centuries of precedent – bars government from interfering in a religious institution’s internal governance, doctrine, and teaching. 

A Slippery Slope for All Faiths

The stakes extend well beyond the Catholic Church. If courts can adjudicate claims based on what was said during worship services, every synagogue, mosque, and church could face discovery demands over sermons, internal communications, and religious decision-making.

Allowing courts to referee disputes over how a church explains or uses offerings would mark a dramatic expansion of government power into religious life. Today it is Peter’s Pence. Tomorrow it could be tithes, zakat, or any faith-based giving. Indeed, the plaintiff seeks to represent a nationwide class of donors – potentially drawing courts into reviewing religious speech across thousands of congregations. 

That prospect is not just burdensome; it is constitutionally suspect. The Supreme Court has long warned that “the very process of inquiry” into religious matters can violate the First Amendment. If religious groups must endure years of litigation before asserting their constitutional rights, the protection itself becomes hollow. 
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The Supreme Court should take this opportunity to declare: Churches govern their own spiritual affairs, and the state must stay out. When it comes to robes, judges should stick to basic black.

In a narrow 9-8 ruling last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a 2025 Texas law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Louisiana has a similar law. As these laws proliferate, so do age-old constitutional fault lines.

Does the Constitution allow or forbid government mandates to post the Ten Commandments? This is a healthy debate for any pluralistic society – what is permitted when it comes to the expression of religion in public life? The standard used to be tighter. In 1971, the Supreme Court found in Lemon v. Kurtzman that state statutes do not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause if they have a secular purpose, do not advance or inhibit religion, and do not result in “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

That Lemon test sounded precise, but in practice proved so vague as to give government wide latitude to impose burdens on religious practice. For that reason, the Supreme Court itself effectively abandoned Lemon in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022).

In recent years, the Court has also repeatedly upheld the notion that the First Amendment doesn’t require treating religion as if it were a contaminated petri dish, to be hygienically removed from the public square. After all, there is no way to understand American history and culture without acknowledging the influence of religion, from abolitionism to the civil rights movement. The Supreme Court’s notion of “ceremonial deism” would also seem relevant. Such references have long been accepted in American public life – from “In God We Trust,” to modern presidents’ promise to uphold the U.S. Constitution with an added, “So help me God,” to courtroom oaths in many states.

But are the laws in Texas and Louisiana consistent with these historical standards?

Opponents point out that posting “the” Ten Commandments raises a troublesome prior question: Which version? There are Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant versions of the Ten Commandments, differing in wording and order. Politicians almost always mean the Protestant version, a decision that effectively excludes Catholic and Jewish children.

And what about the 4.5 million Muslims in the United States? Would the same politicians who welcome postings of the Protestant Ten Commandments want to see the key tenets of the Quran posted in schools in Dearborn, Michigan? Or what about the 3.5 million Hindus in the United States? Some school districts in Dallas have large numbers of Hindu students. Should they post sections of the Upanishads?

The good news is that this controversy prompts a healthy debate on the nature of the First Amendment in a pluralistic society.
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Whatever the answer, we can be glad that at 234 years of age, the First Amendment is still in the news. What better way to honor that primary law than to argue about it?

The U.S. Supreme Court has now stepped into St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, agreeing to decide whether Colorado can exclude Catholic preschools from its “universal” preschool program because of their traditional beliefs on sexuality. The parish refuses to accept the children of same-sex and/or transgender parents. Because families that enroll are participating in the parish community, the parish wants participant families to hold beliefs in line with Catholic teachings.

However you feel about that, this case is a telling example of Colorado’s disregard for the First Amendment’s protection of religious expression.

What the Court Just Did

Last week, the Court granted certiorari, setting the stage for arguments in its upcoming term. At issue is Colorado’s requirement that participating preschools comply with nondiscrimination mandates tied to sexual orientation and gender identity.

On paper, that may sound neutral. In practice, it forces religious schools into an untenable choice: abandon core teachings or be shut out of a public benefit open to others.

Catholic preschools argue that this is precisely what the Constitution forbids – conditioning participation in a public program on surrendering religious identity. Lower courts nevertheless sided with Colorado, accepting the state’s claim that the policy is “neutral and generally applicable.”

The Supreme Court will now decide whether that label reflects reality – or masks discrimination. The Court will need to make a keen evaluation. The Archdiocese of Denver does not wish to allow same-sex couples to join their congregation. Colorado does not like that. Many of us feel the same. But traditional marriage – whatever you think of that as a standard – is a central tenant of the Catholic faith.

Why It Matters

Protect The 1st stands firmly against discrimination in all its forms. We see no contradiction in upholding the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges acceptance of same-sex marriage and supporting the Roman Catholic Church’s right to define its constitutionally protected beliefs. When this case was before the Tenth Circuit, PT1st told that court:

“ … Colorado has violated Plaintiffs’ expressive association rights … Whatever one may think about same-sex relationships or gender transitions – and PT1st does not oppose them – a religious institution has a constitutional right to decide whom to admit into its communities, and cannot be excluded from a publicly available benefit program for making those religion-based choices.”

In a pluralistic society, these Catholic preschools serve a vital need and deserve equal access to public support. Eighty-five percent of the congregation in one parish school in Denver qualifies for free and reduced-price school meals program. For the Catholic Church, this case goes to the heart of a vital First Amendment principle: the government cannot condition benefits on narrowing the freedom of religious exercise. Colorado’s program is billed as “universal.” But a program is not universal if it excludes participants the moment they act like the religious institutions they are. That is not neutrality. It is exclusion dressed up as policy.

That tension is not new. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that religious institutions cannot be treated as second-class participants in public life. This case will test whether states can evade that rule by redefining exclusion as compliance.

The Road Ahead

The Court’s decision to hear the case signals that at least four justices see serious constitutional concerns. A ruling is expected by mid-2027.

The stakes are clear. If Colorado prevails, “universal” programs across the country could become vehicles for sidelining religious providers. If the Court holds the line, it will reaffirm a foundational rule: government benefits cannot be conditioned on the abandonment of faith.
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The First Amendment demands nothing less.

​Religious liberty had already taken root in America long before the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. In 1649, the Maryland Toleration Act – passed in St. Mary’s City – became a landmark law protecting the free exercise of religion, a harbinger of the guarantees of the First Amendment.

On Saturday, April 18, 2026, that legacy comes alive at Historic St. Mary’s City with a “Free Exercise Walk” and roundtable discussion on why religious freedom still matters today.

At 10 a.m., Protect The 1st General Counsel Gene Schaerr and other experts will lead a discussion at the very site where the Toleration Act was created. They will explore how religious liberty continues to shape American life – from education to public participation – and why it remains essential at a time when religious expression is increasingly contested.

A tour and lunch will follow, offering a chance to reflect on the roots of a freedom too often taken for granted.

The message is simple: religious liberty did not begin with the First Amendment, and it will not endure without vigilance. The principles behind the Maryland Toleration Act still matter – and it is up to each generation to carry them forward.
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Register here.

​The act of collecting the names of certain faculty members at a university in order to protect them from discrimination sounds like a good idea. But from a constitutional perspective, it can very quickly start to sound like a registration program, and nothing good can come from that.

Yet that’s exactly what’s happening at the University of Pennsylvania, where this month a federal judge ordered the school to turn over the names of Jewish faculty members. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is investigating the possibility of antisemitism and had issued a subpoena requesting the names.

Penn objected on privacy grounds and its decision was supported by the American Academy of Jewish Research and the school’s own Jewish Law Students Association. The Anti-Defamation League is skeptical too, on the basis of unintended consequences: “History has taught us to be vigilant when governments compile lists of people based on religious identity, and we hope that the EEOC’s important work can continue without such a list.”

From a First Amendment perspective, the privacy dangers inherent in the government’s subpoena and the judge’s order trace out a larger trajectory: publishing lists of names is a kind of outing, and that represents a direct threat to associational privacy. Anonymity – the right not to be known – is a particular kind of privacy, one that carves out space for a particular kind of free expression, namely the right to anonymous association.

Disclosure can quickly become exposure in today’s digital world, especially when the environment is as politically and culturally charged and prone to doxing as it is today. 

The order also sounds a discordant historical note.

The government’s request, no matter how well intentioned, is inadvertently contaminated by the most notorious crime in human history, the first stage of which began when the new Nazi government in April 1933 listed and purged Jewish professors from Germany’s universities. 

In this country, recall the Nixon “Jew count” episode of 1971. And lest we forget our Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities lists were not just administrative tools but instruments of fate, symbols of cold-blooded revenge, and the literal difference between life and death.

At the very least, there is something coarse about such counts. Consider the vintage Saturday Night Live skit in which Tom Hanks played a game show host asking contestants to look at photos of celebrities and to press the buzzer to answer, “Jew or not Jew?” Answers: actor Michael Landon, Jew; then-Defense secretary Caspar Weinberger, not Jew.
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We applaud the desire of the government to come to the protection of Jews on campus, many targeted by a fierce and vicious upwelling of hate. But a list of Jews on campus is too intrusive, too problematic. We urge the EEOC to find another way to protect Jews and people of all beliefs on campus.

​Freedom of expression withers when governments are always watching. Our First Amendment freedoms to think, speak, publish, and worship as we choose are strengthened by the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment.

For this reason, defenders of the First Amendment have much at stake in the looming reauthorization debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This surveillance authority, which Congress enacted to allow the surveillance of foreign threats on foreign soil, has been used extensively by the FBI to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans millions of times in the last five years.

Section 702 was last reauthorized with a two-year extension in April 2024 under the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA). It is now up for a reauthorization by April 20. Will the U.S. House reauthorize Section 702 the right way – by installing robust constitutional guardrails? Or will the House choose a “clean” reauthorization – rejecting all reform amendments – and continue to allow Americans’ personal communications to be swept up in a web of warrantless, at-will surveillance?

Protect The 1st General Counsel Gene Schaerr described how disregard of the Fourth Amendment has directly undermined the pillars of the First Amendment in testimony before Congress:
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• Freedom of Religion: Under Section 702, the FBI illegally searched the communications of religious leaders who applied to the FBI's “Citizens Academy.” The FBI has shown an appetite to spy on the religious, from surveillance of “traditional radical Catholics” to Americans who attend their local mosque. If federal agencies can use collected data to generate comprehensive “religious dossiers” on every American, what’s next?

• Freedom of the Press: The expansion of what is called the “make-everyone-a-spy provision” under RISAA allows the government to force providers of office space, including landlords for media organizations, to facilitate warrantless surveillance. The FBI’s searches of journalists’ and political commentators’ communications have become a recurring practice.

• Freedom of Speech and Political Expression: “Backdoor searches” are another favorite FBI tactic – and when used to illegally surveil presidential campaigns and transitions, they amount to interference in political expression. Not to mention the warrantless search of the communications of 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign. “Political dossiers,” anyone? Better watch what you post on social media.

• Freedom of Assembly and Association: By purchasing sensitive digital data from brokers, the government acquires information that reveals Americans’ political activities and associations. Case in point: The FBI searched (without a judge-approved warrant) the communications of individuals participating in mass gatherings, specifically Black Lives Matter and January 6 protesters.

• The Right to Petition the Government: In a direct affront to citizens interacting with the justice system, the FBI conducted warrantless searches of victims who approached the Bureau to report crimes. The FBI also spied on a state judge who reported suspected civil rights violations committed by a local police chief.

As these examples illustrate, attempted reforms like RISAA in 2024 offered little in the way of meaningful guardrails on Section 702 operations. Congress has one more chance to get this right. The House must legally require government agents to obtain a warrant to search through Americans’ communications, with reasonable exceptions for emergencies.

Given that 80 percent of Congress’s constituents want these changes to become law, it seems like it should be easy. This is the time to reinforce that the “consent of the governed” still matters.

​On Thursday, the Finnish Supreme Court found parliamentarian Päivi Maria Räsänen and Lutheran bishop Juhana Markus Pohjola guilty of “hate speech” for “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group.”
 
What was this insidious document? It was a church pamphlet from 2004 in which they upheld traditional views on marriage and criticized homosexuality. Räsänen had later shared this pamphlet on social media.
 
Whether you are an atheist, agnostic, or believer – whether you are straight or gay – there is no place in a free society for what is essentially a secular blasphemy law.
 
Conservative views on sexual relations are held by all the traditional forms of Christianity, Jewish Orthodoxy, Islam, and many traditions within Hinduism and Buddhism. Agree or disagree with those views – criminalizing them, which Finland’s Supreme Court did, means criminalizing the traditional forms of the great world religions.
 
While Räsänen was acquitted of another charge regarding a past tweet, this conviction is no less serious a criminalization of speech and religious liberty – for a church pamphlet!
 
“You can cite the Bible, but it is Räsänen’s interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that are criminal,” the Finnish state prosecutor told the court. In other words, it is up to the state to determine what is – and what is not – an acceptable interpretation of the Bible.
 
Räsänen, a former Finnish interior minister, physician, and mother of 12, said: “I am shocked and profoundly disappointed that the court has failed to recognize my basic human right to freedom of expression.” So should we all. Räsänen is considering an appeal to Europe’s top human rights court.
 
Such an appeal would only highlight an absurd situation. If Europe declines to hear her case, will it signal that even the speech of Pope Leo XIV is “hateful” and therefore outside the law? The idea that speech should be criminalized because people within a church or some other group hold one view that others find insulting is a never-ending quest for busybody persecution of speakers.
 
Europe, once again, reminds us why we are so fortunate to have the First Amendment, which not only guarantees freedom of speech but also the free exercise of religion – to believe in this doctrine or that, or not to believe at all, regardless of what other people think.
 
Thank you, once again, James Madison.

We don’t usually associate camels with Scotland. Yet the old proverb about the camel’s nose under the tent applies to what nearly happened in the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. A legislative proposal before that body threatened to force medical professionals who object to assisted suicide to help end their patients’ lives – or face fines and firings.

The sponsor of the bill allowing terminally ill people to choose suicide added an amendment that removed the “no duty, no detriment” protections for caregivers who have religious or ethical objections to helping a patient commit suicide. It would have forced healers of conscience to either violate their religious or ethical convictions or to potentially lose their ability to practice medicine altogether.

The medical community fought back. The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland protested that its members “could face pressure from colleagues and employers, or be placed in contentious situations without adequate legal backing.” Faced with this backlash, the bill’s sponsor backed down, stripping the provision from the bill.

The issue, however, remains a live one not only in the United Kingdom, but also in the United States.

Four years ago, it took the intervention of a federal court to protect the right of physicians in California to opt out of participating in assisted suicide when they have religious or ethical objections. This was made necessary by a clause in California law providing that, while doctors were not required to assist, they were required to “document” a patient’s request to die and to “educate” that patient about the procedure and its prescribed pharmaceuticals.

In other words, even physicians who refused to take part in the act itself were still compelled to facilitate it.

A federal judge sided with the Christian Medical and Dental Association, issuing an injunction preventing California from forcing physicians to participate in these aspects of assisted suicide. The court based its ruling on the provision’s likely violation of the physicians’ First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

Such laws – whether compelling assistance in assisted suicide or abortion – force healers to choose between their deepest convictions about life and their ability to practice medicine. Wherever one stands on these contentious moral questions, the idea of forcing physicians or other healthcare workers to participate against their conscience is a grave violation of their constitutional rights. It is no less offensive to liberty than trying to compel an atheist to take part in a religious ceremony.

Like many bad ideas, this one has a way of returning in new guises – through legislation, regulatory mandates, or quiet amendments buried in complex bills. It is also entirely unnecessary. In jurisdictions where assisted suicide or abortion are legal, there is no shortage of providers willing to provide these services.

The Scottish law, once passed, will be reviewed by the Labour government in Westminster, which may or may not clarify, modify, or perhaps restore the deleted provision. That review will determine whether this camel keeps its nose outside the tent – or pushes further in.

In the United States, at least, we can be grateful that federal courts rely on the ultimate backstop: the First Amendment.
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But constitutional rights survive not only in letter, but in practice, when people insist on them. And the continuing push to compel participation in procedures that violate conscience suggests this fight is far from over.

​Does eating pork rinds make a Buddhist, who is also a convicted murderer, ineligible to be served Muslim Halal meat on death row? 

The meandering fact pattern of this case and its underlying principles were carefully parsed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which came to a firm “no” on that question. The Ninth Circuit’s majority opinion, penned by Judge Ryan D. Nelson, is a magisterial declaration on the limits of governmental adjudication of Americans’ religious beliefs. It offers a masterclass in the religious rights of convicts who have had most of their other rights lawfully stripped from them – and a reminder of how integral the free exercise of religion is to all Americans.

The Case – Why a Buddhist Selects Muslim Food

It would be hard to find a less sympathetic plaintiff than Maurice Lydell Harris. He was convicted in 1994 for murdering his girlfriend, Alicia Allen, and her unborn child. In the more than 32 years that have passed since his conviction, Harris has become a practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism, which originated in medieval Japan but is now popular throughout the world. Perhaps you’ve heard practitioners in a park chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in an effort to cultivate their “Buddha nature.”

The founder of this school of Buddhism, a priest named Nichiren, was a vegetarian who left his followers free to eat meat. His only requirement was that practitioners “eat wisely” and with “mindfulness.” Harris, a meat-eater, interpreted this instruction to mean he should eat “clean” – avoiding foods that are highly processed, non-organic, or artificial.

California prisons offer four religious meal-plan alternatives, one of which is halal-certified meat slaughtered in accordance with Islamic religious requirements. Though he is not a Muslim, Harris decided that halal-certified food came the closest to his requirements as a Nichiren Buddhist.

Enter the Pork Rinds

Inmates who enroll in the prison system’s “Religious Meat Alternative Program” must agree to allow officials to monitor their discretionary food purchases to ensure compliance to their diet. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation screens out inmates who sign up for one diet or another out of preference instead of religious belief.

Harris was kicked out of the program when he made purchases at the prison canteen for very un-Islamic pork rinds and salami, as well as meat-flavored ramen and beef steaks. Harris made these purchases after the prison temporarily switched his diet to a vegetarian option which, he said, left him feeling lightheaded.

The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA)

This law requires government to use the “least restrictive means” of meeting a compelling government interest. It has been invoked to allow Sikhs to wear long beards in prison and to permit a Christian inmate facing execution to have his pastor touch him as he was to be injected with lethal drugs.

Harris’s claim for preliminary relief was denied by a federal district judge, who ruled that the diet the inmate chose “does not fulfill the dictates of the Plaintiff’s religion.” Judge Nelson, however, stood firmly in favor of allowing Harris to decide what his religious obligations were.

Judge Nelson wrote:

“Judges ought not to be Pharisees, decreeing from on high what practices are relevant to a prisoner’s understanding of his own faith … It is for Harris to determine whether being on [a halal diet] satisfies Harris’s Nichiren Buddhist beliefs. And if external forces cause Harris to fall short of the exact dictates of his religion, it is for him and his conscience, not us as courts, to decide what compromises are appropriate.”

Such “dictates” include pork rinds to cure lightheadedness. Judge Nelson continued:

“Harris’s departures from the Islamic diet – or even a Buddhist diet – do not demonstrate that his beliefs do not require him to adhere to that diet if possible … Each man’s faith is his own, and judges must avoid questioning whether a prisoner has strictly abided by the letter of his own sincere belief.”
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In other words, RLUIPA does not require prisoners to be flawless theologians – only that government refrain from acting as one.

Colorado calls its Universal Preschool program just that – universal. But as Protect The 1st demonstrates in our amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court, that promise comes with a catch.

Catholic preschools in Colorado want to participate in the state’s publicly funded preschool program on the same terms as secular private schools. The state excludes them – not because they fail to meet academic, health, or safety standards, but because they insist on maintaining a religious mission consistent with Catholic teaching. In response, the schools, parents, and the Archdiocese of Denver are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.

Protect The 1st is supporting them with a brief urging the Court to take this case and correct a dangerous error by the Tenth Circuit. At issue is Colorado’s attempt to condition access to a public benefit on these Catholics’ surrender of their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

Colorado objects that Catholic preschools require families to support the faith-based mission of the school, including traditional teachings on sexuality and marriage. Faced with that reality, the state offered a blunt ultimatum – abandon your religious identity or stay out of the program.

That is not neutrality. It is coercion – and it violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. Supreme Court precedent is clear – when the government creates exceptions to its rules for secular reasons, it may not refuse to accommodate religion. In Carson v. Makin (2021), the Court made the rule unmistakable: “A State violates the Free Exercise Clause when it excludes religious observers from otherwise available public benefits.”

Colorado’s regulations permit flexibility for many schools in many contexts while denying any accommodation to religious schools. That disparity between secular and religious schools should trigger strict scrutiny – a test the state cannot and should not pass.

The state’s demand also infringes on the schools’ right to expressive association.

Religious schools teach and transmit values as well as education. Forcing them to accept students whose families openly reject those values alters the message the school conveys to its community. The Supreme Court has long held that the government may not force private organizations to accept members in ways that undermine their expressive mission – nor may it achieve the same result indirectly by attaching improper conditions on funding.

The Tenth Circuit brushed aside these concerns, treating participation in the preschool program as a privilege the state may ration on its own terms. That reasoning is deeply flawed. The Constitution does not allow the government to do indirectly – through benefit programs – what it may not do directly through regulation.

If this decision stands, the implications extend far beyond Colorado. States could routinely exclude religious schools, charities, and social-service providers from public programs unless they conform their beliefs to official orthodoxy. That is not pluralism. It is pressure for ideological conformity.

The Supreme Court should grant review and reaffirm a simple principle – religious families do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they seek equal access to public benefits.

​We didn’t hear church bells pealing on Jan. 16 after New York State sounded the retreat. Chalk it up to modesty.
 
After almost a decade of trying to force Catholic and Anglican nuns, and faith-based social ministries, to pay for abortion coverage, state officials finally surrendered to the reality that their demand violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free religious expression. They dropped their case.
 
This victory only required these religious organizations to endure years of litigation that included two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
“For nearly a decade, New York bureaucrats tried to strong-arm nuns into paying for abortions because they serve all those in need,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket and an attorney for the religious groups. “At long last, the state has given up its disgraceful campaign. This victory confirms that the government cannot punish religious ministries for living out their faith by serving everyone.”
 
This case arose out of a New York law that included an abortion mandate for health care plans. Despite early promises that religious groups were exempt, New York reneged on its promised protections and extended the mandate to apply to religious groups that hire or serve people of other faiths.
 
In 2021, the Supreme Court remanded the case to lower courts, ordering them to reconsider it. After New York courts refused to follow Supreme Court guidance, these religious organizations had to return to the Supreme Court to ask it intervene.
 
In a similar case, the Court in 2025 ruled unanimously against Wisconsin bureaucrats, Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin. The Court held that the state had violated the First Amendment by denying a Catholic social ministry an exemption from state unemployment taxes. Wisconsin sought to force Catholic Charities to violate its beliefs by funding contraceptives and abortifacients.
 
“It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain ‘neutrality between religion and religion,’” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority. “There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one.”
 
This is relevant because Wisconsin’s theory resembled New York’s, declaring that if a charity serves people of other faiths, it must comply with the mandate. Taken literally, these states would have religious charities either abandon their beliefs about the sanctity of life or ask the needy about their religious beliefs and discriminate against those who are of other faiths or non-believers.
 
In remanding the Catholic Charities case, the Court included language that the “government cannot use schemes like New York’s to discriminate among religious people.” The Court thus held out New York as an example of what not to do. That undoubtedly convinced New York State to stop rowing toward yet another legal waterfall.
 
Will New Jersey and Pennsylvania get the message as well?
 
After also losing before the U.S. Supreme Court – twice! – these states are pressing a new theory to try to force the Catholic nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor to comply with a federal contraception mandate. New Jersey and Pennsylvania offer a convoluted argument under which they are trying to compel the federal government to uphold an administrative requirement for groups to “self-certify” – even though the feds themselves hold that requirement to be “optional.”
 
Attempting to force expressive organizations – whether atheists or evangelicals – to violate their core beliefs is offensive to the Constitution. Yet some states remain Inspector Javert-like in their obsession with enforcing ideological conformity, even when the Supreme Court has told them to stand down.
 
It is time to cut it out.

​The conventional wisdom has long held that religion in America is steadily retreating from public life. Faith, we’re told, is becoming ever more private – something to be practiced quietly at home or in church, but kept out of schools, workplaces, and civic debates.

Becket’s newly released 2025 Religious Freedom Index tells a very different story.

According to the latest national polling, Americans’ support for religious liberty has reached an all-time high. The Index’s composite score climbed to 71 percent in 2025 – up from 2024 and five points higher than in 2020 – marking the strongest public backing for religious freedom since Becket began tracking attitudes. 

Even more striking is where that support is growing.

Faith Is Re-Entering the Public Square

One of the clearest trends in the 2025 data is a renewed confidence in public expressions of faith. Fifty-seven percent of Americans now agree that religious freedom is “inherently public,” meaning people should be free to share their beliefs at school, at work, and online – a five-point jump since 2020. 

That shift matters. It suggests Americans are pushing back against the idea that religious conviction must be hidden to be acceptable. Instead, they increasingly see faith as part of ordinary civic life – no more out of place than political views, cultural identity, or personal values.

At a moment when public discourse feels deeply fractured, this trend is unexpectedly unifying. Becket’s polling finds that support for religious liberty cuts across political, demographic, and generational lines, making it one of the few issues that still brings Americans together.

Parents’ Rights Are a Rallying Point

Nowhere is that unity clearer than on the question of parental rights in education.

Seventy-three percent of Americans support allowing parents to opt their children out of public-school curriculum they find objectionable – an increase of ten points since 2021.

That growing consensus mirrors recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions affirming that parents’ authority over their children’s moral and religious upbringing does not stop at the classroom door. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court required Montgomery County, Maryland to offer curriculum opt-outs, recognizing that parental rights extend into public education. Becket’s data shows that 62 percent of Americans agree with that ruling – a rare moment when public opinion, constitutional principle, and judicial decision align. 

The message is clear – parents expect the law to respect their role as the primary guardians of their children’s values.

Protecting the Sacred Still Matters

Another revealing result concerns one of the oldest religious practices in the Western world – the Catholic sacrament of confession.

Washington State enacted a law that would have forced priests to report anything they heard in confession related to abuse or neglect, effectively breaking the age-old seal of the confessional. This law made no sense as a law enforcement measure. In the confessional, a priest can urge a wrongdoer to turn himself in. Under this statute, the process of turning someone toward repentance and the law would be discouraged.

Becket challenged the law, and a federal court struck it down.

The poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly side with that outcome. The Index found strong support for protecting priests under the First Amendment in this context, affirming that even serious policy goals cannot justify trampling core religious practices.

This isn’t merely a Catholic issue. It reflects a broader public instinct that the government should not insert itself into sacred spaces – whether that’s a confessional, a synagogue, a mosque, or a prayer meeting.

School Choice Gains Ground

Colorado barred families from receiving state funding – available to most private schools – if they choose to send their children to Catholic schools. Americans also approve of the idea that when tax credits and funding are available for private schools, religious schools should be treated equitably. Three in four Americans now favor allowing public education funding to follow families who choose religious schools for their children.

Americans increasingly see educational funding as belonging to families, not systems. If parents decide that a religious school best serves their child, many Americans believe the government should respect that decision rather than penalize it.

A Cultural Rebalancing

Taken together, these results point to something larger than any single Supreme Court case or policy debate. They suggest that after years of cultural turbulence – from pandemic shutdowns to ideological battles in schools, to rising mistrust of institutions – Americans are once again coming to value the stabilizing role of religious freedom.
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Becket’s 2025 Index shows that this vision resonates far beyond church pews. It resonates with parents who want a say in their children’s education, with workers who don’t want to check their beliefs at the office door, and with citizens who still believe that pluralism, not enforced secularism, is the hallmark of a healthy democracy.

​Imagine you’re a Roman Catholic and you go to confession. After spilling your guts about things you’ve done that weigh on your conscience, the priest says, “Actually, don’t sweat it, I don’t believe there is such a thing as sin. Do whatever feels right to you.” You would understandably feel confused as you stumbled out of the confession booth.

This never actually happens because the Roman Catholic Church, like all religions, insists that its clergy believe in its precepts. And in Roman Catholicism, the need for confession and the forgiveness of sins is definitely one of them.

This makes religious organizations different from a business. If a corporation were to tell a job applicant, “sorry, you’re well qualified for this position, but we don’t hire Jews (or Christians, or Muslims, or atheists),” that would be a gross violation of federal civil rights laws. And it should be.

But the law cannot force the Catholic Church to employ a priest who is a stone-cold atheist, or a synagogue to employ a rabbi who wishes to share the Christian gospel. In order for religious groups to have integrity – in the sense of being a coherent whole – they must be able to use their right of free association, as implied by the First Amendment, to only hire their co-religionists.

That is, in essence, what the law means by a “ministerial exception.” Without that exception, religions would have no coherence, rendering the First Amendment’s promise of the free exercise of religion meaningless.

So far, so good. But does the ministerial exception extend to staff? What about the IT guy who keeps the organization’s computer system running? Does he have to adhere to the faith?

That was the question at stake for the Union Gospel Mission of Yakima, Washington. This Christian mission group offers services to the homeless, the hungry, the sick, and the addicted. It operates shelters, health clinics, soup kitchens, and faith-based recovery services. That organization insists that its support staff uphold its beliefs and practices, which includes “abstaining from any sexual conduct outside of biblical marriage between one man and one woman.” Again, in any ordinary context, such a standard by an employer would be – and should be – illegal. But what about a church?

A case against this mission group has bounced several times between a lower court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over a violation of the state’s Washington Law Against Discrimination – perhaps the most robust anti-discrimination law in the United States. On Jan. 6, the Ninth Circuit ruled – and it came down in favor of the Union Gospel Mission on the basis of a broader “church autonomy doctrine.”

Judge Patrick Bumatay wrote: “The church autonomy doctrine encompasses more than just the ministerial exception. It forbids interference with ‘an internal church decision that affects the faith and mission of the church itself.’”

Judge Bumatay noted that Union Gospel requires “employees attend daily prayers and weekly chapel services, and are encouraged and expected to pray for one another and share devotionals … Union Gospel’s religious beliefs guide everything it does … It expects its employees to participate in the group’s evangelism and be an example to others of what Union Gospel believes it means to be a Christian.”

The court found that the hiring of non-ministerial positions isn’t necessarily a religious matter. The religious institution must be able to show – as Union Gospel did – that it has a sincere religious belief in the religious mission of these staff positions.

Judge Bumatay, noting in his opinion that “personnel is policy,” wrote that “this applies perhaps even more so for religious organizations.”
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In the end, the Ninth Circuit did not say that churches get a blank check to discriminate – but it did say that when a religious organization can show that every role is bound up in its spiritual mission, the Constitution gives that judgment real weight. The IT guy may not preach from the pulpit, but if his job is part of advancing the faith, the law will not force a church to separate belief from practice. That balance – between civil rights and religious autonomy – is exactly the line the First Amendment was meant to draw.