FFRF and its robust legal department act on countless state/church entanglements on behalf of its members and the public. Through litigation, education, and other persuasive advocacy, FFRF ends hundreds of violations each year, such as prayers and proselytizing in public schools and events, public funding for religious purposes and religious symbols on public property. FFRF has successfully settled countless religion-in-the-public-schools cases in favor of nonreligious students and secular education. These include ending hour-long prayers imposed on Puerto Rican students, commencement prayers at a Big Ten college and half a century of illegal bible instruction in Dayton, Tenn., schools.
FFRF’s lawsuits have ended a wide range of egregious First Amendment violations. From our very first lawsuit halting religious postal cancellations, to winning the first federal case challenging “faith-based” funding of a pervasively sectarian agency, FFRF court cases protect the wall of separation. FFRF lawsuits have removed Ten Commandments and Jesus paintings from public schools, stopped city/school board prayer; halted school subsidy of child evangelism, removed nativity scenes and Christian crosses from public property, and stopped censorship of freethought displays, literature distribution, license plates and invocations.
Other court victories include:
• Halting federal funds to a bible school offering no academic classes
• Ending millions of tax dollars used to repair and maintain churches
• Halting a government chaplaincy to minister to state workers
• Winning a federal court decision overturning a law declaring Good Friday a state holiday
• Successfully suing the Trump Administration over its executive order against church politicking
• Successfully suing the IRS to reinstitute investigations of church politicking