Don’t be caught on the wrong side of (constitutional) law, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is commanding a Georgia deputy.

Chief Deputy Jonathan Blackmon has been using his position within the Polk County Sheriff’s Office to promote and endorse his personal religious beliefs. Christian ministries are being brought into the Polk County Jail in order to proselytize directly to inmates, and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office regularly posts Blackmon’s religious messages on its official Facebook page.

On April 9, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office posted a message on its official Facebook page announcing it was restarting its “jail ministry program.” This post included a photo of a Latin cross with a crown of thorns. On May 31, Blackmon posted a message on the official sheriff’s office Facebook page explaining that he led prayer to open a Memorial Day service. (See image above.) On June 24, Blackmon posted a message on the official Facebook page where he explained that the office not only invited in a Christian ministry to convert inmates, but that he prayed with the ministry there.

This ministry, named Fly Right, is a Christian entity whose primary goal is to “to see inmates come to know Jesus Christ.” In a Facebook post on June 23, Flyright bragged about being allowed to enter the Polk County Jail to convert inmates.

While the Polk County Jail may accommodate the free exercise rights of its inmates and may allow private groups to organize religious events within the jail, the county and its employees may not organize, promote, endorse or participate in religious events, FFRF underscores.

“The Supreme Court has long held that the Establishment Clause ‘mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion,’” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes to Polk County Sheriff Johnny Moats. “The Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook posts convey a message to non-Christians that they are not ‘favored members of the community,’” to again quote the Supreme Court.

Inmates and local community members interact with and rely on law enforcement officers during some of the most urgent and vulnerable times of their lives. That’s why, FFRF insists, the sheriff’s office must be even-handed and avoid any appearance of bias. The First Amendment prohibits even the appearance of religious endorsement by government officials, FFRF emphasizes. Promoting one set of religious beliefs on the official Polk County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page violates the office’s obligation under the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court has described the power of social media sites as “the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge.” Government entities must be particularly diligent not to entangle religious messages with official government pronouncements made in this “modern public square.”

Finally, the Sheriff’s Office’s promotion of Christianity needlessly jeopardizes taxpayer dollars by exposing the county to legal liability. Not long ago the sheriff’s office in Bradley County, Tenn., agreed to pay more than $40,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees after promoting religion on social media and ignoring objections to the practice. There is no need to expose the Polk County Sheriff’s Office to similar liability due to its promotion of Christianity.

To avoid further Establishment Clause concerns, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office must refrain from endorsing or participating in religious events in its jail or promoting religion on its official social media pages, FFRF insists.

“The Polk County Sheriff’s Office seems to be oblivious to constitutional concerns,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The deputy needs to quit trying to convert a literally captive audience and start enforcing constitutional principles.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with nearly 36,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 500 members and a local chapter in Georgia. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The Chesapeake City Council is considering a proposal tonight to put “In God We Trust” on all its police vehicles, and we need your help now to thwart this proposal.

Such moves are about advancing the Big Lie that the United States was “founded on God” or Christianity, thus dismantling the wall between religion and government. The motto “In God We Trust” is inaccurate, exclusionary, and aimed at brainwashing the country into believing that our nation is a theocracy.

And the exercise will be a waste of taxpayer money. There’ll be an estimated $81,000 in labor costs to add it to 1,500 vehicles, plus $6,000 for materials.

The Chesapeake City Council meeting is at 6:30 p.m. Eastern tonight, July 13, in the City Hall Council chamber at 306 Cedar Road. Please attend the meeting if you live in the area and make your opposition to this absurdity heard loud and clear.

“In God We Trust” was belatedly adopted as a motto when President Eisenhower signed legislation at the behest of the Knights of Columbus and other religious entities, which undertook a national lobbying campaign during the height of 1950s zealotry. The original inclusionary U.S. motto, chosen by a distinguished committee of Jefferson, Franklin and Adams, is the Latin E Pluribus Unum (From Many, [Come] One). As FFRF principal founder Anne Gaylor always pointed out, the religious motto isn't even correct: “To be accurate it would have to read ‘In God Some of Us Trust,’ and wouldn’t that be silly?”

Anne Gaylor’s remark is more apt now than ever. The number of “Nones,” those with no religious affiliation, has tripled since the 1990s, to comprise 23 percent of the U.S. population in 2020. The “Nones” have made substantial inroads in all sectors, a just-released report shows.

Please contact Chesapeake City Council members and urge them to oppose the "In God We Trust" shenanigans. Their emails and phone numbers can be found here.

TALKING POINTS

As an area resident and nonreligious citizen, I am asking you to please oppose the Chesapeake City Council resolution seeking to impose “In God We Trust” on police vehicles. It is an exclusionary motto adopted during the McCarthy era, and it would result in a waste of precious taxpayer dollars. Thank you for standing up for our secular Constitution.

An appeals court has disappointingly issued a stay order in a case that the Freedom From Religion Foundation recently won over a praying Texas judge.

A panel of judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that a Texas judge could continue his courtroom prayers while his appeal is pending. FFRF and its attorney plaintiff “John Roe” have so far prevailed in the challenge of Judge Wayne Mack’s practice of hosting chaplains to deliver prayers to open court sessions.

On May 20, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt ruled that the prayers were coercive and violated the Establishment Clause. The constitutionally sound decision had declared: “The court is of the view that the defendant violates the Establishment Clause when, before a captured audience of litigants and their counsel, he presents himself as theopneustically inspired, enabling him to advance, through the chaplaincy program, God’s ‘larger purpose.’ Such a magnanimous goal flies in the face of historical tradition, and makes a mockery of both religion and law.”

However, the stay order freezes that decision. Judge Andrew Oldham, a President Trump appointee, authored the July 9 opinion, which states, “The judge has made a strong showing that the district court erred.” The three-judge panel issued a stay of the district court’s order and found that Mack was likely to prevail on the merits.

“We are disheartened that people who have cases before Mack will continue to have to participate in unconstitutional prayers while this case proceeds,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The First Amendment must protect individuals from judges who wield their power to coerce participation in religious exercises.”

Mack, a formerly ordained minister who attended Jackson College of Ministries, made the unprecedented decision to solicit chaplains to open his court sessions with prayer, a practice not replicated by any other court in the country. Attendees have reported Mack surveying the courtroom during prayers, causing concern that their cases would be affected if they did not participate. Mack’s bailiff announced the prayers, stating that anyone could leave during the prayer, but then locked the courtroom doors. Mack entered, talked about his chaplaincy program, introduced a chaplain, and gave the name and location of the chaplain's church. While everyone in the courtroom remained standing, the chaplain, who was almost always Christian, delivered a prayer, with no guidelines regarding permissible content.

The stay decision is not a final ruling on the case. Mack and FFRF will file briefs with the 5th Circuit on the appeal later this year.

FFRF and Roe are being represented by FFRF Associate Counsel Sam Grover, with FFRF Associate Counsel Elizabeth Cavell and Attorney Ayesha Khan of Washington, D.C., serving as co-counsel.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has more than 35,000 members and several chapters all over the United States, including over 1,500 members and a chapter in Texas.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is applauding Colorado lawmakers for allowing survivors of child sexual abuse to pursue justice — delayed but, hopefully, not denied.

Often, abuse is not reported until many years after it occurs, and the abusers can escape consequences because of a statute of limitations. Earlier this year, Gov. Jared Polis signed into law SB 211-073, a bill supported by FFRF to remove this “get out of jail free” card, eliminating the statute of limitations for child sexual assault. However, that change in law only applied proactively — it did not revive claims that were already barred by the statute of limitations. Now, Polis has signed SB 211-088, which will give survivors of past abuse a chance at justice through the courts. Beginning in January of next year, the new law will allow those survivors to sue institutions that covered up abuse or failed to take reasonable steps to stop it.

This pattern of abuse and cover-up is especially common in churches, where the myth of divine authority combined with the desire of so many of these entities to maintain a “pure” image allows predator priests to get away with abuse for decades while the church refuses to contact secular authorities. Because this pattern became so apparent in the Catholic Church, many states and countries around the world have initiated investigations into the problem, invariably discovering that it is even worse than previously feared.

Church abuse is not limited to Catholic churches, of course, which is why the recent investigation in FFRF’s home state of Wisconsin is aimed at uncovering all sorts of clergy abuse. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has reportedly refused to cooperate fully in this probe, asserting that Wisconsin law does not allow the Department of Justice to bring cases against old abuse. The lack of cooperation highlights the need for updating such laws, and Colorado is showing Wisconsin how to do that.

“Churches and other institutions that cover up abuse should not be able to escape charges just by running out the clock,” comments FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. “Other states should take note and follow suit.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational charity, is the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics), and has been working since 1978 to keep religion and government separate. It has more than 35,000 members and several chapters all over the country, including over 1,000 members in Colorado, with chapters in Denver and Colorado Springs.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is celebrating findings released today that show a shrinking white Christian majority and a stable percentage of religiously unaffiliated Americans.

The Public Religion Research Institute’s “2020 Census of American Religion” documents that white Christians, previously a supermajority, have declined by nearly a third in the last few decades, from 65 percent in 1996 to a low of 43 percent in 2017. Today, white Christians comprise 44 percent of the population.

The number of “Nones,” those with no religious affiliation, has tripled since the 1990s, to comprise 23 percent of the U.S. population in 2020. “The increase in proportion of religiously unaffiliated Americans has occurred across all age groups but has been most pronounced among young Americans,” the report states.

The “Nones” have made substantial inroads in all sectors. One in five Black Americans and one in five Hispanic Americans today is religiously unaffiliated. More than a third of multiracial Americans are religiously unaffiliated, as are 28 percent of Native Americans. Asian-Americans and Pacific Islander Americans are overall the most likely to be religiously unaffiliated, at 34 percent.

Nearly four in ten (39 percent) religiously unaffiliated Americans live in urban areas, 44 percent live in suburban areas, and 17 percent live in rural areas. Religiously unaffiliated Americans are primarily independents and Democrats. The median age of religiously unaffiliated American adults is 38, much younger than the median age of all Americans.

A majority of white Americans still identify as Christian, breaking down as 50 percent Protestant, 23 percent evangelical, 27 percent mainline Protestant and 19 percent Catholic. Jews are at 2 percent and Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or other religions make up less than 1 percent of the white U.S. population. White Christians tilt Republican: 39 percent identify as Republican, 31 percent identify as Democrat, and 28 percent identify as independent, says the report.

Seventy-two percent of Black Americans, three-quarters of Hispanic Americans, 34 percent of Asian American and Pacific Islander Americans and 60 percent of Native Americans identify as Christian.

Nearly one in four Democrats is religiously unaffiliated, compared to 13 percent of Republicans. However, the Public Religion Research Institute notes, the shares of religiously unaffiliated have increased in both parties. The institute’s study shows that two-thirds of Republicans identify as white and Christian, compared to 39 percent of Democrats.

Notably, the study shows that white evangelical Protestants make up only 14 percent of the U.S. population as of 2020.

“This groundbreaking study shows how important it is that we ‘Nones’ must flex our collective muscle, through our ballots and our lobbying presence, to ensure that our government and courts know we are here,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “White Protestant evangelicals represent only 14 percent of the population, yet their views, which are often Christian nationalist, are so disproportionately represented in Congress, statehouses and on court benches.”

The census is based on interviews with more than 500,000 respondents between 2013 and 2020. It provides the most detailed estimates of American religious affiliation since the U.S. Census Bureau last collected religious data in 1957.

Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee last week signed SB 86, which requires that feminine hygiene products be provided in all public schools in the state, a move that the Freedom From Religion Foundation applauds.

The new law means that all public schools serving students in grades five through 12 will make tampons and sanitary napkins available at no cost to students beginning in the 2022-2023 school year.

Rhode Island is the latest state to adopt these menstrual equality initiatives; New Hampshire, New York, Illinois and California have also approved similar requirements. Additionally, two years ago Boston Public Schools launched a pilot program to provide free menstrual products.

In a statement, state Sen. Valarie Lawson, a sponsor of the bill, described the impetus of free feminine hygiene products: “We all know how necessary feminine hygiene products are, but what many people do not realize, and I see this as a long-time educator, is that a lack of access to these products can cause students to miss crucial school days.”

Lawson is correct, since “period poverty” is a top reason why U.S. girls miss school. In fact, a study found that one in five girls can’t afford to purchase menstrual hygiene products. This is also a global issue. In India, as many as 23 million young women drop out of school when they start menstruating.

Major religions across the world contribute to this culture of shame and health inequality by treating menstruation as a taboo topic. Indeed, texts and rituals from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism describe menstruation as impure and that menstruating women should be avoided, asserting that women cannot enter temples or their own kitchens. They further contend that women should sleep during the day, speak softly, not touch others, and receive special blessings at the culmination of their period.

Making menstrual products available in public schools is an important step toward destigmatizing menstruation. The Freedom From Religion Foundation commends Rhode Island legislators and Gov. McKee for standing up for the health and education of millions of girls. We hope to see other states follow suit.

The anti-science pronouncements of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin (the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s home state) are a threat to our — and our planet’s — health. As an organization of freethinkers committed to propagating scientific thought, FFRF takes umbrage.

Johnson has long been a global warming skeptic and saltily put voice to such sentiments in comments that have now come to the fore.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change is — as Lord Monckton said — bullsh*t,” he told a Republican women’s gathering last month, not fully uttering the expletive and making a reference to British global warming denier Lord Christopher Monckton. “By the way, it is.”

Johnson went on to cite books from scientists supposedly debunking climate change. “What are we doing here? Well, we’re killing ourselves,” he bizarrely claimed, adding, “It’s a self-inflicted wound.”

We are indeed killing ourselves, only in the exact opposite way from what Johnson imagines. Global warming is real and fatal, as the recent ultrahot spell in the Northwestern states and Canada that took hundreds of lives yet again demonstrated.

“The extraordinary heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest last week would almost certainly not have occurred without global warming, an international team of climate researchers said Wednesday,” the New York Times reports.

Johnson’s mode of inaction will only exacerbate the problem. And he is completely off-base about the supposedly skeptical scientists. The scientific consensus is almost unanimously in accord that climate change is occurring — and is caused by human activity.

This isn’t the first time that Johnson has been in denial on the issue. “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,” he once stated, asserting that sunspots were the reason for global warming.

Johnson doesn’t confine his flights of unscientific fantasy to the sphere of climate change. Unfortunately, he has carried them over into the realms of the pandemic and medicine. Just some days ago, Johnson organized an event that featured individuals who had apparently developed side-effects to Covid-19 vaccines. In an extraordinary response, the Milwaukee Health Department denounced Johnson for spreading misinformation and encouraging vaccine hesitancy.

“The scientific facts about the Covid-19 vaccine remain: It is safe, it is effective, and complications are extremely rare,” its statement says. “More importantly, it saves lives. The burden of disease, hospitalizations, and deaths due to Covid-19 are the lowest the city of Milwaukee has experienced since the start of this pandemic.”

Just as with climate change, Johnson has an ignoble track record on this subject.

“Early in the pandemic, Johnson downplayed the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the flu and highway deaths as he argued that common-sense public health measures to stop the spread of the illness were excessive,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel states. “Johnson used his perch as chairman of a powerful Senate committee to tout unproven therapies for Covid, including the controversial malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. He also cast doubt that masks helped prevent spread of the disease even though research shows they do, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly recommended their use.”

These are literally life or death issues for all of us. Johnson should be ashamed of himself for using his position in the Senate to so consistently be on the wrong side of science.

Photo by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is raising objections to a constitutionally problematic partnership between a Wisconsin school district and a religious entity.

The Waupun Area School District has partnered with Church Health Services to provide on-site mental health and substance abuse counseling for students.

“While we certainly support the district’s goal of providing mental health and substance use counseling to students of a vulnerable and impressionable age, explicitly partnering with a faith-based organization appears to favor not only religion but Christianity over all religions,” FFRF Legal Fellow Joseph McDonald writes to Waupun Area School District Administrator Steve Hill. “We believe that the district can achieve its goal of providing mental health and substance use counseling without partnering with a faith-based organization.”

The Waupun Area School District is attempting to disentangle itself from Church Health Services with a series of provisions in the memorandum of understanding. However, these attempts are futile, FFRF asserts.

First, the memorandum is inconsistent. The district purports to control the scope of activities of the Christian counseling organization, while the group is allowed autonomy in its provision of services.

Second, the regular presence of Church Health Services on-campus creates the impression that the district favors religion over nonreligion, and Christianity over other religions. A reasonable observer entering a school building to find the group offering services would presume that the district endorses and approves of its services and views.

Further, the memorandum attempts to minimize the group’s faith-based nature by characterizing it as “a mental health counseling provider.” But according to Church Health Services itself, it is “an ecumenical health ministry committed to enacting God’s plan.”

And in failing to charge the faith-based organization with district facility use fees, while still charging secular groups, the district has shown preference for religion over nonreligion. This is an ever-more hazardous violation of the Establishment Clause and breach of the district’s own fiscal policy in light of the district’s $36 million debt referendum and $1.5 million bond debt, which was intended for building improvements, not religious services. The district’s fiscal health has since worsened, as it is currently $40 million in debt. Even then, the district waived the bidding period for mental health services — exiling secular service providers and eliminating the chance to use the partnership as an asset generator. In doing this and relinquishing the facility use fees, the district has demonstrated a preference for Christianity at the expense of constitutional rights and fiscal health.

To avoid these constitutional concerns, the Waupun Area School District must discontinue the partnership with Church Health Services, FFRF underscores. The problem here is immense — and the solution is simple.

“It is absolutely unnecessary for school officials to venture into a thicket of thorny constitutional questions in picking a religiously sectarian counseling group,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “This partnership is unconstitutional.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization, headquartered in Madison, Wis., with nearly 35,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 1,500 members and a chapter in Wisconsin. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is looking into a constitutionally suspect arrangement that a California park has entered into with a local church.

A concerned local resident has informed the state/church watchdog about a long-term rental agreement between a church and the company that oversees Lake Gregory Regional Park, including the San Moritz Lodge, a public facility. Woodlands Church is reportedly receiving a favorable rate from Lake Gregory Community Recreation Company to rent the lodge, including reduced parking. Woodlands Church has apparently declared San Moritz Lodge its new permanent home, even listing the lodge’s address as its official address. And it has been given permission to install lights and displays during the Christmas season in the park.

The exclusive, long-term deal raises serious constitutional concerns and likely violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, FFRF asserts.

“Allowing Woodlands Church to make San Moritz Lodge its permanent place of business through a long-term use agreement to the exclusion of all other churches, religious organizations and/or other secular community groups or individuals who wish to use this public facility impermissibly advances religion,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes to San Bernardino County Regional Parks Director Beahta Davis. “This agreement demonstrates not only the county’s preference for religion over nonreligion, but also a favoritism of Christianity over all other faiths.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has said time and again, “The touchstone for our analysis is the principle that the ‘First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion,’” FFRF reminds the parks director. The permanent rental of a public facility to a church creates an appearance of government sponsorship of religion.

Another issue raising concerns is that Woodlands Church, which has indicated that it has no intention of finding permanent space on private property, is benefiting from a less expensive rent than is available to other entities or individuals. This amounts to a taxpayer subsidy and must be discontinued, FFRF contends. Taxpayers, under the federal and California Constitutions, should not be compelled to subsidize sectarian worship.

To further look into the matter, FFRF is asking for the following records, among others: all rental rate schedules and policies for rental of the San Moritz Lodge; any contracts or agreements between Woodlands Church and Lake Gregory Community Recreation Company or San Bernardino County Regional Park; and any other records concerning Woodlands Church and its relationship with Lake Gregory Community Recreation Company or San Bernardino County Regional Parks.

“The church-park coziness brings forth troubling constitutional questions,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “At the very least, it deserves further investigation.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 35,000 members and several chapters across the country, including nearly 5,000 members and a chapter in California. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision late last week to review a private school grant program out of Maine signals, once again, that this activist court wants to advance religious interests at the cost of one of our country’s sacred founding principles: keeping religion and government separate.

At issue is the fate of Maine’s existing school funding program, which allows private schools to receive taxpayer money in rural communities lacking equivalent public schools (due to low student populations). Maine’s law properly limits funding to schools providing students with an education free of religious indoctrination.

In Carson v. Makin, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last fall correctly upheld Maine's direct grant program — and its choice to exclude sectarian schools. Under the law, programs run by religious organizations are not automatically excluded from receiving taxpayer money. The disqualifying factor is a program’s intention to indoctrinate students.

It’s always a very bad sign, of course, when our side is winning and the high court chooses to review the case. The newly reconstituted Supreme Court now appears to be positioning itself to drastically expand its prior disastrous decisions related to taxpayer funds for religious institutions.

For example, in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, the court in 2017 struck down a Missouri state restriction against taxpayer subsidies for playground resurfacing for religious preschool and day care facilities. Unlike Maine’s grant program, the playground resurfacing scheme excluded religious groups based on their religious character. Four of the six justices who joined the majority opinion in Trinity Lutheran stated that “this case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding.”

Unfortunately, the court’s new ultraconservative majority might well decide to do away with that distinction in this pending case, thereby obliterating taxpayers’ constitutional right not to fund religious indoctrination.

Where public money goes, public accountability must follow, as FFRF’s mantra has long noted. Accountability to taxpayers is a crucial requirement for any organization using public money, including religious schools. Religious schools want all of the benefits of Maine’s tuition program, but will fight to be excluded from whatever appropriate regulations the state couples with such funding. Their goal is nothing less than completely unrestricted use of government funding for purely religious ends.

FFRF, which had filed a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of the Maine law at the appeals level, intends to file a new amicus brief before the Supreme Court. Forcing taxpayers to subsidize religious indoctrination undermines taxpayers’ constitutional rights, as well as secular education.

“The United States was founded on a principle that it is tyrannical to force citizens to subsidize religions with which they disbelieve,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Public schools exist to educate, not proselytize, and the same should be true of any publicly supported education.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation castigates yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court judgment gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and renews its call for court reform. 

The timing of the 6-3 ruling, right before the august anniversary today of the landmark Civil Rights Act and the Independence Day weekend, adds insult to injury.

“What is tragic here is that the court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses,” Justice Elena Kagan writes in her dissent.

The high court upheld two Arizona voting laws that contribute to the disenfranchisement of voters of color. Arizona bars most individuals or groups from collecting absentee ballots to drop off at polling places, and throws out ballots cast in the wrong precinct. The court decision eviscerates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars any law that discriminates, intentionally or not, on the basis of race.

Lower federal courts had ruled there was ample evidence that the Arizona laws discriminate, such as against Native Americans on Indian reservations without transportation or reliable mail pick-up and delivery, and against lower-income individuals, who move frequently and don’t realize their voting precinct has changed. As dissenting Justice Kagan charges, the restrictions “stack the deck against minority citizens’ voting rights.”

This ruling follows the disastrous 2013 high court decision that destroyed the most important part of the Voting Rights Act, Section 5, which required federal approval before states and regions with histories of discriminatory voting practices change or adopt any voting law. It is more than dismaying that yesterday’s majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, invokes the phony issue of voter fraud to justify legislation to disenfranchise as many voters as possible.

Making this decision even more immoral is the rush by many state legislators to introduce and adopt voter suppression laws. Such grotesque laws have been enacted this year in Georgia and Florida, with Texas poised to pass its own suppression law. H.R. 1, known as the For the People Act, which would ensure voter rights and transparent electioneering, is stalled in Congress. Democrats are struggling, in fact, to pass the more narrow reform bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, intended to return full protections of the Voting Rights Act following the 2013 decision. However, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes even that bill. Let’s hope yesterday’s decision will rev up support for it.

Thanks to Donald Trump, McConnell and the Federalist Society, the Supreme Court and lower federal judicial branches have been stacked with justices or judges who oppose civil rights, the Establishment Clause, reproductive rights and basic democratic safeguards.

The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, which met for the first time this week to analyze the merits and legality of various Supreme Court reform proposals, must see yesterday’s ruling as a wake-up call.

We in the United States do still have a republic. The question, as Ben Franklin famously posed, is whether we will be able to keep it.

Read FFRF’s basic statement on why voter suppression is a secular issue.

Expressing due appreciation for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Colorado school district has ended a church’s unencumbered access to a local school.

A concerned Eagle County Schools community member had informed FFRF that Redeemer Eagle Valley, a Christian church that rents facilities from Brush Creek Elementary School, was advertising and distributing bibles to Brush Creek Elementary School students. The church had a display up during school-sponsored summer school that included a Latin cross and which promoted bibles to students along with a sign reading “FREE BIBLES !!!”

It is well settled that public schools may not advance, prefer or promote religion, FFRF reminded the school district.

“Brush Creek Elementary School may not allow religious displays on school grounds,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line wrote to Eagle County Schools Superintendent Philip Qualman. “Courts have continually held that school districts may not display religious messages or iconography in public schools.” Nor may bibles be distributed to public school students.

When a school displays an advertisement for a church on its property, it has unconstitutionally entangled itself with a religious message — here a Christian message, FFRF added. This is particularly exclusionary to the 35 percent of Americans who are non-Christian.

To avoid continuing to violate the Establishment Clause, Brush Creek Elementary School must immediately remove the Redeemer Eagle Valley’s display and ensure that it is no longer distributing bibles to students or putting up displays during the school day, FFRF urged.

The school district responded to FFRF in a respectful manner.

“I’m grateful to know that organizations like FFRF exist, and can advocate on behalf of those who feel the separation of church and state is at risk,” the superintendent emailed back, after detailing the steps that Brush Creek Elementary has taken to make certain that the constitutional violations won’t recur.

“School districts don’t reply this graciously very often,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It’s gratifying that the school district has responded with such alacrity to uphold constitutional principles protecting student rights of conscience.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 35,000 members and several chapters across the country, including over 1,000 members and two chapters in Colorado. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.