FFRF: Don’t turn Connecticut’s Capitol into holiday battleground
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
It may only be July, but a Christmas controversy is already brewing in Connecticut, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging state officials to avoid turning the State Capitol into another holiday battleground.
After First Liberty Institute threatened Connecticut with litigation over a proposed Nativity display inside the state Capitol, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has stepped up to urge state officials to adopt a simple, content-neutral policy prohibiting all unattended private displays inside the Capitol. This would ensure that government buildings remain focused on serving the public rather than becoming annual battlegrounds over religion.
First Liberty Institute and the law firm Jones Day recently demanded that Connecticut allow the Family Institute of Connecticut to place a privately sponsored Nativity scene inside the Capitol. Rather than allowing advocacy groups to turn the Capitol into a forum for competing religious and ideological displays, FFRF recommends that the state adopt a straightforward rule barring all unattended private displays, regardless of viewpoint.
“The end of the year should be a time for celebration, not annual fights over whose religious display belongs inside the state Capitol,” says FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. “People of every faith and of no faith should be able to visit their Capitol feeling welcome, knowing it’s devoted to the people’s business, not to promoting or hosting private religious displays.”
Christians have churches, homes and countless private venues in which to celebrate the religious aspects of Christmas. Government buildings need not become another venue for privately sponsored religious displays.
In a letter to Connecticut’s Joint Committee on Legislative Management, FFRF noted that prohibiting all unattended private displays inside the Capitol would eliminate recurring disputes over which groups receive access to government property.
Writes FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line: “Such a policy would better serve the Capitol’s governmental purposes, avoid unnecessary constitutional litigation and protect the committee from precisely the type of lawsuit First Liberty appears eager to bring.”
FFRF has consistently opposed government-sponsored religious displays. At the same time, when governments choose to create genuine public forums for private holiday displays, FFRF works to ensure those forums are open to everyone, not just Christians. The organization has placed Winter Solstice displays, its “Bill of Rights Nativity” display and other secular exhibits in capitols and public spaces across the country to remind governments that if they open the door to private religious expression, they must also welcome nonreligious viewpoints. FFRF’s preferred solution, however, is a neutral policy that avoids turning government property into an annual contest over competing religious and ideological displays.
Courts have repeatedly recognized that governments may impose reasonable, viewpoint-neutral restrictions on unattended displays on public property. The U.S. Supreme Court has specifically observed that “a ban on all unattended displays” would be a permissible time, place and manner restriction.
FFRF urged the committee to temporarily pause approval of any new unattended private displays while it reviews and revises its policy. The organization noted that its legal department has extensive experience with First Amendment litigation and state/church issues, and offered to consult with the committee or its counsel in developing a constitutionally sound, viewpoint-neutral display policy.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 41,000 members nationwide, including more than 400 members in Connecticut. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The post FFRF: Don’t turn Connecticut’s Capitol into holiday battleground appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
New ‘We Dissent’ episode focuses on Rededicate 250 and “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias”
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
America turned 250 this year — and the Trump administration did its best to infuse Christian nationalism into the historic anniversary.
On Episode 55, FFRF Deputy Legal Director Liz Cavell, Americans United for Separation of Church and State Legal Director Rebecca Markert and National Women’s Law Center Director of Nominations & Democracy Alison Gill dive into how the Trump administration is using America’s 250th birthday as a way to rewrite the past and the present. They discuss how the administration hijacked the nation’s planned bipartisan 250th anniversary celebration and turned it into a taxpayer-funded Christian nationalist prayer revival, before moving on to tackle the report issued by the “Taskforce to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias,’ one of several task forces created by the administration to manufacture a “Christian persecution” narrative to privilege conservative Christianity under the law.
“We Dissent,” which first aired in May 2022, is a legal affairs show offering legal wisdom from the secular viewpoint of women lawyers. The show is a collaboration of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United and the National Women’s Law Center.
Find previous episodes here, which examine developments affecting the separation of church and state, particularly in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts. Past episodes include discussions about court reform, religion behind bars and abortion and also feature a range of expert guests.
Episodes are available at the “We Dissent” website, on YouTube, Spotify or wherever your podcasts are found. Be sure to stay up to date with the “We Dissent” podcast on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Bluesky.
Tune in regularly at “We Dissent” for compelling legal discussion and insights!
The post New ‘We Dissent’ episode focuses on Rededicate 250 and “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.
California basketball coach made players fill out Christian journals… or run extra laps
This newsletter is free and goes out to over 25,000 subscribers, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can subscribe via Patreon or the Subscribe button below! You can also make one-time donations through Venmo, CashApp, or PayPal.
A high school basketball coach in California told his team that they needed to regularly fill out a Christian journal with affirmations and prayers—and punished them with laps if they refused to do it.
The practice only stopped after a parent of one of the athletes contacted the Freedom From Religion Foundation about it.
All of this took place last year at Enterprise High School in Redding. The parent said Coach Abie Ramirez gave his team copies of the “Empowered Christian Athlete Journal” in order to track their development.
The book purportedly helps students “who want to perform at their best, in sports, school, and life by grounding their strength in Christ.” Students are asked to complete journal entries about things like a time they failed, what they learned from it, etc. While a secular version of that could be helpful, this book includes Bible verses to justify self-improvement because the ultimate goal is to make sure they convert. The book’s creator, Derek Ward, openly brags about how religion is necessary to be the best version of yourself, describing the journal as a “mindset and faith training system.”
The journal would have been bad enough, but a failure to complete an assignment came with punishments—double the running, in one case—which the parent preserved in the form of screenshots of the coach’s messages:
In a letter FFRF attorney Samantha F. Lawrence sent the Shasta Union High School District, she even quoted the parent talking about why this was such a problem:
The parent who contacted us further explained that they “are very angered and disappointed . . . that a Christian based journal would be pushed at a public school” and “our child would be disciplined for not participating” in the religious journal activities. They went on to say that they are not a religious family, and that the faith-based journal assignments crossed the constitutional line.
You have to appreciate the parent being so open and honest here. In so many cases where a public school coach is pushing religion on kids—even when it’s indirect, like Coach Joe Kennedy, who demanded the right to pray at midfield after football games—the assumption is that everyone is on board and that no student has a problem with it.
The church/state separation side tries to remind people that that’s almost never the case; students don’t want to jeopardize their spot on the team, create discord among teammates, or push back against their coach. The point is: It’s foolish to assume everyone’s Christian no matter where in America you are.
That’s why FFRF asked the district to “immediately investigate this situation and ensure that Coach Ramirez ceases pushing religion onto students in violation of the First Amendment.”
It worked. The district eventually wrote back to say the promotion of religion would stop immediately.
The District conducted an investigation into the matter and confirmed that the journal was used. Upon completion of the investigation, we informed the coach that the use of the journal in this context should not continue moving forward.
In addition, the District will provide training and guidance to staff to ensure a clear understanding of expectations and to help prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.
It’s the right response and confirms that what the coach was doing was completely inappropriate.
“This is one of the more egregious misuses of authority we have recently seen by a public school coach,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Coaches wield enormous influence over young athletes, and that authority cannot be used to pressure students into participating in religious exercises. Public school athletics should build teamwork and character, not serve as a vehicle for religious indoctrination.”
We have not heard any statement from Ramirez himself apologizing or even acknowledging that he crossed a line. Nor have we heard why he thought this was a good idea to begin with. In any case, because of one parent and one watchdog group, he won’t be able to push his religion on kids in the future.
I hope he’s learned his lesson, though. When you’re an authority figure who controls students’ playing time, discipline, recommendation letters, and, in some cases, scholarship opportunities, you shouldn’t make any of that dependent on the kids sharing your religious beliefs. That’s just coercion and it helps no one improve.
It’s also why these cases deserve far more attention than they usually receive. If an atheist coach told students they needed to reject God because only they had all the power on the court, it’d be covered non-stop in right-wing media. But it’s hard to believe this will get much coverage even at a local level.
Keep in mind that the district didn’t really reprimand the coach at all. He was told to stop with the Christian journaling… but that’s it. There’s no indication this will affect him in any meaningful way. There’s no “strike” on his record. It feels like he suffered the bare minimum. Without meaningful consequences, though, the lesson to other coaches is that the worst thing that happens if you violate students’ constitutional rights is that you might be asked to stop, maybe, if anyone catches you. It’s not much of a deterrent.
