FFRF warns about appeals court ban on telehealth mifepristone

The country now awaits Supreme Court action in a case that could ban telehealth abortion nationwide only four years after the Dobbs decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

While the Supreme Court today temporarily paused an appeals court ruling imposing an extraordinary restriction all across the United States on telehealth access to medication abortion, a constitutional showdown is in the offing.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in its ruling in State of Louisiana v. Food and Drug Administration, ordered the FDA to temporarily ban the use of telehealth medicine to prescribe mifepristone. Although Louisiana argued the use of telemedicine for abortion undermines its draconian state ban, the appeals court not only granted Louisiana’s request but also shockingly banned telehealth abortion care all over the country. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in a one-sentence order, briefly paused that ban until the parties file briefs by Thursday and the entire court can take up the issue.

“The appeals court ban is an example of practicing medicine without a license,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “An ideologically driven court is overriding evidence-based medicine, federal authority and the rights of patients nationwide to impose a religious agenda.”

About two-thirds of abortions in the United States are via medication and about a quarter are via telemedicine. Millions of U.S. women have used mifepristone, in combination with misoprostol, to safely end pregnancies in the last 26 years, with a serious complication rate of less than 1 percent. The FDA approved mifepristone for use in 2000. In early 2023, the FDA permanently lifted restrictions preventing patients from obtaining medication abortion pills at a retail pharmacy or requiring them to visit a medical provider in person.

Three years ago, an obscure Christian nationalist federal judge in Texas presumed to ban mifepristone nationwide, a ban that the 5th Circuit upheld with modifications, limiting use of the medication to seven weeks of gestation, also banning telemedicine and mail-order shipments. The Biden administration, along with major pharmaceuticals, appealed, with the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s brief in the case noting the plaintiff anti-abortion groups lacked standing to sue. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with FFRF on the standing question and tossed the case in 2024. FFRF warned at the time that the crusade against medication abortion was only beginning.

The stakes are enormous. Some 100,000 patients per year living in states with abortion bans have received abortion pills through the mail from physicians living in states that have passed shield laws protecting such prescriptions. FFRF honored Dr. Maggie Carpenter with its 2025 Forward Award for co-founding Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, after the states of Texas and Louisiana prosecuted her for prescribing and mailing medication abortion to Texas. New York’s shield law has protected her, so far, from extradition.

“The same Christian nationalist movement that pushed Dobbs is now targeting medication abortion and telehealth access nationwide,” Gaylor adds. “This ruling underscores the urgent need to defend the separation of church and state, because these bans are rooted in religious ideology, not medicine or public health.”

FFRF is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to swiftly overturn the 5th Circuit’s ruling and on state lawmakers to enact and strengthen shield laws explicitly protecting telehealth abortion care.

“This is a wake-up call,” Gaylor concludes. “Lawmakers who support reproductive freedom must act now to protect patients and providers from escalating judicial overreach.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

The post FFRF warns about appeals court ban on telehealth mifepristone appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The 8 Weirdest Stories in the Bible

A Christian phone network aims to purify the internet by blocking reality

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A Christian-owned company is launching a new cellphone service that will block users from accessing any kind of adult content deemed inappropriate. While porn sites will be banned for all customers, other sites (like those discussing LGBTQ issues) will be blocked by default though that switched can be flipped by an adult.

The goal is to create a “Jesus-centric” network for all clients, according to Radiant Mobile founder Paul Fisher. MIT Technology Review explained how all this will work:

The network, which is currently being tested ahead of its May 5 launch date, will be run by Radiant Mobile, a newly launched mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). These operators don’t own cell towers but buy bandwidth from the big providers (in this case, T-Mobile) and sell to specific demographics (President Trump announced his own MVNO last year called Trump Mobile; CREDOMobile sends donations to progressive causes).

… He says Radiant is working with the Israeli cybersecurity company Allot to block categories of content, such as material about violence or self-harm. Some categories are banned by default and cannot be allowed even for adult users.

…

The technology to do this blocking is a blunt instrument: Allot groups website domains into more than a hundred categories, which include pornography but also violence, malware, gaming, and in Radiant Mobile’s case “sects,” which includes websites about Satanism. If one of its users tries to visit a website that belongs to a blocked category, the page won’t load.

So there’s basically a filter this company manages that blocks access to anything they perceive as un-Christian, including perfectly normal websites that simply talk about things they are too immature to handle. Adults can unblock those sites if they want to, but the assumption is that sex education websites are off-limits. Parents can also block their kids from visiting (or downloading) TikTok and YouTube. (Which is ridiculous given how much thoughtful, useful content is on those platforms if you know where to look!)

Why would anyone pay for a special network when they could simply avoid adult websites already? Presumably because they know they can’t handle the temptation. Or they just don’t trust their children. But if certain URLs are blocked, it’s generally easy to work around those filters. Just ask any tech-savvy kid. (The Radiant Mobile website insists kids will not be able to bypass the filter with a VPN because their system “intercepts traffic before other VPNs can override it.” But that assumes you’re using their network at all times.) And it’s not like you have to go directly to a porn site to watch adult content.

The more important question is how far this self-imposed censorship goes. What about Wikipedia articles on “adult” topics? What about medical websites that discuss health care for trans kids? What if I want to read a news story about what a Christian pastor just did to unsuspecting children? Or about Donald Trump’s affairs and assaults? Why choose this over programs like the Mike Johnson-approved “Covenant Eyes,” which alerts someone else if you visit an adult site (unless you’re Joshua Duggar and you work around the system)?

And if the goal is to censor certain kinds of websites from your children—like websites explaining what’s happening with their bodies during puberty because you believe ignorance is bliss—why on earth would you be so naïve to think they won’t learn that information some other way?

Indeed, even news sites might be blocked in this network:

… if a news site starts hosting enough gender-related content, Fisher might not just label it as “press,” which is allowed, but also “sexuality,” thus blocking the whole domain to any phone with that category blocked.

It’s unclear if gambling or prediction market apps will also be banned for everyone. What about Rumble and right-wing conspiracy theories? What about Roblox with all of its problems? What about museum websites that teach evolution and the Big Bang instead of Young Earth Creationism?

The irony is that your brain is arguably more likely to be damaged by listening to sermons from right-wing zealots, not accessing information about sex.

As conservative Christians would know from their efforts to censor banned books, using a blunt instrument to block people from accessing information rarely works. If anything, it just instills an urgency to get around the wall.

And if this sales pitch isn’t already enough, don’t worry. The company also plans to offer AI-created Bible slop.

To fill the gap left by all the sites being blocked, the company intends to offer access to a library of religious content, including AI-generated Bible videos. It plans to use characters like Cinderella, Tinker Bell, and others (it has obtained rights from the entertainment and media company Elf Labs, which has been amassing rights to hundreds of children’s characters). “Those characters were originally constructed with a conservative perspective,” Klimis says. They’ll be used in AI-generated content alongside testimonials and devotionals.

If you’ve ever wanted to listen to Snow White talk about Noah’s Ark and how happy every was to watch God’s genocide of the rest of humanity, enjoy, I guess…

In that video, the bunnies are bigger than the lions, the zebras are as tall as the children, and the giraffes barely make it above Noah’s head. (Fundamentalists call that history.) There’s another video about Adam and Eve, two naked white people in a garden, but because that story has a Christian stamp of approval, it’s marketed as a children’s video.

No word yet on how Snow White plans to explain the story involving Lot and his two daughters… but maybe that won’t matter, according to these Redditors:

So if you’ve ever said to yourself, “I hate my current phone company and I wish it was shittier in every way,” this is the plan for you. It’s like the mobile version of a Christian movie: Worse by every conceivable metric despite the company having access to all the money they’d ever need.

At that point, why even get a phone with internet access at all? Get one of those old flip phones and call it a day.

What Radiant Mobile is really selling isn’t a phone plan. It’s just control. They control adults, and adults get to control kids, and kids are smart enough to get around both sets of censors. Which is something they’re going to have to do given that the Christian adults are effectively isolating them from the information required to function in the real world. The only people meaningfully affected by all this are the ones who don’t realize what’s being withheld from them—and that’s exactly the point. It’s not going to stop bad behavior; it’s just going to keep some people more ignorant a little longer.

This will eventually backfire. Information suppression rarely eliminates curiosity. It only intensifies it. Children and sheltered adults will want to know what’s being kept from them. And some people are going to find answers without useful context or guidance to help them process it, which is even worse than the alternative. Bubbles eventually pop.

Any network that blocks sex education but pipes in AI-generated Bible cartoons isn’t elevating discourse. It’s just harming people in a different way. There are definitely harmful sites online. But people who understand what they’re looking at and have the maturity to handle it are bound to be better prepared to deal with the real world. Not the people trapped in an even smaller, more fragile ecosystem.

‘Great American Freethought Songbook’ May 11 livestream Irving Berlin special

The Freedom From Religion Foundation continues its unique monthly concert series, “The Great American Freethought Songbook with Dan & Darcie,” with its second installment on Monday, May 11, at 7 p.m. Central.

The one-hour concert before a live local audience in Madison, Wis., will be livestreamed on FFRF’s Facebook page, YouTube channel and Freethought TV, FFRF’s free app for smart TVs and other devices. (It’s easy and free to download this app.) The show will be available to watch afterward on YouTube and Freethought TV at your convenience.

The seven-month concert series celebrates major figures of the Great American Songbook and their secular viewpoints. This month’s concert celebrates the music, life and freethinking views of Irving Berlin, one of the most influential composers of the genre, known even today for his song “White Christmas” and many others.

“The Great American Freethought Songbook with Dan & Darcie” features FFRF Co-President Dan Barker, an accomplished jazz pianist and music history enthusiast, alongside Madison vocalist Darcie Johnston. The series explores not only timeless standards but also the often-overlooked freethinking perspectives of many classic American songwriters.

Upcoming performances will feature George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin (June 8), Yip Harburg (July 13), Cole Porter (Aug. 24), Richard Rodgers (with Mary Rodgers) (Sept. 21) and a finale on Nov. 9 featuring a medley of nonreligious 20th-century songwriters, including Jay Gorney, Burton Lane, Tom Lehrer, Frank Loesser, Thelonious Monk, Stephen Sondheim and Charles Strouse.

If you missed the debut, you may catch it now on YouTube or look for it in Freethought TV’s archive.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With nearly 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

The post ‘Great American Freethought Songbook’ May 11 livestream Irving Berlin special appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The 8 Weirdest Stories in the Bible

Florida pastor resigns after adult son, a youth pastor, caught in child predator sting

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A recently hired pastor and his wife have stepped down from Victory Church in East Palatka, Florida after their 25-year-old son was caught on camera trying to meet someone he believed was a 14-year-old child whom he had sent sexually explicit photos to.

Turns out that child was a decoy (in the vein of To Catch a Predator). The sting was the work of a vigilante group called Operation 17:2, named after the Bible verse that reads, “It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” They posed as the child online and ended up in a conversation with youth pastor Caleb Roberts, where the chats grew increasingly explicit. When Roberts walked into a Florida CVS to meet the child he believed he was talking to, he was instead greeted by former MMA fighter Garrett Gross and his crew.

Within a span of a few minutes, Roberts went from saying he was there to meet a male friend… to confessing that he intended to sexually assault a girl. Along the way, he admitted he was a virgin, that he was a youth pastor, and that he was really a “good guy” who just “sometimes [gets] these thoughts in my head,” And that’s before he called his pastor/father on speakerphone: “Hey, dad. How you doing? So, um, listen, I made a mistake…”

Roberts is whisked away by police at the end of the video.

I’ll pause here to say there are a number of ethical concerns about groups like these that try to capture predators on their own either because they believe it’s the right thing to do or because they know videos like these will go viral. They are often so obsessed with footage of the “capture,” that they sometimes screw up procedural steps that ultimately allow the alleged predators to go free. Groups like these are also often accused of entrapment: baiting someone into committing a crime they wouldn’t have otherwise committed. And there’s always the possibility of violence when the two sides come face-to-face, when the alleged predator doesn’t see any way out of the situation. I wanted to ask Gross about these concerns, but he didn’t respond to my request for comment.

In this case, two things happened in rapid succession.

First, even though police took over investigation of this particular case, a local judge apparently denied them a warrant to search Roberts’ phone because there was a possibility the chats were the result of artificial intelligence.

Gross reacted on Facebook:

… We have reached the point where a grown man can show up, on video, admit he came to meet a 14 year old for sex, and instead of action we get “AI might make this unreliable”? Thats a complete collapse of common sense. If real time video, a direct confession, and a physical encounter aren’t enough to even justify a warrant, then the standard isn’t higher….it’s nonexistent. All you’ve done is create a loophole big enough for every predator to hide behind. This isn’t protecting justice, it’s protecting offenders…. Its cowardice.

It’s not clear if the on-camera admission will count for anything but local police are apparently still working on this case, so a prosecution is still a possibility. The Christian Post confirmed an investigation was ongoing:

Matt Newcomb, assistant chief of the Palatka Police Department, confirmed with CP on Wednesday that the case is still under investigation.

“We are currently investigating the incident and are working with the State Attorney’s Office on the case,” Newcomb said.

Second, the fallout at the church was immediate, especially since Caleb worked as a youth pastor with access to children. His father Steve Roberts was a relatively recent hire at Victory Church, having started there in April of 2025. Now, a year later, Victory Church announced that Steve and his wife would no longer be associated with them:

After much prayer and careful consideration, we want to share that Pastor Steve and Angie Roberts have stepped down from their roles at Victory Church, effective immediately.

Recent circumstances have brought deep sorrow to many within our church and our community. While we are limited in what we can share at this time, we want to speak clearly about our hearts. We grieve whenever trust is broken and when people are hurt, and we take these matters with the utmost seriousness.

We want to state plainly that there is no place in the Body of Christ for sexual misconduct or the abuse of trust in any form. Such actions are contrary to the character of Christ and inconsistent with the values we are called to uphold as His church.

Nowhere in their message did they say if they were investigating Caleb’s interactions with kids at the church, or where people could go if they had concerns, or whether they would have a counselor available for anyone who needed to talk. It also didn’t mention what the hell happened. If you didn’t know any of the details beforehand, you could walk away with the impression that Steve Roberts himself committed an act of sexual misconduct, which isn’t the case at all. (A local news station was also confused, saying, “There are still major questions, including who, if anyone, is facing these allegations.” That can be blamed directly on the church for being vague to the point of useless. The news report made no mention of Caleb or the video.)

The church’s “Leadership” page is now empty, except for a single sentence that reads “We are currently praying and beginning the search for a new pastor.”

Incidentally, while there’s not a lot of video of Steve Roberts preaching at this church, a few sermons are available, including this one where he mocked the very existence of transgender people:

If I remember in Genesis, God made men—a man—then God made woman. And then he stopped making people.

But I looked up gender identities, and I said, “How how many do you think there are?” I hit it in Google and one site said there’s 57. The next one said 98. And the next one said 107 different identities, not just man and woman.

So being a man is harder today in many ways…

Don’t ask me to Christsplain that one. It makes no sense. But even though he doesn’t say in that sermon that trans people are predators, we’ve seen this kind of rhetoric used by pastors to insist LGBTQ people in general are threats to children’s safety—in schools, in bathrooms, and everywhere else.

Turns out his own son was the real danger to kids. It raises a lot of questions about what these churches and parents were teaching their children about consent, and sex education, and “purity.” While a lot of questions remain unanswered right now, this appears to be yet another story about how Christian churches that claim to be a safe harbor for everyone are sometimes the most irresponsible places to send your kids. If only they would admit that they’re no better than all the people they routinely condemn.

The 8 Weirdest Stories in the Bible

Norway’s highest court upholds state funding for Jehovah’s Witnesses

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The Supreme Court of Norway has, unfortunately, upheld a ruling that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are entitled to taxpayer-funded subsidies by the government and the ability to perform legal marriages. A lower court had rescinded the JW’s “religious community” status years ago—a major victory for those who see it as a cult—but an appellate ruling and now this Supreme Court decision have restored the Witnesses to the level of all other religions despite their extreme practices.

Norway’s odd relationship with religion

Norway, which has a national Church but no longer has a national religion, is one of those countries where religion is literally supported by taxpayers; the more members you have, the more money your preferred religious (or Humanist) organization receives. Any “religious” group with 50 registered members is allowed to apply for state subsidies, and 736 groups received that kind of funding in 2022.

The law is very open regarding the kinds of religious or non-religious groups that can receive that money. However there are some lines in the sand:

If a religious or philosophical community, or individuals acting on behalf of the community, commits violence or coercion, makes threats, violates children’s rights, violates statutory discrimination prohibitions or in other ways seriously violates the rights and freedoms of others, society may be denied grants or grants may be suspended. Grants may also be refused or reduced if society encourages or provides support for violations mentioned in this section.

Religious or philosophical communities that accept grants from states that do not respect the right to freedom of religion or belief may be denied grants.

That makes sense. A group that endorses violence shouldn’t get taxpayer money, nor should any group hurting children or violating human rights. Sure, there are atheists who might argue that any form of religious indoctrination is child abuse, but these rules are theoretically limited to things that are irrefutable and not up for debate.

More specifically, groups that receive these subsidies can’t force people to remain members. They can’t ban interactions with non-members. They can’t make children pledge a lifelong commitment to them. While practicing faith is fine, cult-like behavior is not tolerated.

If groups cross those boundaries, then they might lose that government funding.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses in Norway

According to the Norwegian government’s Ministry of Children and Family Affairs, in 2021, there were 12,686 registered Jehovah’s Witnesses in the country. That number meant taxpayers were on the hook to give the Witnesses more than NOK 16 million (roughly $1,778,793 in U.S. dollars at the time) in support. About $140 per member.

In 2021, the government also said it would begin looking into the Witnesses after two former members and a separate (anonymous) whistleblower sent letters explaining that the Witnesses were in violation of the rules. It’s not that the JW beliefs were secrets but rather that government officials needed to act deliberately and get their paperwork in order before they could take any kind of action. Those letters got the ball rolling.

Some of those claims were open to debate. For example, the Witnesses say members can’t get involved in politics, which is why JWs never vote in elections. One former member argued that since voting in an election could lead to expulsion by the Witnesses—which meant members couldn’t interact with you—the No Voting rule qualified as a violation of the law. The Witnesses responded by saying they had every right to set their own policies, and if someone wanted to vote, they were freely deciding to leave the fold. There was nothing coercive about it.

But there were other concerns that the government took very seriously.

The concerns about the Jehovah’s Witnesses

In a written statement from the state administrator in Oslo and Viken, there were two Jehovah’s Witness beliefs that were particularly egregious as far as the law went:

1. The Witnesses engage in the practice of Disfellowshipping. That means former JWs who leave the religion are effectively excommunicated and members are told not to have any interactions with them. (The idea here is that the former members will get so lonely or depressed that they’ll eventually come crawling back. There’s no shortage of families that have been torn apart because of this.)

   The state administrator wrote that Norwegian law requires all religions that receive government subsidies to practice a “right to free withdrawal.” If there’s a serious obstacle to leaving a religion, that’s arguably a violation. Disfellowshipping, the administrator wrote, “can cause members to feel pressured to remain in the faith community.”

2. A similar policy applied to children. If a child in a JW family “makes it a habit to break the moral standards of the Bible and does not repent,” the Witnesses teach, they are also to be treated as pariahs. That means a young teenager (baptized or not) who quits the religion is subject to exclusion from religious members.

   While their immediate families don’t have to kick them out of the house, the state administrator said the Witnesses believe that rebellious child can no longer “have contact with other close family (including grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins) or friends.” That puts pressure on the child to remain in the fold—a violation of their own rights under the law. (”We consider social isolation as a form of punishment against the child.”)

Because of those two “systematic and intentional” offenses, neither of which could be denied by the Witnesses themselves, the state administrator concluded that the Witnesses were not deserving of the subsidies. They were still allowed to practice their faith; they just wouldn’t get any taxpayer money for it.

They Jehovah’ed themselves out of nearly $2 million.

The Witnesses said at the time that they planned to appeal the decision:

Fabian Fond at the branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Scandinavia, writes in an e-mail to NRK that they are disappointed:

“The decision will be appealed. The appeal process will give us an opportunity to clearly explain why our faith and religious practices fully respect the rights and freedoms of others.”

Fond further writes that no one is forced or pressured to become, or continue to be, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses:

“It is worth noting that trials in several lands have confirmed the right of Jehovah’s Witnesses to exclude persons who choose not to live by the moral standards of the Bible. As a registered religious community in Norway, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been eligible to receive government grants for more than 30 years. “

The appeal went nowhere because the JWs had no actual counterpoint. The Witnesses still maintained the right to exclude non-members. What they didn’t have is a right to be rewarded for it. For a group of people who want nothing to do with the government, they were incredibly upset over not receiving a government handout.

The decision wasn’t unfair, though. The Catholic Church (just to name one example) has its share of problems, too, but if you quit the Church, there’s no formal policy in place designed to make you suffer for it. You might have arguments with family members, and you might struggle with the loss of a community with shared beliefs (at least for a while), but the Church itself doesn’t go out of its way to make your life worse. Jehovah’s Witnesses do.

If nothing else, the move by the Norwegian government would hopefully spur other religious groups to take a fresh look at their own policies. If they wanted access to taxpayer money, they needed to play by the rules.

Further sanctions against the Jehovah’s Witnesses

At the end of 2022, the temporary sanctions against the Jehovah’s Witnesses were made permanent. The state administrator in Oslo and Viken revoked the group’s official “religious community” status, depriving them of those taxpayer funds and the ability to bless marriages that are accepted by the government. It was a far more serious sanction than the Witnesses received a year earlier.

… In our opinion, the religious community violates the members’ right to freedom of expression. We believe this violates the members’ right to freedom of religion. We also believe that they violate children’s rights by allowing them to exclude baptized minors, and by encouraging members to socially isolate children who do not follow the religious community’s rules.

… We have come to the conclusion that Jehovah’s Witnesses violate the members’ right to free expression of religious communities and that they violate children’s rights. On this background, we have come to the conclusion that the society cannot be registered under the Religious Societies Act. We believe that this corresponds to the provisions of the Religious Communities Act.

In a more formal response, the official explained how the government had taken several steps to give the Witnesses a chance to remedy this problem, but there was never any indication the Witnesses were going to change their policies:

The fact that a religious community violates its members’ right to freedom of expression and thus violates the right to freedom of religion is considered particularly serious. The same applies to the negative social control of children, which violates children’s human rights protection under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

However, as the preparations for the religious community regulations indicate, the State Administrator must, even in the case of serious violations, check whether the community has taken measures to prevent the violations from continuing.

As mentioned in the letter of December 14, 2022, Jehovah’s Witnesses state that practice will not be changed. The organization will therefore not take measures to prevent the conditions that led to refusal.

This means that the conditions are persistent. After the above preparatory work, particularly serious or persistent conditions shall lead to loss of registration.

On this background, we have assessed that the conditions for withdrawing the registration of Jehovah’s Witnesses as a registered religious community have been met…

There was still an opportunity to appeal the decision, but again, it wasn’t clear on what grounds the Jehovah’s Witnesses had a case. These really are their beliefs. These really are their policies. Unless they were willing to change the rules of their faith, an appeal wouldn’t go anywhere.

Ever since that threat was first issued, conservatives in the country made all kinds of slippery slope arguments, suggesting the government was just going after religions they didn’t like—as if the JW funding decision would lead to future funding bans on religious groups that opposed issues like LGBTQ+ rights. Government officials quickly rejected that stance and reiterated that the beliefs themselves were irrelevant; it was the undeniable actions of the Witnesses that mattered and that’s why they weren’t going to receive the subsidies. It’s not like Catholics or evangelicals were being targeted here.

That didn’t stop the JW Governing Body from acting like this move was unconstitutional in an update from December of 2022.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses sued to prevent the punishment from going into effect

In December of 2022, the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Norway sued over the denial of state grants and challenged their loss of their “religious community” status. Even though they were temporarily granted an injunction (preventing the punishments from going into effect), the courts removed it months later. So the lawsuits, now combined into one, continued. And a trial took place in January of 2024.

And then came the bombshell. The Oslo District Court announced that the state did nothing wrong in punishing the Witnesses. The decision to not give the JWs taxpayer funding in 2022 and 2023 was upheld, as was the request to give the Witnesses the NOK 35 million ($3.3 million USD) they had missed out on. (You can read a summary of the verdict in this thread from Jan Frode Nilsen.)

The religious organization was also required to pay the state’s legal bills amounting to around NOK 1.1 million (just over $100,000 USD).

As one (loosely translated) article explained:

The court concludes that “the conditions are met for denying Jehovah’s Witnesses state subsidies and registration under the Religious Communities Act, and that the decisions are valid”.

Furthermore, the court considers that Jehovah’s Witnesses “through the guidelines and practice of exclusion, encourage Jehovah’s Witnesses to shun members who are ostracized or withdraw, so that with few exceptions they are exposed to social isolation from those remaining in the religious community”.

The Witnesses eventually appealed that decision, and in March of 2025, the Borgarting Court of Appeal unanimously overturned the decision. The panel of judges effectively said that shunning someone didn’t amount to a violation of his or her rights, and removing disobedient children from the congregation didn’t “constitute psychological violence.”

It was a disappointing decision that also required the state to pay the Witnesses roughly NOK 8.5 million (just over $800,000 USD) in legal fees.

What Norway’s Supreme Court said

The Norwegian government decided to appeal that decision to the Supreme Court, and that’s the decision that has now come down. (You can read an English translation here.) It was a 3-2 ruling upholding the earlier verdict.

The Witnesses have won the case. They will continue to receive state subsidies. They will be allowed to perform legal marriages. And the shunning will continue without serious consequences.

As one summary put it:

The majority of three judges found that the practice of exclusion does not constitute undue pressure against members in violation of Article 9 of the ECHR [European Court of Human Rights]. Among other things, emphasis was placed on the fact that the practice is rooted in the teachings of the religious community, is known to the members when they join and does not involve direct pressure, coercion or threats. The practice of exclusion does not apply to family members in the same household. Family ties are not broken for family members outside the household. The majority subsequently found that the conditions for refusing state subsidies and registration under Section 6 of the Religious Communities Act were not met. The decisions to refuse subsidies and de-registration could therefore not be upheld.

The majority’s ruling has a number of questionable statements, like when they say children are “aware of the consequences of leaving or being expelled from Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Are they, though?! And just because they may not be kicked out of their own house doesn’t make the shunning any less cruel.

The majority also said that an adult who’s disfellowshipped isn’t really suffering because they’ll still be a member of broader society. But how is that any consolation when the people you’re closest to want nothing to do with you? The psychological torture associated with being kicked out of a religion with these harsh rules is intense.

They also claim that disfellowshipping “does not apply to family members living in the same household”… but that’s not my understanding of what happens to adults who leave the religion. Many of them are indeed kicked out of their homes.

What about the question of whether shunning the unbelievers goes too far? The majority didn’t buy it because, they say, members already know what they’re signing up for:

Disfellowshipping does not apply to family members living in the same household, and family ties are not severed. Although the practice entails indirect pressure against leaving, members are not subjected to direct pressure, such as threats of sanctions, in connection with leaving. Furthermore, the shunning practice is rooted in the doctrine itself, which is known to those who join Jehovah’s Witnesses.

It’s hard to believe any of that. For people who grow up in the religion and don’t consciously make a choice of joining it from the outside, you begin to believe you’re trapped inside with no opportunity to break free. Just because there are no formal sanctions against you doesn’t make the shunning any less cruel.

The judges also awarded the Witnesses an additional 2,165,461 NOK ($232,933 USD) in legal fees on top of the earlier ones. (It’s not clear if the state will have to reimburse the Witnesses for years’ worth of subsidies they didn’t receive.)

A spokesperson for the Witnesses celebrated the decision and claimed that it confirmed the reputation of the JWs as people who are “loving, caring and law-abiding citizens.” Which is easy to say when you ignore the horrific details of what they actually do.

Honestly, if the Witnesses are allowed to receive government subsidies, you have to wonder what it takes for Norway to reject any group that meets its bare-bones criteria. How much worse do things have to get before they can refuse to subsidize a group?

If there’s anything position to take from this, perhaps it’s that more people will now be aware of one of the most pernicious rules of the religion. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, like so many smaller religious groups, thrive on people not knowing how they actually operate. Exposure to those beliefs—especially the shunning and all the mental anguish it causes—doesn’t help their side one bit.

And people in Norway can take solace in the fact that their government was on the side of justice and decency even if the Supreme Court’s majority was not. (As an American, I can only dream.)

The subsidies have unintended consequences

On a completely different note, all this discussion about Norwegian religious subsidies has led to some fascinating (and unintentional) effects, mostly because citizens are now wise to the fact that they don’t need to prop up churches for which they hold no special allegiance. (They still have to pay a church tax, so to speak—which is a very different kind of problem altogether—but less money given to certain institutions means more money for the remaining ones.)

For example, in 2016, the nation’s evangelical Lutheran Church launched a website to make it easier to track members and enroll new ones… but that plan backfired after thousands of people used the website to opt out of Church membership altogether, depriving the Church of that government funding. (Considering that roughly 75% of the country were officially members, though, the exodus wasn’t all that shocking. They realistically could only go lower.)

There was also a mini-scandal in 2015 when the Catholic Church owed the Norwegian government more than $5 million for “fraudulently registering thousands of people on its membership lists” precisely because they got taxpayer money for that act of manipulation.

Those weren’t just symbolic acts. The reason so many people actively went through the motions of getting off those membership rolls was because they didn’t want the government giving those institutions money in their name. There are plenty of people there (as in the United States) who just keep a Catholic or Lutheran label because their families raised them in those traditions or they simply don’t care enough to go through the formal process of changing it. But those subsidies have pushed some Norwegians to formally declare themselves not Catholic or not Lutheran. It just shows you how many religious institutions in Norway have financially benefitted from the apathy of many of their own lapsed members.

So even if the Jehovah’s Witnesses will now get to receive those federal benefits again, it’s never too late for former members of that religion—or other religions—to rip the bandage off for good.

(Large portions of this article were published earlier)

Two more Democrats have joined the Congressional Freethought Caucus

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The Congressional Freethought Caucus has added two more members: Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR) and Gil Cisneros (D-CA).

Hoyle first entered Congress in 2023, but she’s been in politics for much longer. She served as commissioner of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries in the four years prior to that. And from 2009 to 2017, she was in the State House, where she spent two of those years as Majority Leader. She is now a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure as well as the Committee on Natural Resources. She’s also part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Equality Caucus.

She hasn’t always voted on the side of science, though; in 2023, she voted with Republicans to lift COVID vaccine mandates for health care workers, a move that put vulnerable people’s lives in jeopardy. She also initially voted for a racist immigration bill that the New Republic described as one that would allow “for the deportation and detention of any undocumented immigrant merely suspected of a nonviolent crime,” though she switched to a no vote for the final passage.

Cisneros is currently in his second (non-consecutive) term in Congress, and in between his terms, he served in the Department of Defense under the Biden administration. (Incredibly, this phase of his life began after winning the Mega Millions lottery in 2010.) He serves on the Armed Services and Small Business committees and is also a member of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Equality Caucus.

Like most of their colleagues in the CFC, neither Hoyle nor Cisneros is non-religious. The Pew Research Center, in their 2025 roundup, listed both as Catholic. Still, they support church/state separation and pledge to protect freedom of religion for everyone (including the non-religious).

The caucus now includes a record 35 members, all of whom are Democrats. As of this writing, the two have not made any public announcement about their CFC affiliation.

In case you need a refresher, the CFC was first announced in 2018 by Rep. Jared Huffman, currently the only openly Humanist member of Congress.

The 35 members now include:

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) (Co-cha)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) (Co-chair)
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL)
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.)
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA)
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA)
Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA)
Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA)
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX)
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA)
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL)
Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT)
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX)
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA)
Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-OR)
Rep. Emily Randall (D-WA)
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ)
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA)
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL)
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR)
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA)
Rep. Kelly Morrison (D-MN)
Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE)
Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA)
Rep. Herb Conaway (D-NJ)
Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR)
Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-CA)

(Eric Swalwell was a member of the CFC until his recent resignation.)

To be clear, this isn’t an “atheist club” for Congress, as some critics have suggested. This is just a group of lawmakers dedicated to promoting reason-based public policy, keeping church and state separate, opposing discrimination against non-religious people, and championing freedom of thought around the world. There’s really no reason anyone should be against this. That’s why there’s nothing hypocritical about the fact that nearly every member of the Caucus is religious.

The hope is that the membership continues growing—making the Caucus more influential—while the stigma of being an atheist (or even being associated with non-religiosity) decreases across the country. Those two things are more closely linked than we might imagine. Keep in mind that the Congressional Prayer Caucus, which typically promotes a version of conservative Christianity, is much larger and has members from both major parties. By that metric, the Freethought Caucus has a long way to go.

As I’ve said before, perhaps the most shocking thing about the Caucus is that, based on the relative lack of media interest, people don’t seem to care who the members are… which is to say, no one—not even in right-wing media—thinks it’s a big deal for sitting House members to align with a group defending atheists.

That also means none of these lawmakers believes the Caucus will be a concern for them during the second Trump administration. That may come as a shock to anyone who remembers a time when aligning (even remotely) with atheism was considered one of the biggest taboos in politics.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

American Atheists Slams Trump Task Force Findings on “Anti-Christian Bias”

Washington, D.C. — On Thursday, the Department of Justice released a report from President Trump’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.” The publication claims, “The Biden administration’s policies regularly clashed with a Christian worldview,” citing abortion, gender identity, and sexual orientation as areas of conflict and framing civil rights protections as violations of religious liberty. But the report relies heavily on Christian Nationalist groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Principles Project, and the First Liberty Institute. The 197-page report mentions atheists only twice in footnotes, effectively excluding the 29% of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated. It also overlooks the widespread stigmatization and discrimination faced by atheists under every presidential administration, as documented by American Atheists’ groundbreaking U.S. Secular Survey. American Atheists president Nick Fish said, “True religious freedom — the kind our nation’s founders enshrined in the Constitution — protects and treats equally people of all faiths and of none. It’s very clear this administration is only concerned about Americans of a certain faith.” Nearly a third of respondents to the Secular Survey reported negative experiences in education due to their nonreligious identity, and more than 20% reported discrimination in the workplace. These experiences are especially profound in areas where religious conformity is expected. American Atheists warns that the current administration is increasingly invoking “anti-Christian bias” as a way to reinforce the false narrative that the United States is a Christian nation; to reframe civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ Americans as discriminatory; and to recast any disagreement with the White Christian Nationalist worldview as improper or even criminal. Fish added, “The Trump Administration’s deliberate distortion of our American laws and values will have devastating consequences on pluralism, freedom, and democracy — all foundational pillars of our nation that distinguish us from the theocracies and autocracies abroad.” The 2025 Freedom of Thought Report, released by Humanists International in February, found that the United States, which historically received a more favorable rating, is currently undergoing “an unprecedented backsliding of democratic rights and fundamental freedoms.’” The “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” is expected to issue an additional report in 2027 outlining policy recommendations, which are likely to include proposals to roll back civil rights protections, expand religious exemptions, weaken the Johnson Amendment, and direct public funding toward religious institutions. “American Atheists will continue opposing any such measures,” Fish said. “We remain committed to defending religious pluralism, ending discrimination against atheists and the nonreligious, and ensuring equality for all Americans.”

The post American Atheists Slams Trump Task Force Findings on “Anti-Christian Bias” appeared first on American Atheists.