Church and State are Being Reunited, Thanks to SCOTUS

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This episode is presented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Many of the most important legal fights in this country come down to a basic question. Who gets to make decisions about our bodies and our health care? That question isn't theoretical. It's playing out right now. The Trump administration's backers in Congress are trying to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, an effort to shut down health centers and block patients' care, especially from those with low incomes. Together, we have the power to protect and expand affordable care. Visit plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift today. This is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court. I'm Delia Lithwick. The Supreme Court is making advances for religious extremists that are pretty unprecedented. This is the Department of Labor's monthly prayer service. They say separation between church and state, they told me. I said, all right, let's forget about that for one time. Christian nationalism is about advancing. traditional power structures in our society. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invited a self-described Christian nationalist pastor to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon. Do you know that God also is a god of war? We are one military, one fighting force, one nation under God. We face an essential test. Whether our nations will be and remain Western nations. with distinct characteristics, Christian nations. Religious freedom, as it's promised in our Constitution, church state separation is an American original. We should be so proud that it came from us.

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a couple of shadow docket orders that barely caused a ripple in the headlines, understandably. America's newly minted war on Iran that, please remember, is an undeclared war and therefore absolutely unconstitutional, dominated, and will continue to dominate the daily news. But one of those shadow docket rulings is really worth... a second look on its own terms and also because it is part of a pattern of Supreme Court jurisprudence that mirrors amplifies and in some ways laid a path for the ways in which the second Trump administration is conducting itself. On Monday, the court's conservatives yet again sided with a group of Christian parents agreeing to block a series of California policies that bar schools from outing trans kids to their parents. The three liberal justices dissented. The shadow docket ruling is the latest in a long string of decisions that privilege the rights and feelings of select, objecting Christians over the rights and interests of, well, pretty much everyone else. Yes, this is just a shadow docket ruling about California schools in a week of massive global and geopolitical upheaval. But I think it's important to note that reinstituting American Christian nationalism was the guiding principle of Project 2025. It continues to guide the Trump administration in 26. And it also forms the backbone of much of the decision making of the conservative justices on the John Roberts Court. That latter project has been decades in the making at the High Court long before it was Trump administration guidance at the Pentagon. So on this week's show, we will be shining a light on the rise of Christian nationalism as a core American political value at the court and increasingly a core domestic and geopolitical project inside the federal government. And we're going to do that with Rachel Lasser. She's president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Rachel is a lawyer and advocate and strategist, and in December of last year, she was appointed by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to serve on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. She's also a friend of this show and somebody I always find immensely helpful in clarifying the murk of this very complicated topic. Rachel, welcome back to Amicus. Thank you. It's so nice to be back and to be with all of your unbelievably informed and wonderful listeners.

Before we survey the field of everything that's been going on, it would be incredibly helpful to root us all in the history of this movement. And so can you just take us back to, I'm going to say the word genesis, sounding very biblical, I'm going to ask you for the genesis of this idea that America is a Christian country or, you know, the gloss is the Judeo-Christian country, and that the spoils from civil rights to education to citizenship. should all be directed at a certain religious group of Americans. This has unfortunately a longer history in our country than many are aware of. It's just that right now we're seeing this incredible surge of Christian nationalism, right, which is rooted in the lie that America was a country that was established for Christians and that our laws and policies should perpetuate that privilege. You know, it reared its ugly head in the McCarthy era when in the 1950s there was a series of civic religion sort of advances that. that like our board vice chair, who's a Baptist pastor, says, really laid the foundation for what we're seeing now. So in the 1950s, that's when under God was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. In God We Trust became the national motto instead of e pluribus unum from many won. And in God we trust was added to money, right? And that happened in response to, quote, Godless communism in a scare. I think that what we're seeing right now is in reaction to massive demographic and social changes that have been happening in this country. Our friend Robbie Jay Jones wrote the book that, you know, white Christian majority ended back in 2014. in this country. That's a long time ago. That's a big change. We've seen the advent of marriage equality, the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter movements, and there's just been a lot of change afoot. And right now we're seeing a real backlash to that. And it's just that it's not brand new, but it's strong and it's raging. In that moment in the 1950s, when you really saw it start to tick up and be... kind of grafted onto political ideas, it definitely, I think Christian nationalism gets bolted to economic ideas, to ideas about geopolitics, to ideas about war, right? So it's not just religion, qua religion, or religion and law. It's really bolted onto ideas of... capitalism and the economy and dominion of the world, right? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're really seeing that come through today as Christian nationalism is infusing every branch of government. I think maybe it's most vivid right now with the department of so-called war, you know, where we're seeing literally a Christian crusader who's in charge, who's the secretary with a Christian crusade tattoo on his body, former Fox News host, who is initiating prayer services, inviting.

His pastor, Doug Wilson, who believes women shouldn't have the right to vote anymore to lead prayer services that are broadcast across the agency with emails that go out inviting everyone. And, you know, even in sort of this idea of fighting holy wars. So, yes, it's a mentality. It's a mindset. And honestly, there are many Christians who really wouldn't call it Christian. That's why I think using Christian nationalist is really important because it's just one narrow version of Christianity. And we work every day with Christian leaders who are getting angrier and angrier that their religion is being misused to advance what is really a political agenda. So one of the reasons we wanted to have you here this week is that in many ways the John Roberts Court is the proving ground for a lot of this, right? I mean, this long before we had Betsy DeVos, long before the Heritage Foundation and Kevin Roberts and Project 2025 and Pete Hegseth and his pastor, Doug Wilson that you just talked about, the kind of religious right wing of the Supreme Court was... ahead of all of this with its work in Hobby Lobby and Masterpiece Cake Shop and what becomes COVID mitigation, right? This is a decades-long project at the court. And I guess it finds its way into the pages of Project 2025, but I think I need you to help me understand why those cases of the inflection points. Why, in terms of the court, this is a project that long predates the political moment we're in now? It's why I think so many of us are just feeling so frustrated that so many of the chess pieces have been carefully set up against us. And it's okay. We're going to play the long game, too, but we can come back to that. So, yeah, I mean, this has been going on for a very long time. Even if you look at, you know, cases like Marsh v. Chambers, which is a case from 1983 where an atheist member of Nebraska's legislature sued to challenge Nebraska's policy of having chaplains paid by taxpayers, right? Say prayers. And even there, we saw the beginnings of this history and tradition test, right? The idea that, you know, these prayers have been... part of the practice and, quote, fabric of our society, right? So that's like a 1983 case, you know, continuation of it in the town of Greece v. Galloway, a similar case from 2014. Trinity Lutheran was like a really important case for religious extremists. That's a 2017 case. In that case, we knew how harmful it would be because it was about a Missouri religious group that wanted to take advantage of a state grant for... their playground flooring, right? Sounds so harmless. Others are getting it. Why can't we get it to it's just for our kids' playground flooring? But really what the court said there is you can't exclude a group based on its religious identity. Sounds really harmless, right? Like no discrimination against religious people. Until you think about the first 16 words of the First Amendment, which is a foundational part of our pluralistic democracy, which says you have to separate church and state.

that's critical to religious freedom in this pluralistic nation where we have to be able to coexist with so many people who are different from us and where we value religious freedom as a human right. And so government funding of religion actually should be in a different category, right? It should be prohibited. That's in our founding. The founders were really clear about that. But the minute the court started in 2017, which is almost 10 years ago now, to say that that was a problem and it was discrimination, it started leading us down this path. And, you know, I love to point out what Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent in a case that happened in 2022, Carson v. Macon, which I think is really important, you know. And she said, what a difference five years makes? This is her quote. In 2017, and she's referring to Trinity Lutheran, I feared that the court was leading us to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment. Today, she said with Carson v. Macon, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation. That's where we're getting to. I think, you know, These concepts, Dahlia are so important. And part of what we're trying to do at Americans United for Separation of Church and State is break them down and I'm not sure I'm being very effective at that right now. But just you almost have to back up to the two clauses in the First Amendment, right? The free exercise clause and the non-establishment clause. And they work together to promise religious freedom. Like you have free exercise, right, until your fist is right up against the tip of someone else's nose and then you can't. swing it into it, right, as Ruth Bitter-Ginsberg used to point out, because then you would take away their free exercise, right? And that's where the non-establishment clause puts a cap. And it says our government can't favor one religion over any other or religion over non-religion. And that's as pro-religion. As it is pro-religious freedom, it protects religion from being co-opted by the government. And where we've been going for a long time now is to a place where the government is, and this is just one line of cases, calling it religious discrimination to protect religion and to protect religious freedom by keeping it separate from the state. Now, I think you explained it really clearly, and it's very hard, right, Rachel, because those two clauses are in some sense. in opposition or at least in tension with one another. They appear to be. And yet, over many decades, the court has tried to calibrate a really delicate balance where everybody has the right to exercise their religion freely. And part of that guarantee is that the state... doesn't create state religion. It doesn't seem like it's that hard. And yet, as you're noting, that has been entirely upended to mean that any individual who doesn't get to exercise her religion to the fullest, maximalist extent of her,

feelings about religion is now being burdened by the state. And that's the flip you're describing. That's the flip, I think, that Justice Sotomayor bemoans, right? Exactly. I mean, we like to say religious freedom is the freedom to believe as you choose so long as you don't harm others, right? And there's legalistic ways of describing why that is because if you're harming others, you're forcing them to bear the cost of your religion, you know, the state is doing that. The other way we like to describe religious freedom is it's the freedom to live as yourself and not just believe as you choose, but also to live as yourself. And in this pluralistic society where my freedom to live as myself as a Jewish woman means that I have to have an abortion if my life or health is at risk, means that someone else can't impose their views on abortion on me because that takes away my religious freedom. So yes to what you just said. We're going to take a short break. This episode is brought to you by Quince. The very best summer pieces are the ones you end up wearing on repeat, comfortable, versatile, and somehow right for almost every occasion. And that's why I love Quince. Their elevated essentials use premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, and washable silk without the traditional retail markup. Quince's 100% European linen pants, dresses and tops are the pieces you will reach for all summer long. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for exceptional quality, not brand markup. I just received their featherweight cashmere silk freight edge scarf in the coolest stage. The scarf is as light as a cloud. It's silky soft, and it will be a summer staple for me for all the way. weddings, all the plane travel, and all the chilly evenings. Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to quince.com slash amicus for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too, that's QI-N-C-E.com slash amicus for free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash amicus.

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President Trump got to appoint so many justices in such a short time, three justices, I think, in four years, and two of them, right, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, were replacing justices who usually ruled on the side of religious freedom, Anthony Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Similarly, George Bush, you know, he had the opportunity to put Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on the court. And I think it's really important to point out that Samuel Alito replaced Sandra Day O'Connor, you know, who famously said about church state separation. Why would a country change something that has been working for it for so long? Whereas like when Barack Obama made his two appointments, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, they replaced Souter and Stevens. And it wasn't that kind of dramatic change. And Biden similarly, right, with Ketanji Brown Jackson replacing Stephen Breyer, that's another part of the problem, just like when people have died or gone off the court, has not been working in favor of true religious freedom. So I want to talk if we can. I mentioned it in the introduction that on Monday on the shadow docket, always on the shadow docket, the court comes down in a case siding with a group of California parents to reinstate a ruling by a federal district court in that state that prohibits schools from, quote, misleading parents about their children's gender presentation. and requires schools to follow parents' instructions regarding the names and pronouns their kids use. And the majority found that, surprise, surprise that parents were likely to prevail on their claim that these California policies violate their right to freely exercise their religion and their right to, quote, direct the upbringing and the education of their kids. This is, as we've both now suggested, really only the most recent, in a very long train of cases that carve out parents, again, almost always Christian religious parents, for very, very special solicitude based on religious liberty claims. And it happened on the shadow nugget. It did. And that's not a surprise, right? Because it is how the John Roberts Court has been operating. I mean... There has been a lot of sort of changing of the traditional customs, practices, and rules under the John Roberts Court in terms of the cases that they're deciding to take, the way they're evaluating facts in the cases. Here, without any briefing, without any oral argument, right, which is like what the shadow docket is, we see not just Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her concurrence, but the main opinion that came down from the court in this case. broadly interpreting this Mahmood v. Taylor case, right? And that is really dangerous. Explain what happened in Mahmood because it's all over this shadow ducat order. So the Mahmood v. Taylor case allowed a bunch of conservative religious parents to opt their kids out of reading books that are part of the curriculum because they have LGBTQ plus characters or themes in them.

And it's a very dangerous decision. It did it on the grounds of free exercise, right? Because what it does is it creates a very likely unworkable opt-out system for schools. So in effect, it's an attempt to censor curricula in schools and ultimately to have schools remove things from their curriculum. because their minds are going to blow up, like they're going to explode when they're trying to figure out, okay, where do we send these kids then? What do we teach them there? And, you know, so it's an effort by Christian nationalists to shape the curriculum of our public schools, which are inclusive. I'm not going to lie, that at the time that that case came out, we had this concern, which is, okay, this ruling was only as to the curriculum, you know, and that seemed pretty clear. But we didn't even know how far it would go in the curriculum. So it was like it did not answer the question, for example, which is hard to believe, but it left us wondering about the question of, so can parents opt their kids out of like a biology class that teaches just Darwinism but not creationism? That kind of question was bad enough, right? But now the court is basically in the shadow docket without briefing, without argument again, expanding this Mahmood ruling so much broader in public schools. And so now you have to start asking really whacked out questions to yourself. Like, so does this mean that a parent will be allowed based on parents' rights and religious freedom to opt their kid out of... having to share a classroom with a transgender kid? Or does this mean that if a teacher teaching a kid is gay, that the parent says, I have a religious right to opt my kid out? You know, and people have even taken it further to be like, you know, how far does this go? Does this mean like if a Jewish kid shows up to school eating bacon? The teacher has some kind of duty to inform the parents that something's going on here if they know that they're, you know, a family that's observant. That last one, you know, might seem like it goes too far, but unfortunately it feels like lots of scenarios that we thought were going too far or happening. So it's a very dangerous move, and I think it's symbolic of what's been going on with this court, which is the court's looking for ways to, you know, get around sort of our traditional democratic, stable systems of stare decisis, which means we can rely on, you know, rulings that have been in place for decades and the like to rule in support of the free exercise clause, to rule against. the non-establishment clause and to rule in support of Christians. Rachel, you're saying something really important and it's something that, you know, Elena Kagan writes like a banger of a dissent in this shadow docket, as she often does, just excoriating the court for both the doing it on the shadow docket and the need to do it like super fast. She says the...

Court had received, quote, scant and frankly inadequate briefing about the legal issues in dispute. And then she says, without holding oral argument, this is important. She writes, they granted relief by means of a terse, tonally dismissive ruling designed to conclusively resolve the dispute. And then she goes on to write, I found this really arresting language. The court is impatient. It already knows what it thinks and insists on getting everything over quickly. So what she's doing here is both saying, you know, that your tone is off, you're presenting it as though this is done and dusted, that this is established law, that you are just asserting as established law, and you're doing it without benefit of comprehensive briefing and argument. And I think what she's... trying to call out is that the court has now taken this posture and you sort of mentioned the line of cases, you know, flagging Trinity Lutheran. There's been a huge seismic shift in how we think about religion cases, but the court keeps trying to present it as though it has ever been thus. We're just doing the law. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean, for one, like, just. I know we've got to end with Hope Dahlia because it's a hard time, but like just think of how devastating that is, though, to have someone who's on the inside say this, right? Say like kind of what we've all been feeling and thinking. It's very upsetting to be proved right. And yeah, I mean, I think there's this moment in this. This is maybe the hope. How about this? I mean, there's this moment in this country where there's just like coalescing of religious extremists. They're guiding the Supreme Court. They're leading in the administration. Too many states have a majority, right? It's really a moment. And this is how it happens. It happens in moments. And so everybody is rushing, rushing, rushing. Oh, you know, Supreme Court, there was a four, four, you know, sort of had to. say that the St. Isidore decision from the Oklahoma State Supreme Court that said there can't be a religious public school stands because it deadlocked. You know, like, so now there's like three other examples around the country of Christian nationals trying to push a religious public school back to the Supreme Court. I mean, there is this sort of feeling like, we've got a lock on it now. Let's go. But, you know, the silver lining in that is maybe. Maybe they even know that this is running against the DNA of our country, of our democracy, of our one binding thing that we have in America, which is our Constitution that binds us all. And that's maybe the positive part. So Rachel, I started this conversation by noting the overtly sectarian symbolism and rhetoric that is infusing America's conduct of and communications around this war. And it feels like one of those Overton moments where something that was already shifting sort of swings wide open. But...

I want you to sketch out how radically things have changed in terms of that laundry list of Project 2025 that is now popping up all over the federal government. One unlawful and thorough violation of the Establishment Clause after another, despite jurisprudence that has been codified over decades. So I would love for you to explain what has shifted. Something has absolutely shifted. There is an emboldenedment behind Christian nationalists that many of us in our lifetimes have never seen before. I mean, what about the fact that at Christmas time we had all these federal agencies saying one nation, one savior? you know, that there are prayer services, Christian prayer services that open with the Lord's Prayer. And by the way, funny enough, different versions of them, apparently the Catholic one at the Department of Labor and the Protestant version at the Department of War, but that that's even happening in our federal agencies. There's actually so much more. I just wanted to list some of it. And then I want to talk about, like, why it's happening. So, you know, right away, this president issued an executive order creating this. quote, anti-Christian bias task force, right, which already starts to like, almost like what Elena Kagan said, you know, go on this hunt for ways to sort of show that. Christians need to be bolstered right now in America. There was a memo that this administration sent to the agencies about repealing regulations based on like 10 cases. And as part of those cases, they listed two on religious freedom from the conservative court. There was the Office of Personnel Management guidance that was issued for federal workers that was. alarming in the examples that it gave, like at Veterans Affairs that doctors should be free to pray over patients. Can you imagine if it's not your family's religion or that Federal Park Rangers should feel free to join their troops in prayer when they're leading these groups? There was a Department of Labor request for information for how religious groups applying for grants and the like to work with the Department of Labor are being unfairly treated. There was the Department of Education guidance that came out just in February on prayer and religious expression in public schools that invite teachers to pray with their students. again, very narrowly citing the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decisions and wrongly citing it and ignoring like the 1960s cases and a line of cases since then that are going out of their way to protect school children's religious freedom because they're impressionable and they have to report to school. And I won't keep going, but I could. So I think, you know, already in this administration we're seeing so many actions, we know that the whole point of the Religious Liberty Commission, the so-called Trump Religious Liberty Commission,

is to put together a bunch of more policy recommendations. So we are seeing things that, for those of us that understand what America should be about, feel like they're out of the onion. Why are we seeing that? We're seeing that because right now, the Supreme Court is making advances for religious extremists that are pretty unprecedented. And that's really empowering for religious extremists. And then there's the Trump administration. And then there's this. backlash that's happening. Actually, Van Jay Jones also called it a white lash, which I think explains some of what we're seeing, too, and the demographic changes. And I think they're all coalescing to make ultra-conservative Christians or religious extremists feel very emboldened right now. And they're organized. That's the other thing, Talia, that last term, you know, it's like there was a lot of talk. There was some action as well, and believe me, you know, we had a lot of lawsuits against the administration and won a lot of them. And a lot of them led to the Biden administration repealing, you know, a lot of what Trump won it done. But this time, you reference Project 2025. And the Trump administration came to the table with their act together on this and ready to implement real policy change throughout. And they are on a role. You know, and I think it's reversible. I really do, but it's a very bad moment for true religious freedom. More in a moment with Rachel Lazar. Summer always reminds me how quickly dehydration can catch up with me. Between warmer weather, travel, and long days with two kids under three, I can feel when water alone isn't enough. That's why I keep drip drop on hand. It's an easy way to stay ahead of dehydration before I start feeling tired. drip drop is proven fast hydration that's built to hydrate you faster and more effectively than water alone. It uses science-based formulas for rapid hydration so you feel results fast while getting three times the electrolytes of leading sports drinks. And it's trusted by over 90% of top college and pro sports teams. Because hydration isn't just something you do when you're behind. It's how you stay ahead. Drip drop zero sugar plus is a breakthrough fast absorbing formula with an advanced blend of six key electrolytes, 15 essential vitamins and nutrients and no sugar or artificial sweeteners. There are 16 original flavors and 8 zero sugar plus options, including my preferred choice after a long day outside with the kids, zero sugar passion fruit. Right now, drip drop is offering podcast listeners 20% off your first order. Go to dripdrop.com and use the promo code amicus. That's dripdrop.com promo code amicus for 20% off. Stock now at dripdrop.com and use promo code amicus, AMI, CUS.

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And we are back talking about the Supreme Court, the Trump administration, and Christian nationalism with Rachel Lazar of Americans United for the separation of church and state. I think we have to talk about the fact that there is an absolutely straight line connecting some of the policies you've just described and these very patriarchal religious ideas and the subjugation of women and of minorities and of immigrants and children. We've both now mentioned Pete Hegseth's pastor who spoke at the Pentagon. I mean, he openly speaks of a return to a patriarchal society. Women have to submit to their husbands. He has famously said, this is Pastor Wilson. I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation. I would like this world to be a Christian world. He wants to repeal the 19th Amendment. He literally, women shouldn't vote. Women are banned from leadership positions in his church. They're not allowed to vote in congregation. decisions in his church. I guess I feel like this again grafts so beautifully onto this larger project. of subjugating and emiserating vulnerable minorities and especially women. And it's hard not to look at this in the same breath that we are talking about the Save Act, right, that may disenfranchise millions of women whose married names aren't the same on their birth certificates and passports. So just one beat, if you would, Rachel, on how conveniently this aligns, or maybe this is the mission, it's not convenient at all, with the project to strip way established rights from, as we have said, LGBTQ Americans and trans Americans and women and kids and immigrants and everyone else. Christian nationalism is about advancing traditional power structures in our society. It believes that the truest Americans are white and Christian, and the Americans who should have the most power are also male, straight, and cisgender, right? And that's why you got to look, and you don't even have to look that hard these days, right? I mean, it's another silver lining. Those of us who might not have... seeing sort of what this movement is really about are now seeing the linkages, right? Seeing DEI be banned everywhere as though, you know, think about what those words are, just diversity, which this nation is. Inclusion. Like inclusion's a bad word? The sexism, right? I mean, I really appreciate, Dahlia, that you said that because I sort of think in the progressive movement, folks aren't talking about the sexism as much anymore. And it's so... much a piece of this Christian nationalist movement. So if you want to fight back, right, like you need to fight for church state separation. And if you believe in women's equality, if you believe in racial justice, if you believe in LGBTQ equality, if you believe in our kids learning accurate science, if you believe in the right to read books that you want and to learn in inclusive public education.

then you actually do believe in church-state separation and you should be fighting this Christian nationalist movement with all you've got, which is why you should join us at A.U.org. You really should because we are a growing movement. It's really powerful, Dahlia. The people we're bringing together don't exist in most spaces together. If you come to our Summit for Religious Freedom, you have... People from all 50 states were half religious, we're half non-religious, we're gay and strayed from every walk of life. And you sit there and you look to your left and you look to your right and you realize that this is actually where the people are and where the power is. And we just have to fight back, you know, and come together. And I really hope people will join us in this fight. And you should really, I think, lift up the extent to which we have seen churches around the country become the real spine of fighting back. I mean, we have been so heartened on this show talking about, including, you know, last week the bishops. But the degree to which religious groups that have either tended to sort of stay silent or to sideline themselves. have been, I think, a really important moral voice, Rachel, for like, this isn't right. This isn't fair. And so what you are describing isn't just the work that you all are doing. I think it's a lot of deeply religious Americans looking at themselves and saying, wait, I'm a person of faith. I'm not for renditioning people to. third-party countries where they are tortured. And I think that it's been kind of a unique moment to see the ways that conversation can be alienated by a positive and affirmative view of what faith can be. Absolutely. I'm really glad that you pointed that out. I think it's so important. I do have one side note to that. So number one, you're absolutely right. There is a rising up of in particular Christians. I mean, also other people of faith for sure. And certainly, you know, there's Jews. I'm from the Jewish community. Muslims, Sikhs. There's, you know, Hindus. These are all plaintiffs in our lawsuits. The non-religious, humanists, you know, everyone is rising up. I think particularly the swelling of Christians around the country who... are so angry to see their religion misused to advance this political agenda has been really powerful. This is my side note, my cautionary note. When those Christians are speaking about the problems of Christian nationalism, especially if they're members of the government. to our organization and for our democracy. It's really important that they don't stop at talking about how Jesus would really do something different from what Christian nationalists are doing. They must come back to the Constitution.

Right? Because this country is not just about one version of Jesus or one, you know, Jewish religion or one Muslim religion or one any non-religious, right? It's not about a favored religion. This country is about... religious freedom as it's promised in our Constitution, church state separation is an American original. We should be so proud that it came from us. And that is a really important place for these Christians to be reaching. Some of them are, but not all of them. And that's what I wanted to say. It's really important what you're saying because otherwise sort of swapping out one version of faith for another version of faith in order to subordinate the Constitution doesn't get everybody where they need to go, right? And it presumes a shared faith that is anathema to how we think about America and religious freedom. You have mentioned. the organizing. You've mentioned the work you all are doing. And I haven't given you nearly enough time, Rachel, to talk about the lawsuits. So I would love for you to talk about what people should be watching. You know, one, again, drumbeat on this show has been judges across the country have been spectacular in this past year with few exceptions. And the courts have been, in fact. a beacon of real adherence to core constitutional values. So tell me what you're working on. Tell me what you're watching. Tell me what's around the corner. And more than anything, and I do think this goes to your point about hope, tell me where you think the courts are going to land on what really right now we're experiencing as a kind of one-way ratchet to, you know, a government imposing theology. And that's not what's happening in the courts. Right. No. And the courts, thankfully, you know, so far, have really been panning out for us. So right now we actually have four lawsuits against the Trump administration and the courts. We have three lawsuits against... It's anti-Christian-bias task force executive order against the Department of Health and Human Services, anti-Christian-biased task force, the Veterans Affairs one, and the State Department one. And those stem from our investigation into this task force. We have one lawsuit that we recently filed against Trump's Religious Liberty Commission over violating FACA, the Federal Advisory Committee Act. But the point there is that FACA requires advisory committees to be fairly balanced. and to meet public transparency requirements, and this is neither. There's all Christian members except for one Orthodox rabbi on the commission, and they are failing to be transparent with what's happening around this commission, why it's happening at the Bible Museum so often, how much money is going there. I mean, there's so much which is sort of dark and behind the scenes. But we're also very active right now in lawsuits challenging the Ten Commandments mandates around the country.

in a coalition of allies. We have challenged the Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas mandates. Right now, 16 states are considering 27 more, and there's probably more states and versions that are popping up as we speak. So there's a rash of these bills around the country. But. Let's just say until like a few weeks ago, I would have been able to say we have won in every court. And it's still significant that we won in all the lower courts in those cases. And then we won in the Fifth Circuit First Appeal. What happened since then is there was what's called an en banc appeal before the Fifth Circuit for both the Louisiana and Texas Ten Commandments cases. Okay. The Texas en banc ruling has not come down yet. No one exactly knows why. But the Louisiana one did. And it wasn't great. It's not a loss on the merits, as we say, right? The court did not yet say, no, these laws are constitutional, and we really hope that that won't be the end result. But it did really, unfortunately, in what one of the dissenters called procedural artifice, say that the case wasn't ripe. And they said it wasn't right because, and this was what was very upsetting about it, they could imagine a scenario where there could be something constitutional about. forcibly and permanently hanging the 10 commandments on every public classroom wall, every school day. That's incredibly upsetting, even that the court imagined that there could be something permissible. So this is actively in the courts right now. That knocked that case in Louisiana for now. It said that we have to wait until the very harm that we were trying to avoid, which is... public school children having to venerate the Ten Commandments because they're already hanging everywhere in their classroom has to happen first, the court said, before we can bring that case back to the courts. But we have many other active cases right now, our case in Arkansas. We have two other cases in Texas in one. There already have been some of these Ten Commandments displays hung, and we've brought cases. And by the way, these cases are all brought on... behalf of multi-faith families and non-religious families, and I want to say something about that. I flew to New Orleans to hear this oral argument, and guess what? All of the kids and families that were in the courthouse, they were all on the side of true religious freedom. So like when you're talking about parents' rights, and by the way, that's been co-opted by, you know, the extreme right. I mean, I'm a parent, your parent. Parents do want some rights over their kids, some right to like be the ones to decide how their kids are going to learn about religion when they're young, for example. That's fine. Parents' rights in that fair regard is on.

our side here, and families are on our side. And these kids were telling me why they felt so strong. One of the kids was telling me about one of his Hindu classmates. And don't forget, right, the Ten Commandments start with, thou shalt have no other God before me, right? And mentioning God many times, Hindus believe in many gods, right? There are students who believe in no gods. So it was really quite awesome to see how families are really showing up. also for church-state separation. And so there are lots of reasons to hope. Dahlia, I see every day different factions that sometimes are very divided. I mean, at Americans United, Jews and Muslims are coming together every day. Religious and non-religious Americans are coming together every day. People from New York are coming together with people from Oklahoma. I mean, we are a majority. We have done polling in Texas and Oklahoma. And they support church-state separation. You know what? They want to make sure that it's parents who are teaching kids about the Bible, not public school teachers. I have traveled to Oklahoma and spoken to all the Christian, majority Christian teachers there and done a listening tour. They are Christian. They don't have a problem with Christianity. They just have a problem with being asked to be the ones to explain the Bible because they take their jobs so seriously. So there are so many reasons to hope right now. Americans, you know, United is on it and people need to activate and not take church state separation for granted anymore. If we just remember that we have a voice and we have the power of the people and the Constitution and history actually on our side, we can put our country back on the right track. So keep fighting, everybody. Rachel, one of the reasons I really was looking forward to talking to you this week is that I think We are living in such an acute, diabolical zero-sum moment in the world right now. And I love the vision that Americans United and that you bring to it of that isn't in fact. what religious liberty means. It doesn't mean everybody else has to lose so I can win. And the picture you've painted today has really, really helped enter the idea that that really is what the framers were fighting for. And in fact, the alternative, ridiculous timeline we now live in is what the framers and the people who came to the United States were fleeing. Rachel Lasser is president and CEO of Americans United for separation of church and state. She's a lawyer, advocate, and strategist. And in December, she was appointed by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to serve on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Rachel's always a treat to have you. Thank you for your time today. Take good care. Thank you so much, Dahlia.

That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Mark Joseph Stern is right now lighting up a smokeless cigar over in the Amicus Plus boom boom, boom. And we're going to be talking about the other shadow docket decision that came down this week. more clown show behavior from Pam Bondi's DOJ as they withdrew then takes the backseat their withdrawal from the lawsuits that contested Donald Trump's law firm shakedown executive order. And that's not all. If you thought Lindsey Halligan, our favorite Florida insurance lawyer turned crack prosecutor, had left the headlines for good when she was forced to stop pretending to be a prosecutor. Oh, think again. The Florida Bar now says, hold my beer. Sign up for Slate Plus at slate.com slash amicus plus. And not only does Plus membership get you past the velvet rope into our exclusive bonus episodes. You will also be able to listen to all of Slate's podcasts ad-free. And you'll get special extras from our friends at death, sex, and money, and what next in political gab fest. You will also never, ever hit a paywall at slate.com and games. We have awesome games. Sarah, our producer, is currently using pairs as a primary coping strategy when the news becomes just too much for her. You can also subscribe to Amicus Plus from our show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you so much for your letters and your questions and your comments. Please keep them coming. We are reachable by email at amicus.com. You can find us at facebook.com slash amicus podcast. You can also leave a comment if you're listening on Spotify or on YouTube or rate us and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sarah Burningham is Amicus' supervising producer. Our producer is Sophie Summergrad. Hilary Fry is Slate's editor-in-chief. Susan Matthews is executive editor, Mia Lobel is executive producer of Slate Podcasts, and Ben Richmond is our senior director of operations. We'll be back with another episode of Amicus next week.

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