Religious Freedom For Me Not For Thee

Religious freedom is near and dear to me and I’ve written here before on the topic. To me and others it means being able to practice your faith or non-faith without interference or coercion by government at any level. Republicans seem to mean something else entirely when they speak of the topic. As exemplified by the cases below, to Republicans religious freedom means the freedom to push their faith on everyone else.

Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, is a case which will be argued before the Supreme Court in April on behalf of the public school district in Bremerton, Washington, which is trying to protect the religious freedom of its students and their parents. Kennedy is a one-time football coach who was placed on paid administrative leave after he refused to stop leading prayers on the 50-yard line after games.

Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram of Knoxville, Tennessee are a Jewish couple who wanted to foster and adopt a Florida child, and they needed to obtain foster-parent training and a home study authorized by Tennessee to do so. The only accessible place to get those services was Holston United Methodist Home for Children, which is funded by the state to provide the services. But Holston canceled the couple’s training because it only accepts “families that share our [Christian] belief system.”

Aimee Maddonna of South Carolina, was denied a similar opportunity because of her Catholic faith as was another South Carolina couple. Both have sued after they were rejected by Miracle Hill Ministries, the largest state-contracted and government-funded foster care agency in South Carolina, because Miracle Hill restricts "eligibility to prospective foster parents who are evangelical Protestant Christians." U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina denied a motion to dismiss those suits, ruling that "to the extent defendants' assert that their actions are immune from challenge under the Establishment Clause as 'religious accommodation,' such argument is directly contrary to the well-pled allegations in the complaint and long-established federal jurisprudence and must be rejected at this stage of the proceedings."

According to the civil complaint "For prospective foster parents who live in South Carolina's upstate region and do not meet Miracle Hill's religious requirements, the primary foster care agency serving the region is not available to them. Such denial creates a practical barrier to fostering, as not all foster care agencies are equivalent or offer the same services, and also stigmatizes these families, branding them as inferior and less worthy of serving as foster parents. Moreover, this discriminatory treatment of prospective foster parents denies children access to families they need."

Lawyers for the families allege that the state violated the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution by essentially establishing a religious test for foster parents in northern South Carolina.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had granted a waiver to Miracle Hill Ministries from federal non-discrimination rules. The Biden administration stopped this blatantly unconstitutional practice.

All of these folks are paying taxes to support discrimination that victimizes them. I don’t know about you but if I paid my taxes and got such a slap in the face I’d be pretty upset.

This is exactly the kind of government funded discrimination that our founders were concerned about and which the first amendment clearly opposes yet Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, refers to as “so-called separation of church and state”. We all have reason to worry about out religious liberty when Republicans are in control.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 23, 2022