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Alison, Liz, and Rebecca go back to school! They discuss the latest wild and crazy state/church violations in public schools reported to their organizations, the postscript on the Coach Kennedy case, and the alarming move by Oklahoma to create the first religious public school.
Background
Complaints Discussed
Cases
Resources
Rebecca Markert:
Welcome to We Dissent, the podcast with secular women attorneys discussing religious liberty issues in our federal and state courts, and our work to keep Religion and government separate. I'm Rebecca Markert with the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Liz Cavell:
And I'm Liz Cavell, also with the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Alison Gill:
And I'm Alison Gill with American Atheists.
Rebecca Markert:
So school has been in session for a number of months now, and as we predicted on the show earlier, we're seeing many more incursions of religion in our public schools. A lot of freely emboldened school officials who really want to indoctrinate their students. It seems like we kind of talk about religion in the public schools ad nauseum on this show, but it is by far the greatest area of complaint that both of our organizations receive when we're looking at what sort of state church violations occur in communities, especially for our members. It's also the last stronghold of separation of state and church law. So we do expect to see more and more litigation in this arena as these religious right law groups seek to further dismantle the wall of separation and disrupt true religious liberty for all. So today I thought it would be a little fun to talk about some of the complaints that we've been receiving this fall.
I think we get a lot of the same types of complaints, prayer at football games, kindergarten prayer, religious music in the schools, things like that. But of course there's always something new under the sun. And every single fall I get a — we get another complaint that is just out there and something that I've never seen before. So it's always a very interesting time to be working in this area of law in the fall.
I thought we'd start off talking about some of those complaints, which we typically just send demand letters to remedy those situations. But then we also want to give you kind of a coda on the Coach Kennedy situation out of Bremerton, Washington. And then we are going to discuss a couple of our newer lawsuits that our organizations have filed this year. So we'll get started with some of these complaints that we have been receiving.
I'm not sure our listeners know exactly how our intake process works, but the Freedom From Religion Foundation and American Atheists actually have an agreement to work jointly on these complaints. And so a lot of what we're going to be talking about are complaints that our organizations have received, and we've been sending letters together on behalf of the community members who've submitted them. One of the first complaints that I wanna talk about is something that really sort of shocked me when I started working in this area of law because, you know, when you come out of law school, you think religion is not allowed in public schools. We can't have prayer, we can't have Bible readings or any sort of religious worship that's just sort of a basic tenant of our jurisprudence. And one of the complaints that we receive a lot about actually are baptisms that happen in public schools. This is typically with high school football teams and a lot of times they are baptized in the high school pool. And you know, usually this happens typically in the south. I know Liz, you've worked on several of these types of complaint letters. They really sort of stem from Georgia, Alabama, Florida. That's really where we sort of see these come about a lot of times.
Alison Gill:
You know, I don't think that water is particularly holy. I just like, it's questionable at best, I think, right?
Liz Cavell:
Ones I've written on take place in like an agricultural stock tank. So, you know, make of that what you will in terms of holiness.
Rebecca Markert:
So one of the first complaints is one that happened in Alabama at Auburn University. Earlier this fall they had a Unite Auburn event, which was dedicated quote “to worship” and “giving messages to Auburn students seeking to grow their faith in God or who were curious about Christianity.” The purpose of this event was to be pro–
Alison Gill:
Never heard of that, Christianity? I love that.
Liz Cavell:
Curious about Christianity Come learn more,
Alison Gill:
Right? In Alabama. Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt you Rebecca, please.
Rebecca Markert:
That's fine.
Liz Cavell:
No, that's hilarious.
Rebecca Markert:
So the purpose of this event was to quote, be united under one roof of worship. Of course, this event was organized by coaches in the various athletic departments at the university. The head coaches of the football, basketball, and baseball teams all participated. The chaplain for the men's basketball team was there and actually boasted that during the event he was able to baptize 20 students. And one of the football coaches also baptized one student, the head football coach, in fact. Auburn was featured in a report that the Freedom From Religion Foundation published a few years ago called Pray to Play. And that report exposed religious indoctrination and coercion practices in public college athletic programs. So Auburn was featured pretty heavily in that report as well as the current head football coach of Auburn. In that report though, he was at Ole Miss. That complaint letter was sent to the university recently, and it has been causing a lot of consternation in the state of Alabama. People from Alabama have been calling complaining about our letter and being very upset that we are getting involved.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah, this was a big lightning rod for all the Christian nationalists in Alabama government. We got lots of notoriety and media attention because this really drew a reaction from Governor Kay Ivy and also some of the other Christian nationalist state government officials. It's been good because it's been raising the profile of something that's actually really a really big problem in college athletics, where we haven't litigated as much or done as much hard enforcement of, of the Establishment Clause through litigation in the public university context, because the courts have always treated public colleges a little bit differently than they've treated lower grade public schools. Rationalizing that public colleges are a little bit more of a marketplace of ideas. Public college students are older, less impressionable, more understanding of nuances and things like that. But the amount of religious coercion in athletic programs and the level of coercion is really unique, obviously in the athletics context. And that doesn't really change. If anything, the stakes get higher as you get into college athletics. And these coaches, and we're talking about public universities, these coaches wield so much power over athletes. And the way that their programs are just absolutely infused with this Christian indoctrination program is actually really troubling and surprising to a lot of people that might not have ever crossed paths with something like this.
Rebecca Markert:
Right. The fact that a lot of these universities do have chaplains that travel with the team and pray with the team and encourage athletes to attend religious worship services you know, are definitely engaged and intermingled with the coaches. I mean, they're really sometimes part of the coaching staff. So it's really insidious, and you're right Liz, a hundred percent that the coercion element in particularly these football programs is so high because they are in charge of their playing time, which NFL scouts are gonna come and see them. And really just in charge of scholarships and all sorts of things that really make them indirectly feel like they have to pray. And we have had students who have commented even lower division schools, that they felt that they had to join in the prayer circles and the religious events because they didn't wanna go against what their coach was asking them to do.
Alison Gill:
This is one of the reasons that Kennedy is so worrisome because the Supreme Court in that case, which was the coach leading prayer on the 50 yard line, the Supreme Court just sort of ignored the fact that religious coercion was happening here, the impact that this coach has on students and really did not address the indirect sort of types of coercion that we're talking about. In this case maybe we might even be talking about direct coercion, but you know, there's also an indirect effect where they don't say explicitly, well, if you're Christian, you get to play more. But that's the implication, right? So it's worrisome and I'm curious to see how this will turn out.
Rebecca Markert:
Right. Well, it's a good thing that you brought Kennedy back up because that was in a public high school. And the next baptism complaint that I wanna talk about was with Charlotte County Public Schools in Florida. So there, Port Charlotte High School has a football team with a team chaplain, and that chaplain regularly organizes a lot of religious events and, you know, they start practicing in the summer before school starts. In July, the team chaplain bragged on social media that he had baptized 13 football players and one of the coach's brother during an event, three days later, he was able to baptize nine more players and another coach who were not able to be at the first event. And then he boasted again that by the end of August there were four more people that he was able to baptize. We sent a letter again to the school district telling them that this was inappropriate behavior and they needed to cease immediately. This complaint was also, apparently these religious events were organized in response to a death from a beloved coach, which of course we sympathize with. And those types of situations are always really difficult. But in our letter we do stress the fact that even when you're dealing with these difficult situations where people need support, it is not appropriate for public schools to use religion to offer that support and comfort.
Alison Gill:
And does the school pay this chaplain? Do they pay this person to go around and baptize? I mean, is that their entire role to baptize students or, or what's going on here? Do you know?
Rebecca Markert:
So I don't know exactly if he's paid or not. Yeah, I would imagine. No. 'cause it's a public high school and–
Alison Gill:
Sure.
Rebecca Markert:
I believe most of the chaplains that we see in public high schools are volunteer chaplains. I see. And so it's just a local pastor usually who volunteers his time. But again, very similar to the college context where they really are sort of embedded with the team and they're in the locker room before and after practices and before and after games. They're encouraging them to come to dinners at the church and religious services and things like that.
Alison Gill:
Imagine if there was a secular equivalent. It's just like some guy who says, I'm just here to remind you, there's no God. I just, it's just interesting.
Rebecca Markert:
No. If there was a random guy walking around the locker room, I mean, people would be concerned about that, but–
Alison Gill:
Right, right.
Liz Cavell:
And I just wanna point out, we often tread lightly when there's some sort of like precipitating event. Something that's seen as a tragedy in the community, like a student death or a beloved staff member death. And I mean, obviously there is a chaplain who's given access to the team and that has nothing to do with somebody dying so take it for what it's worth. But even when that's a genuine precipitating event for some of this religious activity, it's arguably worse, right? Like as we're talking about what if it were just a random non-religious man who, “I'm just a volunteer, but I'm here to see to your emotional needs. Don't worry about my qualifications or my background. Oh no, someone died that you really loved. You're feeling vulnerable. Let me talk to you about that.” I mean, it's just like, it's so exploitative and it's so much worse. I feel like that these things are being pushed, these indoctrinating events. Let me baptize you all, let me exploit this moment of vulnerability for these young public school students as an opportunity for me to push my religion onto you.
Alison Gill:
It might actually impact the school's decision making, too. For example, if there was a tragedy like this and the school sees an impact on their students, they might think, okay, well maybe we need to get a mental health counselor in here to help deal with this grief that we're seeing in our student body. Instead, there's already someone there who's like a faith figure. They might just lean on that instead. And it just sort of detracts from what might be offered in its place even if indirectly.
Rebecca Markert:
Right, right.
Liz Cavell:
For more on that problem, listen to last month's episode where we talk about Texas deliberately implementing a paid system for this very problem.
Alison Gill:
Exactly.
Rebecca Markert:
I'll just say one more thing on this Florida complaint. These baptisms were done in the ocean, which as a lawyer, my spidey sense is like, why are you guys doing that? You're dunking them backwards into wild waters. It seems like that's just not a wise and safe choice to do when you have children in your care. But I digress.
Liz Cavell:
Rebecca, they obviously weren't thinking about liability when they planned this event.
Rebecca Markert:
The next complaint that I wanna talk about is actually one that I do kind of find funny and that's why I put it in here. There is a school in California where they put up a religious message in the girl's bathroom, which was located near one of the front offices. And the sign read, and I'm gonna quote this verbatim, "Wash your hands and say your prayers, because Jesus and germs are everywhere." And we actually had a student at that high school send the complaint into us and said in their complaint, “I find this kind of creepy.”
Alison Gill:
You're not getting across the full impact of it though, hands and prayers are all in caps, as are germs are everywhere, all in caps, right? So that's — I think you need that context to fully understand how weird this is.
Rebecca Markert:
You should probably link the picture. Because there is a really nice picture in our show notes and actually our legal assistant, Greta, who helps us immensely on this podcast, she actually printed out the sign and put it up above the sink in our kitchen on the legal floor at FFRF. And it just matches so perfectly. It's really funny. But yes, you should definitely take a look at what this sign looks like because it was a lot of word art.
Liz Cavell:
It's definitely like something you pick up at Hobby Lobby. It's the vibe.
Rebecca Markert:
And I mean, it's not unusual for schools obviously to have or any places of business or restaurants and theaters and stuff like that, especially in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic to have, you know, reminders to wash your hands, not just for employees, but also for the general public. And so in my kids' elementary schools, of course there's always little visual signs that say, don't forget to wash your hands and this is how you do it. But this was obviously like above and beyond what they should have been putting up in a public school bathroom.
Alison Gill:
It's kind of weird that they equate Jesus in germs though, isn't it?
Rebecca Markert:
I know. Yeah.
Liz Cavell:
It's such a weird comparison.
Alison Gill:
Yeah
Liz Cavell:
I mean it's contagious. It's infectious. Potentially deadly.
Alison Gill:
I can see why saying your prayers like in their mind might help deal with both those things, Jesus and germs. But like, does washing her hands help keep the Jesus away? I don't know. It's sort of an odd framing of this entire…
Rebecca Markert:
Sense. It's a very weird phrase, but that's why it was so humorous to me.
Liz Cavell:
Also, I just wanna add, as I did intake for our legal team for many years, this is not the first time that this exact sign being posted in a public school has been reported to us. So this is a popular little hand washing reminder.
Rebecca Markert:
The final area of complaint that we've received from this fall is the issue of prayer walks. This is one that I don't think a lot of listeners will realize happens in public schools. It definitely was something I had never heard of. Again, one of these complaints that seems to mostly happen in the deep south, but Liz, tell us what a prayer walk is.
Liz Cavell:
Well, Rebecca, a prayer walk. What is it? It's some sort of event where adults walk around or through public schools to pray over them or bless them or that sort of thing in the beginning of the school year or before the school year starts. It's potentially not a violation of the Establishment Clause. But why, how and when it violates the Establishment Clause is that oftentimes the school districts are like intimately involved in the planning or the hosting of these events. And like they're purely religious events. They're like prayer revivals at public schools. So oftentimes we'll hear about a prayer walk that was flat out organized by the school district, like parents saying, Hey, we got a call. Or I got a text on my public school district announcement system saying “prayer walk at such and such campus on August 4th, everyone come and pray over the schools.”
And that's just flat out the school district hosting a purely religious event. Oftentimes though, it'll be something more in the middle where it's a church or a religious group of parents or old folks in the community that want to do a prayer walk and they get in touch with the school district or the principal of a school and ask for special access to the school campuses. So it's just kind of troubling, right? Because we've seen principals that just kind of give access to a group of unknown, just unchecked adults to the public school plant to walk around classrooms, sometimes spray holy water around, pray, walk through all the different rooms and all the buildings of a school. And they're not, it's not like they're going through regular access channels, following district policies in terms of how to get access to school property or school facilities.
They're just getting special treatment or there's something, there'll be something in the middle, like the school district didn't host the event, but they're promoting it on their official social media channels or advertising it in advance on their social media channels, encouraging students and parents to go. Things like that. And it's really problematic because it's a purely religious event. It's a prayer circle or a prayer walk. So as we started hearing about these routinely every single start of school year and it just kind of was increasing year to year within the last few years, FFRF published a report on this. It'll be in the show notes. It's just kind of like a short explainer on this issue in public schools. It's common. Here are the ways that it presents itself and here's how and why it can violate state church separation.
Alison Gill:
I have to be honest, this is the first time I've ever heard of this. I've never heard of it before. It's really kind of interesting and if you consider the way that a lot of these sort of Christian nationalists think about public schools as being this sort of secular inherently anti-them sort of places where their children are indoctrinated and being worldly and secular and they try to, you know, I'm just talking about it from their sort of viewpoint. I mean, trying to go in and sort of I guess ward that off has a certain weird magical logic to it, right? Magical thinking logic. It's just really kind of fascinating.
Liz Cavell:
Totally. You're right. Alison. There have been reports that we've gotten that actually that involve like holy water, right? It's like this exorcizing of secular forces to try and bless these poor damned public school students. But it's really quite common. I mean, we get, I don't know, a dozen of these, at least from around the country that just trickle in at the beginning of the school year or before the school year starts.
Rebecca Markert:
And the one that we got this fall that I wanted to highlight, it was just massive. This took place again in Florida, Marion County Public Schools. They had 400 congregants from the Church of Hope who spread out into small groups and did prayer walks in the district's 43 schools. This is a massive effort to pray over the schools, exercise them from the demons and like the woke left. I don't know. But just to give you an idea of the magnitude of that particular event. We've seen obviously smaller ones, but this is just one of those other violations that we've sort of seen here and there, but has just seemed to grow since the last couple of Supreme Court terms where the court has definitely signaled that it's okay to pray in schools and in a few years we are going to be there. And that's what I wanna talk about next. What do you guys think is the next big source of litigation areas of complaint in the school context?
Alison Gill:
Well, we've talked about a major one last month, which is a school chaplain bill in Texas. Right? I'm worried we're gonna start seeing that in other places. And the other thing we talked about last month was the Ten Commandments bills, right? That directly violates existing on point Supreme Court precedent Stone v. Graham. And we're probably gonna see those too. But it is just like this sort of soft intrusion of religion into schools, like teachers mentioning it in classrooms, not even like policy-based, but just sort of this indirect sort of, people just feel more likely to bring in their own religious beliefs and, and, and sort of assert them. And it's really hard for us to deal with that. I don't know. I speak with a lot of people from the South who tell me, we've never really had secular public schools in the south. They've always been, you know, prayers before, before class, or you know, during class even. Or it just, it's been a pervasive part no matter how hard we try to, you know, push back. So it's, I think that's just gonna increase.
Rebecca Markert:
Oh yeah, it's definitely been a culture. I've definitely even had superintendents who have told the press that they've known that prayer at these football games is illegal and inappropriate, but they were just sort of waiting until somebody called them out on it to stop it. It is something that they do just ignore.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah. One of the things that's definitely going to grow as there's more and more kind of chaos created by the current federal courts and the Supreme Court's decisions on religion is kind of the blurring of the lines between public and private that we're seeing in the funding context we're gonna talk about later when it comes to funding private religious schools becoming more and more expansive, but also just what Alison is calling kind of this soft intrusion of religion permeating everything. And that is in huge part thanks to the Kennedy decision because it's not just what the court is doing, it's the way that it's doing it in these cases, right? It's the way that the court is knowingly and deliberately misrepresenting the facts in its opinion, knowing that the public or anyone with eyes and ears sees a different set of facts before them.
And so in the Kennedy decision, we're all seeing the pictures in the press. We see this guy on the 50 yard line, he's surrounded by his students, he's beckoning them with the football helmet to come gather around him and pray. And the Supreme Court is saying, thumbs up. That's the takeaway for most people. And they're not reading the opinion that says, oh no, actually all we're putting our stamp of approval on is this private prayer when he's got a moment to himself. And this is deliberate, right? The court is sowing confusion and chaos and blurring these issues and saying, we kind of crapped on the Establishment Clause a long time ago and it's been gone, but anyways, this is fine and here's what happened. And the nuance is lost. And the takeaway is religion in schools equals okay. And that's what we're seeing kind of trickle down to school officials, administrators, school board members, down to teachers and employees in the classroom.
And so we're gonna keep seeing these types of public school violations, a lot of them in the athletics arena because that is specific to Kennedy and we're seeing this already, but a lot of it just sort of adjacent to what Kennedy did. So anything that involves prayer at school events, school officials that think, oh, prayer's okay in schools now let's bring back prayer at our football games over the loudspeaker. Let's bring back prayer at our graduations. We're gonna start seeing all of these violations on the rise. And I think the trend is already in that direction.
Alison Gill:
I would say it's not just the confusion which you're talking about, which is really important, right? The confusion, it definitely allows us to proceed. But the other thing is it, it's made it incredibly more difficult for our organizations to effectively stop these intrusions when they do occur. Because now the existing tests are so vague and unusable or they've just been out like, like not used anymore, that we have to, we have these new tests that don't mean anything or that are so easily cherry picked around them. For example, we have to prove historical practices and understandings. And that means we need a historian every single time we wanna bring a case and build this record. And then the judge can just be like, well, they did it once in 1786 and therefore it's fine. I mean that's what we're setting up, right? This whole cherry picking through history.
And the Supreme Court seems to be perfectly okay with that as long as they get to do it. They're the ones in control of it I mean. It adds a lot to litigation costs, makes it much more difficult for us to bring things much more risky. And this is all a strategy because if we can't be a bulwark against this our organizations in the ACLU and AU and American United and our other partners, then these small intrusions Liz's talking about are just kind of build and build and build until, that's it. All education is religious education.
Liz Cavell:
Yep. Well, speaking of which, we wanted to just give a quick sort of postscript on the Coach Kennedy in Bremerton, Washington situation. Coach Kennedy himself, infamously of the Kennedy versus Bremerton decision after all of the years and years of litigation, was claiming that the remedy he was asking the courts for was his actual job back as coach of the Bremerton High School football team was pointed out by the school district in some of the later years of litigation that actually Coach Kennedy moved out of state while litigation was pending. And you probably remember us railing about this when we talked about the case because it's really significant because it goes to standing and mootness, right? If the thing you're asking the court to do is not actually a real thing that can happen anymore. Like you're asking for your job back, but you literally live 2000 miles away.
Traditionally, a court might dismiss the case saying, well actually it's moot now because what you're asking us for isn't something that we can realistically give you. But of course it was sort of secretly done, you know, it only kind of came out. The courts never addressed it because of course we know the Supreme Court doesn't care about jurisdictional problems when it wants to hear a case. But now Kennedy won his case, right? He got what he wanted, which was to be reinstated as coach. And of course now we were all waiting to see what's he gonna do. Because again, he no longer lives in that corner of the country. So what happened was he kind of delayed, because remember this case was in the summer of 2022. He kind of hemmed and hawed and said, okay, I'm gonna return as coach for the fall season.
I am coming back to Bremerton. He was slated to coach his first game back at Bremerton High School's first home game on September 1st. And of course the First Liberty Institute, which is his Christian nationalist legal firm backing this entire litigation crusade, took the opportunity to create a whole national campaign, take a knee with Coach Kennedy, where they were quote, asking coaches, players, parents and fans nationwide to go take a knee in personal private prayer on Friday, September 1st. So you have to pause again to appreciate the non-ironic use of personal private prayer to describe what you're calling upon the entire nation to do
Alison Gill:
National campaign for personal private prayer. Cool.
Liz Cavell:
So that was, here's what we want you to do. We want you to pray, take a video of it. It's gonna be super personal and super private. Take a video of it, post it on social media, hashtag you know, take a Knee with Coach Kennedy, hashtag all the things. Also donate money to First Liberty Institute to keep fighting these fights.
Rebecca Markert:
Of course, of course.
Liz Cavell:
And then of course he did a big Associated Press interview with a big article hyping his return, but also kind of planting the seeds of like, “gee, I'm just not sure what the next chapter holds. I don't know if football is really my future.” All this trouble, I'm just gonna blow up five decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence because God has called me to coach football in this way. But actually it turns out God wants me to be a Fox News media correspondent.
Alison Gill:
I love that when that suggestion was raised by Bremerton school district's attorneys that, oh, he doesn't live here. It might not have standing right. There was this, I don't know, I felt like the letter back from his attorneys was just like angry and sort of spiteful being like, how dare you question his integrity. And that sort of language was very prominent. And of course they're acting accusatory because they never intended for him to stay, that was patently obvious to anybody who was watching it. And lo and behold, he did not stay.
Liz Cavell:
Of course. He coached his one game. He went out to the 50 yard line knelt and did an actual private prayer alone. Well not private 'cause it was on the 50 yard line, but, you know, lonely. And for once there was not a lot of enthusiasm for his performance from the teams or the other coaches probably because this whole school system is just absolutely exhausted from this whole debacle. And lo and behold, the following week we hear that he's actually gonna be leaving. He coached that one game and now he's gonna quit and pursue his next chapter. And of course had to have Hiram Sasser from First Liberty Institute go out and do like apologetics about how everyone was so mean to him when he returned. And it was just so unfair. And the school district is so to blame for him not being welcomed back with open arms.
Alison Gill:
Right. Right. I feel sorry for the kids. I mean their entire game is being overshadowed by this media event to this one guy who actually retired like what a couple years ago. Right? So hasn't even been around shows up, has this big media media's practical during their game. I mean, it's unbelievable.
Liz Cavell:
Right. I mean, it is all for the good of the actual team and students that he's resigned and will be leaving, but not after totally destroying years of the football program at that school. And, you know, costing the school district millions.
Rebecca Markert:
Setting aside, you know, the fact that he just destroyed church state separation law and all of that. I mean, it is kind of funny that he comes back and it's this like “the moment you've all been waiting for Coach Kennedy returns” and then he leaves, after one game. It's just really kind of funny then, but also anti-climactic. I just, I feel like I was expecting more and instead everybody was just like, “yep, bye.”
Liz Cavell:
I mean totally. And it's just a real life moment of what the whole thing was, which was not anything to do with a grassroots thing that was happening in the team. All the BS that the court was painting about how there was so much student initiation behind this and what do you know you take away the indoctrinating power holder and go put him on the other side of the country for five years and what do you know, all the religious fervor just fizzles right out of the student body. How weird. There wasn't coercion, I guess it was just different people.
It's like, yeah, obviously you take the freaking missionary out of the football program and the enthusiasm for his religious fervor kind of fizzles out and all of that attention that was being drummed up by him and his first liberty backers by the media people coming to the games and bum rushing the field. What do you know that wasn't grassroots Bremerton school districts parents and students. That was just other evangelical maniacs like Coach Kennedy who were coming in from all over the place and the same stuff that they accuse all the secularists of, right? Like coming in from out of town and bringing all their ideology into these small communities. That was what the whole thing was during this whole debacle. He comes back after being gone for years and what do you know, it's just a bunch of public school kids trying to play football. That's what it always was. The only thing that was different was Kennedy bringing his circus to town.
Rebecca Markert:
What do you think is going to happen next? Does this saga continue?
Liz Cavell:
What happens next? Well, for Joe Kennedy, his book came out this week.
Rebecca Markert:
What is his book called again?
Liz Cavell:
Average Joe.
Alison Gill:
Course. Oh God.
Liz Cavell:
You like that Alison?
Alison Gill:
It’s better than like taking a knee or something. Like, I don't know. I mean I could see a lot of dumber titles. I guess it's, it's up there.
Liz Cavell:
No, his memoir just came out. He's quit football. So his schedule is now free to do the the Trump rally circuit and –
Alison Gill:
Yeah, the Fox. It could be all over the right wing circuits. Totally. Absolutely.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah. yeah. So now what do you know, it wasn't, it wasn't football after all that he was being called to do.
Rebecca Markert:
Right. Do you think that he's gonna sue the school district?
Liz Cavell:
For their meanness?
Alison Gill:
No, there's no, there's no action there.
Liz Cavell:
Court, you were mean to me. No, I honestly feel like that was cover fire from Hiram Sasser for like, yes. We actually never had standing all along and don't look at us. Look at these mean people.
Rebecca Markert:
Yeah, yeah.
Alison Gill:
A hundred percent.
Liz Cavell:
Well that was the postscript. Shocking. I know on, the Coach Kennedy situation,
Rebecca Markert:
It was definitely a move that surprised none of us.
Liz Cavell:
No.
Rebecca Markert:
So the next thing that we wanna talk about is something that Alison, you have predicted for years. I remember you always bringing this up whenever we had conferences that we were attending together or just meetings, and we probably also talked about it here on this podcast, but you've always said that charter schools are going to be the next frontier in state church law and public schools.
Alison Gill:
Absolutely. Yeah. And this is because we've seen cases like Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza, that's the Montana department of Revenue. And then recently Carson v. Makin more and more examples where basically private schools are saying we should get a cut of public funding. And the logical extension of that is we're gonna start seeing religious schools that want to become charter schools and get government funding in that way. Step up and demand their cut too.
Rebecca Markert:
In Oklahoma, there is a virtual Catholic school that wants to get approval to be a public charter school. It's Saint Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. Obviously, they are a Catholic school, so they have religious underpinnings and as this is coming out that they are going to apply to be a public charter school, the executive director of the statewide virtual charter school board, Rebecca Wilkinson, submits a request for an opinion from the Oklahoma Attorney General. And her question is whether the statute that requires a state public charter school to be secular, therefore not affiliated with a sectarian or religious institution, could be enforced. Obviously this happened in 2022 after all of the seismic changes in case law that Alison just brought up. So in December of 2022, she gets her opinion from then Attorney General O'Connor, and he concludes that yes, this statute cannot be enforced, it would violate the First Amendment.
And he goes through all of those cases that Alison mentioned, the funding cases, Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson, all of those lead him to this conclusion that a requirement that these schools be non-sectarian and non-religious violate the First Amendment and should not be enforced. So of course this gets out into the public and FFRF just a month later sends a memo to the statewide virtual Charter school board to rebut everything that the AGs opinion had said. The opinion from the Attorney General in Oklahoma is advisory only. So there's no real force of law to it, but obviously it's going to be very persuasive to the school board. So we wanted to rebut a lot of the points that were made in the AG’s opinion. And basically what we concluded in our memo to the school board was that charter schools are state actors. They're created by state statute and that statute holds them to most of the same requirements as traditional public schools. And therefore they cannot be religious. We will have the whole memo in the show notes as well. There's a lot of discussion about the state statutes and how things have been defined in case law and things like that. But generally speaking, these schools, charter schools, are state actors and therefore have to abide by the Establishment Clause and not be religious.
So then there is a new attorney general in 2023.
Alison Gill:
Also Republican.
Rebecca Markert:
Also a Republican. Yes. Everybody in Oklahoma, Republican. Yeah.
Liz Cavell:
And in case you don't believe us, his name is Gentner Drummond.
Rebecca Markert:
Drummond issues an opinion. It's actually only two pages. Basically rescinding the former AG’s opinion, withdrawing that. And there are some really good quotes in this very short two page letter that was sent to the charter school board basically saying, don't listen to that former opinion. It's wrong. And so here some of the quotes he writes, "without binding precedent, definitively addressing whether charter schools or state actors, this office is not currently comfortable advising your school board members to violate the Oklahoma constitution's clear directive: provisions shall be made for the Establishment and maintenance of a system of public school, which shall be open to all children of the state and free from sectarian control." He then goes on to state, "likewise without clear precedent, this office is not comfortable advising you to violate the legislature's clear directive that a charter school shall be non-sectarian in its programs, admissions policies, employment practices, and all other operations."
Alison Gill:
Can I just before you go on, this language seems kind of anodyne, but I think to a lawyer, like the fact that we have to say I'm not gonna do this without strong precedent, is really pointing to the last opinion as being just completely activist and ridiculous. Right?
Rebecca Markert:
Exactly.
Liz Cavell:
Exactly Right. Because again, this second Attorney General Drummond is a staunch Republican. Right? Like this is not an ideologically motivated opinion. He's clearly reading the Oklahoma Constitution and then the Oklahoma statutes that created charter schools.
Alison Gill:
Yeah.
Liz Cavell:
As like explicitly prohibiting what this charter school board is asking to do.
Alison Gill:
Right. Right. Like, I'm not just going to violate the law based on unclear guidance because I feel like it is basically what he's saying. Right. The implication is unlike what you did.
Rebecca Markert:
So that just leads us to my favorite part of this opinion. He has a paragraph in there where he kind of talks to your point, Liz, that he is this staunch Republican and you know, probably believes in some of the goals and objectives of a lot of his colleagues in quote unquote “true religious liberty.” But here he says, "as a strong supporter of religious liberty, I am obliged to note that the opinion does nothing to advance that worthy cause. Religious liberty is one of our most fundamental freedoms. It allows us to worship according to our faith and to be free from any duty that may conflict with our faith. The opinion as issued by my predecessor, misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state funded religion if allowed to remain in force. I fear the opinion will be used as a basis for taxpayer funded religious schools."
Liz Cavell:
Which to his credit, there was a time when like the allies for state church separation were so much broader and there were a lot of conservatives and even religionists who were stauncher supporters of state church separation. And unfortunately, this guy's a unicorn in today's moment, but he's kind of hearkening back to a bygone shared understanding of what true religious liberty is.
Rebecca Markert:
But St. Isidore is still out there. So despite these conflicting ag opinions, they go ahead and submit an application to be a virtual charter school. So in April the board rejects their application, but in rejecting that application, they did identify eight categories of deficiencies in their application and kind of gave them a roadmap to fix those deficiencies and encourage them to then, you know, submit the application again. So they do just that. And in May they submitted their revised sponsorship application to the board. The June 5th meeting of the school board, they vote three to two in favor of establishing this charter school. This is the first such approval in the nation. So this is unprecedented. A public charter school is allowed to be a religious school.
Alison Gill:
This charter school is also virtual, so it could apply to anybody in Oklahoma just to be clear. So we're not talking about one district or Oklahoma City or something. It's virtual. Yes. So it's anywhere.
Rebecca Markert:
Thank you very much for that clarification. It's a virtual school. So of course our organizations have been watching and monitoring this situation since last year and forms a coalition to prepare any litigation if the school is approved by the school board. And the coalition does file a lawsuit in the state of Oklahoma. The coalition is the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United, the ACLU, and the Education Law Center. The lawsuit that we filed generally asserts that the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School board violated the Oklahoma Constitution when they approved St. Isidore's application. We are asking the court to block St. Isidore from operating as a charter school in the state of Oklahoma and the charter school board from entering into or implementing any contracts with St. Isidore and asking the court to block the state from funding St. Isidore.
Alison Gill:
Is this state court or federal court?
Rebecca Markert:
It's all state court claims.
Alison Gill:
All state court.
Rebecca Markert:
Yes. Yes. So we are suing under the Oklahoma State Constitution, state law and other regulations. This has just been filed at the end of the summer, so it's in the very early stages of litigation. But let's talk a little bit about who the parties are and the plaintiffs are. Obviously, the defendants are the statewide Virtual Charter School Board in Oklahoma, the five members of that board, and the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters and St. Isidore itself. You're laughing about Ryan Walters and I think this probably is a good time to talk a little bit about who he is. So he's the recently elected state superintendent of Oklahoma, and it's probably sufficient to say that he is a Christian nationalist.
Alison Gill:
I think his picture is next to the definition of Christian nationalist if you look at it.
Rebecca Markert:
Yes. So he has called for prayer in schools and to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms after his election. He was quoted as saying, this is a war for the souls of our kids. I will do all I can to fight to get that nonsense out of schools and put God back in schools. The nonsense that he's referring to, of course, is all this woke liberalism and pro LGBTQ initiatives and the agenda where we are trying to make all of the public school students gay.
Alison Gill:
And of course that's very prevalent in Oklahoma.
Rebecca Markert:
Very prevalent.
But he's also called state church separation, a myth and a false narrative fight back against the radical myth of separation of church and state. He's also endorsed a group of evangelical pastors in Oklahoma, known as the Oklahoma Advisory Council on Founding Principles. And they're, they have a list of goals that he has endorsed. And that includes overturning the precedent from the 1960s Engel v. Vitale, which disallowed prayer in schools.
Liz Cavell:
There are several plaintiffs, we don't necessarily have to go through every single one, but I think it's important to note that these aren't all atheists. Right? The plaintiffs run the gamut of stakeholders that include public school parents – atheists or not, faith leaders, and also public education advocates. So there's an organization that tries to advance and protect public education. That's one of the plaintiffs. And so there's a really strong faith leader representation amongst the plaintiffs and they've given some good press statements. And it kind of speaks to that idea that we gave earlier from the Attorney General Drummond, which is that not all religions are supportive of this idea that public funding should go to religious schools and indoctrination, right? There is support amongst religions for the principle of state church separation because keeping government funding out of religion is good for religion, not just good for public schools.
Rebecca Markert:
It is interesting to note there is a plaintiff who identifies as Catholic and there are several retired pastors who are plaintiffs in this lawsuit.
Liz Cavell:
Right. So we should really get into the seriousness of what's actually going on here because the crux of the case is that the parties are both diametrically opposite on whether or not a charter school is a public school, right? But the thing is, and this is what the AG is saying under the law of Oklahoma and the practice of how charter schools were created and operate, they are clearly public schools. So that makes them subject to the same laws and regulations including constitutional requirements that public schools are obligated by. And that means the Establishment Clause. And so what does this school wanna do that is so different from a public school couldn't be more like serious. It's not like we're just talking about like a Catholic school that is agreeing to take public funds but still operate like a public school would. Like in the Carson versus Makin case where we had the state of Maine funding students who lived in a district that didn't have a secondary school funding their kind of replacement education, and then the court kind of stepping in and saying, well, religious schools have to also be an option for those parents that are otherwise getting funding to send their kids to an alternative school.
But the subtext in that case was that in that program, these had to be schools that were providing a comparable secular education to what these students should be getting in a public high school. We're not talking about that situation here. Like we're talking about this school, St. Isidore. They are a full stop Catholic school. It's not theoretical whether or not they have to abide by curricular standards or whether or not they have to abide by anti-discrimination policies. They have said flat out they will operate only according to Catholic doctrine and what the conference of bishops say. And that means there'll be anti LGBTQ in their practices, in their hiring, in their enrollment. They will or will not be open to disabled students. Like they will be exempt from all of those requirements that public schools have. Oh, and not to mention they'll be completely sectarian in their curriculum.
Meaning they will literally indoctrinate Catholicism. This is not like some Jesuit college that's gonna give a liberal arts education from a Jesuit tradition. This is a full on indoctrination center. And they will be a public charter school, meaning they will be completely taxpayer funded and they will be operating with a public school charter, in other words, under the authority of a public school district in Oklahoma. And that's what we're facing here. There's nothing like this that exists in our nation because this is not supposed to exist in our nation because we have separation of church and state.
Alison Gill:
I wanted to bring up two points here. And not only is this somatic for all the reasons you're talking about with the exceptions and allowing the discrimination and them getting money and, and being able to ignore the rules, but it sets up so many future suits for them. So much litigation. They could argue these federal requirements that apply to public schools do not apply to them like the Equal Access Act, for example, if they don't wanna have an LGBTQ student group, well, there we go. A lawsuit that goes up to the Supreme Court maybe and now we get exemptions from the equal access. And that's just one thing. It sets up thing after thing after thing. The ministerial exemption: does that now apply to public, well I guess they say they're not public, but does that apply now to other charter schools, not just private schools, right?
And also based on the precedent we see from Trinity Lutheran, Carson v. Makin and Espinoza, if this is allowable, if the Supreme Court says this is allowable eventually we're pretty far from the Supreme Court, yet, right? But if that eventually happens and the Supreme Court says this is allowable, then it doesn't become acceptable for a charter school board to accept a school like this. It becomes mandatory, right? It becomes mandatory because the rule that they've established is if it's a program where they give out money and a religious organization applies, you cannot exclude them because they're religious and therefore anywhere there's a charter school program, right? If religious organizations apply, you're going to have to accept them. It becomes mandatory everywhere. Right? We're talking about really people using the charter school system to destroy public education or make it religious, right? So it's really, really scary in concept how this could proceed.
Liz Cavell:
Right? And so, and I don't know how much we wanna dig into the pieces of this lawsuit, and I'm sure this is not the last episode that we're gonna discuss this litigation as it's proceeding, right? This is just back to school fun today. But, but I think like the thing that is gonna be seized on, it's not a question. I'm not gonna like buy into this framing of the issue, but the idea that somehow charter schools are not public schools, and that's actually all a lot more confusing than we all think. It just makes me so mad that what passes for logic in this group of Christian nationalists including Walters, is that what they're arguing is right. You don't look at who funds it or who regulates it, or what labels Oklahoma law puts on us to, to tell whether or not we're a state actor or a public school.
You don't look at those things. You actually have to look at who the schools and who's responsible for the day-to-day operations, right? That's what they have in their briefing. And it's just like infuriating because it's just this circular argument that tries to just create confusion where it's just like, we are not gonna follow the rules that you've set up for public schools. We refuse to and we're not gonna let you control how we operate. And then based on that, you should see that we're not public in our character. Right? Of course. You are not gonna be like judged to be public schools if you refuse to follow the regulations that public schools are supposed to adhere to. And then you tell the court that that's the test that they need to judge you by in terms of whether or not you're a state actor.
There's a charter schools act, Oklahoma Charter Schools Act that literally created the charter school if they wanted to. Tomorrow the Oklahoma legislature could repeal that law and say there's no charter schools in this state. This is a creation of state law. There are things in that statute that say what a charter school is, it explicitly says it's a public school. Here's why. Here are the things in its character that make it public, that makes it a state actor. It has to adhere to state and federal laws and regulations that would bind a public school. Oh, and by the way, we explicitly say it can't be sectarian, right? This violates the law. There's no confusion. But here we are arguing over this basic premise of what the character of the charter school is, and they know that they have a fighting chance of getting that argument accepted because of how ideologically conservative many of the judges are in these courts. It's so infuriating. This should not be a close case. But here we are kind of fighting for our lives to protect public schools. And this isn't something that's like unclear under the law.
Alison Gill:
I think if you look at public universities, it really puts to lie this argument that charter schools are private because public universities, no one argues that they're actually secretly private. Right. And they actually get a smaller percentage of their funding from the state. They don't actually get, most states, they don't actually get a super large percentage of their funding from the states. They get it from students attending. And here these charter schools are a hundred percent funded by the state. And anyway, I don't see how you can possibly make that private without also making all state universities also private. Right.
Liz Cavell:
Right. That's such a good point.
Alison Gill:
And also,
Liz Cavell:
Sorry to interrupt you, but
Alison Gill:
Oh go ahead.
Liz Cavell:
It never even clicked in my mind this way. But here we're gonna have a Catholic school that doesn't have to charge tuition, it's free.
Alison Gill:
And they're still portray it as charity, won't they?
Liz Cavell:
And of course, right? Like it's, it's gonna be quote unquote “open to all faiths.” Right? But if you come here, we're gonna indoctrinate you into the Catholic faith and we're gonna make you live under the edicts of Catholic bishops.
Alison Gill:
How do you know it's gonna be open to all faiths? I mean, I mean, what if they say no is allowed?
Liz Cavell:
You're so right. That's a good point.
I think that's something that they have said in their application maybe, and I don't know, or maybe I'm just picking that up from elsewhere. You're right, Alison, like their argument is that they can't be regulated in that way, that that's a violation of their free exercise rights as is not funding them as they would a public school.
Alison Gill:
And you know, Title IX does not apply to them, right? Title IX applies to all public schools, but it would not apply to them because they can point to elements in their tenants and doctrine to sort of be exempt from it. So there's a very wide religious exemption in Title IX, which applies to, you know, sex discrimination in, in education very, very wide. But it only applies generally to private schools. So if it's bad that people aren't as concerned about it, 'cause usually you make a decision to go to private schools, right? But here, if this can start making its way into public schools, then that creates an even larger problem. And there's no safeguards because the assumption when the law is written is that this applies to private schools. So the law does not perfectly apply. It will create a bunch of inconsistencies to deal with.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah. It's such a minefield. If this is allowed to stand, there's gonna be so many other cascading points to litigate and try and figure out because there are so many things that are unleashed when you say a public school also has free exercise rights that can't be regulated in any way that infringes on those rights. I mean, that just doesn't work.
Alison Gill:
Yeah. So I wanna ask about legal strategy because it's interesting we've talked a little bit about how this is in state court and not federal court. Why?
Rebecca Markert:
The state constitution of Oklahoma has been interpreted more favorably than our federal counterpart. We obviously take into consideration with all litigation what the bench looks like. We don't want something like that to be fast tracked to the Supreme Court. We believe here that we have a really strong case under Oklahoma State law that this is unconstitutional.
Liz Cavell:
I think that's the biggest thing in this particular case is that, and I ranted on this earlier, Oklahoma state law and the Oklahoma Constitution are actually pretty explicit on how it would apply to this situation. The language of the Oklahoma Constitution that has to do with public schools, which there's no counterpart for this in the US Constitution, is that provisions shall be made to establish a public school system. And that shall be, first of all, open to all children. That's an important point here. And also shall be free from sectarian control. Public schools shall be free from sectarian control is sitting in the Oklahoma State Constitution, and there's nothing comparable to that in our federal constitution, that's really strong. And then the other thing is, of course, the Charter School Act that Oklahoma has passed to, created charter schools that has all of the really explicit language about the fact that charter schools are public and how they're supposed to conduct themselves.
Alison Gill:
I'm gonna play devil's advocate – well, Christian nationalist advocate here, which is, I mean, the Supreme Court already in the Espinoza case didn't care much about their restriction on giving funding to private schools. And the bigger issue, I think, is the underlying case law Vitale in other cases that say you can't give money directly. The underlying issue is whether it's public or private. I mean, that's the biggest issue in the case. So I guess I'm curious why, sort of leaning on this constitutional argument and statutory argument when the Supreme Court doesn't seem to care about those, when they conflict with “religious freedom,” quote unquote.
Yeah. I mean, now I'm just being mean.
Liz Cavell:
I mean, you're right. Like you're absolutely right. That's what's terrifying about the case is that even though the state and federal law, state lawmakers who pass these laws, the Oklahoma AG, many charter schools themselves right, all agree that charter schools are public schools. And yet still we know that the threat is real. That the courts will ignore that and not care and just seize on whatever little kernel of free exercise argument can apply and just run with that, ignore all the other interests and go, I mean, that's what makes it so terrifying.
Alison Gill:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rebecca Markert:
We have to fight against these things because this is an unprecedented overreach into public school law and the principles that we know about religion in public schools. This is just like if Texas were to post the Ten Commandments in its classrooms, or even here, you know, Oklahoma wants to do that, or at least the state superintendent wants to do that, if they go to do that, it is something that we have to take a stand against because somebody has to do it. We can't just let them create this free for all and ignore core constitutional principles that we've had for decades. I think this really just kind of goes back to our role as dissenters. Somebody's gotta stand up and say that this is incorrect and wrong, and whether the courts agree with us or not, we still have to make this stand.
Alison Gill:
Yeah, yeah. No, I wasn't saying we shouldn't, you shouldn't defend. I was simply questioning, just to be clear, whether that is the defense that's gonna be useful or not, as opposed to public versus private.
Liz Cavell:
As unprincipled as like Carson and Espinoza in this line of cases has been. And as much as we disagree, they happened, right? As much as we disagree with those cases, they happened. And it's important to say that the continued extension of that line of argument is not warranted and it's not necessarily analogous. Right? Carson and Espinoza applied to voucher programs to fund private schools, and this situation is very different in character, right? It is being argued as an extension of that analysis of the Carson, Espinosa line. That's what our adversaries are arguing that those cases apply to this instance. But I think it's really important to point out that these are public charter schools. We're not talking about vouchers that can be used at private religious schools. And whether or not that's fair or neutral or those not being available to fund private schools are some violation of free exercise rights. But I mean, it's really important. Part of what Rebecca's trying to point out is even though this principle is gonna keep being pushed and pushed and pushed by Christian nationalists every step of the way, you know, we have to keep making the argument that there is a limiting principle here. There has to be, because this is not a theocracy.
Alison Gill:
Hmm, good point.
Liz Cavell:
I mean, charter schools are not private schools. What we're talking about in this situation, if you apply for a charter under a state charter school law, you are accepting a charter from a public school district and you're becoming a public school. It's not analogous to a situation where public money is being given to parents to spend on private education. It's not the same thing.
Rebecca Markert:
Also, state constitutions need to be protected here. They need to mean more. And if, if they are giving more protection than our federal constitution allows, that has to stand. I mean, otherwise, what's the point of having all of these state constitutions if the federal constitution's just overriding them all the time?
Liz Cavell:
Well, I mean–
Alison Gill:
Well, that was my point, was that the Supreme Court has expressly said that if they extend further than the federal Constitution and there is another adverse interest, it always loses. Yeah. I mean, if basically there's no compelling interest in an extension of Establishment Clause principles beyond the First Amendment, what, of course they minimize that as much as possible, but they basically said that, right.
Liz Cavell:
You're right. I mean, Carson versus Makin, and we right ranted about this at the time, and as did Justice Sotomayor, that what the court was saying was that any state, like Maine, 'cause that was also being argued in the Carson versus Makin case, right? Like Maine also had language in its state constitution that had to do with the provision of public education. And in that case, the argument was being made that like, hey, we're trying to replace public education for these students that don't have a public school. And like this language applies. Our constitution says it like we as a state do not want to fund sectarian schools with taxpayer money. Period. And you're right, the court said, well, to the extent that you want greater state church separation than the federal Constitution requires you can do that unless there's a free exercise Right. From any person, place, or thing on the other side of the question. Right. And that's the same principle that's being argued, but to the nth degree here, where this school is saying, we have a right to actually be funded as a public school.
Alison Gill:
Yeah.
Liz Cavell:
And I don't know, it's different. And it's totally different in quality and magnitude and consequence, but we'll see. I mean, what the courts are willing to protect.
Alison Gill:
This situation is sort of a culmination of where I think the rights sort of education work has been going for years, though. They've been fighting for not having any sort of government controls on their education institutions like the ministerial exemption, freedom from non-discrimination laws. And at the same time they've been fighting for mandatory funding of their institutions, basically, right? So inclusion in all funding streams, and now this is sort of crossing both streams. So they basically get, you must include us, you may not regulate us. Right. That's what we're seeing here. Basically having your cake and eating it too. And when all of our Supreme Court, amicus briefs, all of our organizations have been calling out this dichotomy, you are basically ending up in a situation where the government must fund religion and can't regulate it. I mean, frankly, that's called a theocracy, right? If religion controls everything. But I think this is a very clear example of where, where that's headed.
Liz Cavell:
No, absolutely. It's full on culmination of like the assault on public schools meets the assault on state church separation. You see this being kind of clearly signaled by backers, right? As usual, there's like a very powerful shadow and not shadow network of orgs supporting this effort, like the Notre Dame law school clinic that's behind the St. Isidore Charter School application. And they're saying publicly, we want other states to follow Oklahoma's lead. This is going to be the first of many, right. Faith-Based charter schools to take over the country.
Alison Gill:
I'm worried about that happening in the Fifth Circuit. 'cause At least the 8th, I mean, I'm sorry, it's the 10th in Oklahoma at least they might moderate it, but I, I don't know. It's concerning.
Rebecca Markert:
Well, this lawsuit is, as I said before, in its early stages of litigation, so there will, as Liz pointed out, probably be more episodes on this as the case continues.
That's it for today's episode. If you don't already, please be sure to check us out on our socials. We have Twitter, which I guess is now X, Facebook, and we also recently joined Instagram. You can also check us out online we-dissent.org. We also would love to hear how you're enjoying the show, so please remember to leave us a five star review. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm Rebecca Markert.
Alison Gill:
I'm Alison Gill.
Liz Cavell:
And I'm Liz Cavell.
Rebecca Markert:
Thanks for listening. We Dissent is a joint production of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and American Atheists. It is hosted by attorneys Liz Cavell, Alison Gill, and me, Rebecca Markert. Other production support comes from Greta Martens. Audio Engineering provided by Audio for the Arts based in Madison, Wisconsin. Thanks for listening.
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