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Alison, Liz, and Rebecca take a deep dive into Texas for a case study in theocratic government. They discuss recent Christian nationalist legislation advancing in the state, the takeover of state institutions by conservative Christian legal groups, and the many state/church battles their organizations have fought in Texas.
Background
Texas Monthly – “How a Right-wing Law Firm Shaped the Judge Who Will Rule on the Abortion Pill”
The Washington Post – “Texas legislature passes bill allowing chaplains in public schools”
Religion News Service – “More than 100 chaplains urge Texans not to hire school chaplains”
FFRF, Americans United, and the ACLU/ACLU of Texas letter to Texas school districts
Texas Tribune – “Key supporter of Texas school chaplain bill has pushed for evangelism in schools”
Resources
Bills Discussed
HB 4949/SB 1396 and SB 19: Would allow a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text in public schools
SB 17: Would have created the right for a public school employee to engage in religious speech or prayer while on duty
SB 1515: Would require the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools
SB 763: Would allow school districts to employ chaplains to perform the duties of school counselors
Cases
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. In this episode, we’re going to discuss the encroachments of religion and governments in the state of Texas. So we’re going to do sort of a deep dive on Texas and talking about a lot of the recent developments there, both legislation wise, but also somewhat litigation wise and other things happening in the state. And you might be thinking, well, why Texas?
Well, Texas is a really important state. It’s one of our largest states. It’s actually fairly evenly divided politically, but the Republicans are firmly entrenched in power. I say entrenched purposefully. I think there through things like gerrymandering and those sorts of unscrupulous avenues. It’s also interesting because we’re seeing a lot of Christian nationalist advancement in terms of legislation, and it’s a place where there’s sort of a lot of unique judicial districts at the federal level. There’s only one judge in a certain number of districts, so it’s used for a lot of forum shopping on issues, particularly by conservatives who want to bring their issues before a chosen judge who they think there’s going to rule in a certain way. And as we talked about in this podcast many times also it’s under the Fifth Circuit, which is kind of a remarkable circuit who seems to think they can revise large amounts of the law all on their own. So it’s kind of a fascinating juxtaposition of a lot of stuff happening, Christian nationalist policy-wise on the ground in this sort of legislative atmosphere that enables it in a very dangerous way.
Liz Cavell:
When we were batting around whether or not to tackle Texas in an episode on its own we thought, this is actually a really good opportunity to sort of discuss a case study in how Christian nationalism has really sort of taken hold of a state government and created somewhat of a revolving door of power between state government and state institutions and the federal courts in an area of the country. And so I think it’s going to be really useful just to sort of give an illustration, we’ll talk about legislation, we’ll talk about the courts, but it’s kind of a microcosm of what we’re seeing in the greater federal landscape and also in other states that have similar state governments and similar issues with minority hold on their state legislatures through gerrymandering and really, really extreme policy proposals.
Rebecca Markert:
It’s really been a hotbed of the, quote unquote, culture wars for decades. We had many state church battles in Texas, including one about the Ten Commandments on the lawn of the state capitol. There’s been countless incursions of religion in public schools down in Texas.
I really want to give our listeners a background about a particular organization that is headquartered in Texas that really has emerged as one of the leading, quote unquote, religious liberty organizations that has really dominated this space in the last ten years. And that is the First Liberty Institute. This is an organization that we’ve dealt with for a number of years. They were formerly called the Liberty Institute, and before that Liberty Legal Institute, they claim to be the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to protecting religious freedom for all Americans. And as we’ve mentioned previously on this podcast, they do say that they just focus on religious liberty for all Americans and that they would take cases for minority faiths.
But when you go through their list of litigation and the causes that they get involved with, they are largely conservative Christian causes. They are based in Plano, Texas, and they do have a lot of connections. Liz mentioned this revolving door between the state institutions, state government, and the federal judiciary, and that’s really remarkable in Texas. Jeff Mateer was an executive vice president and chief legal officer for First Liberty, and he became first assistant attorney general of Texas. So he worked for First Liberty before and after his appointment to the Attorney general’s office. Hiram Sasser is another former First Liberty, and I think now current, First Liberty employee. He was the executive general counsel at First Liberty and was briefly the chief of staff for Ken Paxton, who is the Attorney General of Texas, the embattled Attorney General of Texas. He is currently facing an impeachment for ethics violations, but he had strong ties to First Liberty Institute as well.
Liz Cavell:
And at the time, and probably still, there really was a pipeline from First Liberty to the Attorney General’s office of the State of Texas and back, which is a whole lot of entanglement for an organization doing, quote unquote, religious freedom work that is often involved in litigation involving the states and the federal government. But I have to pause on Jeff Mateer, Rebecca, because you have to give the man his due. He was nominated to the Federal bench by President Trump. You might remember him because he was one of only two, I think, of Trump’s nominees that was not confirmed by the Senate for being too controversial, which is a pretty hard thing to achieve in the Trump judiciary. Past comments surfaced of Jeff Mateer calling trans kids evidence of Satan’s plan, and apparently that was a bridge too far for some Senate Republicans, but that was what, 2017 or 2018. And so obviously he was a man ahead of his time in terms of where the conservative platform has gone because attacking trans kids has become de rigueur. But he did not get elevated to the Eastern District of Texas where he was nominated and he made those comments when he was working for First Liberty because of course an enormous part of their project is anti LGBTQ legislation, litigation and everything in between.
Alison Gill:
And just bringing this full circle. Of course, Ken Paxton’s one of the most anti LGBTQ public figures in our nation, honestly. He’s famous for calling the fact that there are trans children getting care child abuse. The first speech he gave in office upon achieving office was at First Liberty Institute. So after he became Attorney General, he went right back to First Liberty Institute and gave a speech there. So yeah, it’s amazing how incestuous this all is.
Liz Cavell:
You might remember if you just sort of more than casually follow federal court news, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who is famous, infamous, for being the Mifepristone judge who has basically shut down the use of Mifepristone across the entire nation with a case that was forum shopped to his courtroom. Like Alison said in the opening, Texas is sort of a ground zero of the conservative and oftentimes conservative Christian or anti-LBGT litigants hand picking the district that they’re filing their lawsuits in because there will be many districts where only one federal judge is available to hear cases in that district. And that’s the case with Judge Kacsmaryk’s district, and he is extremely conservative. Another Trump appointee who, what do you know used to be Deputy General Counsel at First Liberty Institute and is now wielding his power to make medication abortion unavailable and a thing of the past in America.
Alison Gill:
It’s not just that they’re conservative either. These decisions are such reaches, they go so far beyond a known judicial precedent. There’s no sort of reasoning that these are correct, right? But the problem is they’re in this place where they can’t be touched and then they get appealed to the Fifth Circuit. So unless the Supreme Court intervenes, we’re left in a terrible place. So I mean, conservative judges are one thing when they ignore the law and do whatever the heck they want and are unaccountable, that’s worse.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah, and I mean you speak of the Fifth Circuit. Let’s also not fail to mention Judge James Ho, who is an extremely conservative member of the Fifth Circuit, who was I think also elevated to that appellate court by Trump, and he worked as a volunteer attorney with First Liberty Institute providing thousands of pro bono hours as was reported on recently his wife accepted speaking fees and honoraria from ADF, so a very tight relationship there. And Judge Ho now sits on the Fifth Circuit and hands down some of the most conservative and disgusting anti-LBGT and anti-abortion rulings that you see coming out of the Fifth Circuit.
Rebecca Markert:
If you want to find out more about First Liberty and their impact on religious liberty and how the abortion cases are going in Texas, there is a great article that we will put in our show notes in Texas Monthly that is entitled "How a Right-Wing Law Firm shaped the Judge who will rule on the Abortion Pill." And it really does a deeper dive into First Liberty, the cases that they’ve taken and really what they’ve done in the state of Texas. So you can find out more information there. Our organization’s also not new to dealing with litigation in Texas. Again, it’s been the hotbed of litigation for us, American Atheists and the Freedom From Religion Foundation have filed lawsuits even recently in Texas.
Alison Gill:
We filed a case on behalf of Metroplex Atheists, which desired to, there’s a banner program in downtown Fort Worth, so nonprofits can discuss upcoming events. Any nonprofit could set forward as long as they met these basic qualifications, they could display their banners and invite the town to attend their events, and no one had ever been rejected until, of course, the atheist applied even though they had been accepted for the same sort of forum back in 2019. They applied late last year for an event that’s going to be held in August. And basically they were rejected because they said that there was insufficient magnitude, so there was nothing in the questionnaire about magnitude. They didn’t actually ask how big is the event going to be or anything in the materials. They just sort of assumed it wasn’t going to be big enough, which is even more interesting.
Well, we brought suit on behalf of Metroplex atheists and we sought a preliminary injunction so we could get the advertisements up prior to their event. Unfortunately, we were before Judge Reed O’Connor, which is in the northern district of Texas, who’s another judge who is often selected for forum shopping, unfortunately. However, he decided that despite Shurtleff existing, this banner forum was not in fact a public forum. It was government speech. So even though they provide no regulation and they allow nonprofits to come and put their own banners up to advertise their events, somehow that’s government speech. So it’s a wrong decision. It’s not even like maybe, it’s wrong. All legal experts we’ve seen disagree with that it’s wrong, but nevertheless, that’s how the event is. So we are going to move forward with the rest of the case. We decided it was not worth appealing to the Fifth Circuit at that point. But anyway, I’d love to hear about your cases too.
Liz Cavell:
I was, when I saw that in the outline, Alison just so grossed out that here you have Judge Reed O’Connor, who is a known Federalist Society stooge and forum shopped to the hilt, but he’s a George W. Bush appointee, and you would expect at least to get rulings that follow the law, especially in the free speech context where it’s actually not that controversial to conservatives, but here he is, Judge O’Connor, just taking his cues from the Supreme Court and basically saying, oh, you don’t actually have to follow the law. You get to just pick a side and rule in favor of the party that you like, and you get to rule against the atheists who you don’t want to see succeed in the litigation. And it’s really frustrating.
Alison Gill:
I don’t disagree. I mean, we’re still proceeding with this case, so we’re still before this judge, but I don’t disagree.
Liz Cavell:
Anywho, so Texas litigation from FFRF. We’ve got a storied history, Rebecca.
Rebecca Markert:
Yes, we do. We sued Governor Abbott after he censored FFRF’S Bill of Rights nativity display, which we put up in the Texas State Capitol in 2015. He asked that it be taken down and actually removed it saying that it was, quote, indecent and mocking and lacking in public morality. This case was filed in early 2016 as a challenge to FFRF’s own free speech rights, and we did win that case earlier this year. What’s interesting about that case is the Bill of Rights nativity, if you’re not familiar with it, it is a project that we put up in areas where they have the traditional nativity scenes depicting the birth of Jesus in December. But what you may not know or may have forgotten from your civics and history classes when you were young is that the Bill of Rights was also born in December, on December 15th. And so we decided to counter these traditional nativity scenes with a Bill of Rights nativity scene, which is the Founding Fathers and the Statue of Liberty, all sort of looking adoringly at the Bill of Rights in a cradle. And that is what Governor Abbott said was lacking in public morality and was indecent.
Liz Cavell:
I do feel like we should link to an image of the Bill of Rights nativity in the show because it is the least offensive thing that–
Alison Gill:
I want to see it now. I haven’t seen this before.
Liz Cavell:
It’s like irreverent in the most inoffensive way possible in terms of all the kind of incendiary atheist displays that have been the subject of some of these censorship cases. It is so unbelievably inoffensive. It is just the founding fathers gazing at the Bill of Rights in a manger. It’s cute.
Rebecca Markert:
Right? And that we have an elected official in a pretty significant government office in the United States saying that it was indecent. The Bill of Rights is indecent and lacking in public morality was just unbelievable to me. The other one, if you want to discuss it, Liz, was a case against a Justice of the Peace Wayne Mack.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah. So this was a lawsuit against basically a sitting judge in Texas who had a really remarkable practice of opening each of his court sessions with a chaplain led prayer. And if you’ve ever been in open court you know that it is a very coercive environment where the judge is literally the king on high and everybody is there to literally be judged by him. At the time we sued in 2019, and this is also a illustration of the whiplash that has occurred in the law in the past five years. At the time that we sued, this was a really strong case in our view, and also just a really uncommon practice. There is no history and tradition of courtroom prayer in this country. It is not a widespread practice because it’s an obviously coercive environment, and it also gives a stain of partiality on the proceedings, which are courtroom proceedings are supposed to be scrupulously impartial in terms of the identity, the religion, and any other characteristics of the litigants in a courtroom. But we litigated several iterations of this case and have recently in the past year, again, this is in the Fifth Circuit, gotten some unfavorable outcomes. And so kind of like the case Alison was talking about earlier, we’re trying to be strategic about whether or not and what we proceed further with in the Fifth Circuit.
Alison Gill:
Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s move on and talk about what’s been happening this year in the legislature. There’s a few different bills we want to talk about. First, we should give just an overview of the Texas legislature. It’s kind of fascinating. So Texas is one of the few states, I think there are like five states that only have their legislature open every other year. So only every odd year is the legislature open. So this is 2023. So the legislature was open this year. It’s a short legislative session. I think it’s 140 days, so just over four months. It’s one of the busiest legislatures in the country this year. They considered over 12,000 bills, 12,000 bills in just over four months every other year. It’s kind of a madhouse how this works in Texas. And we track, just to give you an idea, over 88 bills in Texas this year, and the vast majority were negative.
So all the, I don’t know, I don’t know how to frame this, all the grievance issues that build up in America over the last two years. The dam bursts and every single Texas lawmaker that wants to bring another bill against stopping abortion again or more or attacking trans kids even better, or trying to have Bibles in every home, not just every school. It just goes one step beyond what you consider every time, more and more. And so we’re going to talk about some of the worst bills, and some of the ones unfortunately did pass into law this year. Texas has the ability to do what are called special sessions. So they can call a special session after that 140 days ends for a particular purpose. We’re hearing they’re going to do one around school vouchers so they can more destroy public schools. But during that special session on school vouchers, they could also bring up and discuss other quasi relevant issues, maybe inserting Ten Commandments into schools, for example, because that also deals with schools. So anyway, that’s something that we have to watch for. So although the Texas regular session is ended this year, there’s definitely the possibility of one or more special sessions still to come.
Liz Cavell:
Can I just interject Alison and ask, so if they held their regular session this year, does that mean they have no legislative sessions next year at all?
Alison Gill:
That is correct. There’s nothing scheduled. It doesn’t mean they can’t have a special one. Got it. But there’s nothing scheduled. I mean, that way they can still respond to emergencies because emergencies do arise, but they’re too busy legislating about, I don’t know, CRT and prayer in schools and everything else. There’s a Republican majority, and of course it’s a Republican governor, but it’s not like a supermajority like we see in some states. So they don’t have complete control over the legislature. The Democrats do have some power in Texas. It’s not all Republican. In some states there’s, just a handful of Democrats. So it’s a little bit different than that. And that’s because Texas is a very large population and it’s very divided politically. Let’s talk about some of the bills. I think I would like to start with the school prayer bills.
So it’s really interesting. This is one of the first ones that caught my eye this year. There was a bill, I think it was HB 4949, and there’s actually a couple bills that use this sort of formulation in Texas we saw this year. But they basically want to establish a period of prayer and reading of the Bible and other religious texts during each school day. And the way they try to get around, the obvious unconstitutional infirmities with that are that they basically say a person has to sign a waiver in order to participate. So the goal was to basically ask people if they would sign a waiver in order to participate in these school Bible readings, basically in school prayer sessions in schools. There’s a number of different flaws with that whole dynamic. And I should say this is a number of bills. It’s SB19, SB 1396, HB 4949.
So there’s several different bills together. I think the biggest problems with this are it’s coercive, right? If you’re saying that everyone is going to be participating in this, and if you don’t, you’re going to be excluded unless you sign this waiver, you can’t participate. That in itself is inherently coercive, but also you can’t waive your basic constitutional rights. We don’t allow that. You can’t actually waive your first amendment rights, so it doesn’t actually make sense legally as well. And I think the third point, and the most important one is that this waiver is being sent to parents and not children where children have constitutional rights too. So if a parent signs off, then a child could still be coerced into this religiously coercive Bible prayer environment and they have no say against it. And I guess a counter argument could be, well, parents can direct the religious upbringing of their children. That is a true thing, but they don’t have the right to commandeer the state’s apparatus to force those religious rights on children. And that’s what we basically would see in this sort of system.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah, this is a wild one. I don’t recall ever seeing a scheme for waiver of constitutional protections like this.
Alison Gill:
Actually, this is the version that almost passed. It actually was way worse when it was introduced. So are you both familiar with John Mitchell? No. Jonathan Mitchell, he’s the guy who wrote SB 8, the anti-abortion bill, a very convoluted system that sets up a stacked deck where anybody in Texas, even if they don’t have standing, can sue somebody who they suspect might have an illegal abortion. And the goal was to basically, there was to insulate it from litigation to make it so there’s no one person that could be sued to stop the bill and to make it so that it’s crushing liability for places that provide abortion, even without passing a law that stops abortion. So it’s this trifecta of harm without being able to be addressed to the court. So elluding judicial review and the Supreme Court, let that stand up. Well, I don’t have direct evidence of this, but I believe Jonathan Mitchell, if he was behind this, I think it would make sense because what it does is it sets up all these protections to prevent this sort of prayer bill from being challenged in courts.
So this was not in the bill that eventually moved forward. It was eventually cut out of the Senate version, but specifically it has any person, including attorneys who challenge the law, are jointly and severally liable for any attorney’s fees for its defense, basically. So if you bring a challenge to this law, you are an ordinary attorney who brings a challenge, you are liable for the cost of the other side. For this purpose, dismissing any claim is considered winning. So unless you win on any claim that you bring, if you bring four claims against it, if you either lose on one, you’re liable for costs, right? Even if you win at the district court level and later lose at the circuit court level, then you’re liable, right? So winning at the circuit district court level is no defense. It purports to extend sovereign immunity to all officials that make decisions under the bill.
So it tries to provide sovereign immunity wherever possible. That’s a complex concept we don’t really need to get into, but it just creates a bunch of legal obstacles for bringing litigation here. It prohibits any state court from exercising jurisdiction to declare the law invalid or issue declaratory judgment regarding this bill. So state courts may not look at this at all or declare it invalid and says that any state court that does so anyway, and awards damages must be ignored by any other political branches and cannot be enforced. So even if the court says, well, this is not constitutional, you cannot bar judicial review, and you get damages, and they send that to the treasury, the treasurer’s like, I can’t pay this. I’m sorry, because I’m required to ignore your decision. So think about all those layers.
Liz Cavell:
What an unbelievable overreach of authority by the legislature. If you’re sitting here listening, wondering, what the hell does all that mean? Basically, it’s making it so that it is absolutely impossible for anyone to sue, challenging the law that was being proposed and then making it impossible even if they somehow get through all those defenses and get to sue making it impossible to win, then even if they win, making it impossible for them to collect damages that they might have been awarded. Doing that is literally just usurping the power of other independent parts of the government that the legislature has no right to do.
Alison Gill:
It’s hacking away at someone’s constitutional rights. It’s trying to, whatever way possible, cut out their constitutional rights to be free of religious coercion. Right?
Liz Cavell:
Whoa.
Rebecca Markert:
So this just brings me back to Liz, what you’ve always said on this podcast, which is it’s worse than you know, because I think a lot of people understood how expansive and harmful SB 8 was, and now to see it in another context, it isn’t just the abortion issue that they’re working on. They’re trying to shut the courthouse doors for all civil rights issues, really.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah, and they’re just saying, oh, well, we’re the legislature, so let’s just put it in the bill that a court can’t exercise jurisdiction over this, and let’s just put it in the bill that everyone has immunity and can’t be sued over this. I mean, it’s just crazy.
Alison Gill:
Yeah. Well, that’s the prayer bill, and that did not move forward. I mean, I think there was a hearing, and at the hearing actually, we submitted testimony and were called out directly by the sponsor.
Liz Cavell:
Oh, nice.
Alison Gill:
Yeah. The sponsor, Mays Middleton said, of the bill on Twitter, based on our testimony, the American atheist hates my bill putting prayer back in public schools, SB 19 undoes decades of damage they have done in their lawsuits to take away religious liberties in schools. So apparently religious liberty means coercing children to participate in prayer and Bible readings against their will
Liz Cavell:
And damage done in their lawsuits, lawsuits that are upholding the constitutional rights of students. We didn’t do the damage with our lawsuits. Our lawsuits enforced constitutional laws that existed.
Alison Gill:
Exactly. Exactly.
Liz Cavell:
But that’s a great shout out. I love that for you.
Alison Gill:
Yeah, no, it’s pretty great. This did not move forward, but it doesn’t mean a version of it, even the watered down version without all the crazy jurisdiction changing issues that is not incorporated still might move forward in a special session. So it’s definitely a possibility. But the next one I wanted to highlight was the, let’s see. SB 17 was the right for public school employees to engage in religious speech or prayer, war on duty, and these are often called Coach Kennedy bills nowadays after the Kennedy v. Bremerton case, which I know we’ve discussed multiple times on this podcast, but the idea is they’re sort of, now this goes way beyond that, but we hear lawmakers say, oh, well, we’re just taking what the Supreme Court said and putting it into law. Not true, not true. It goes much further. Let’s see.
The sponsor, Tan Parker called the bill an extension of the Kennedy decision that would codify the decision, described the bill as allowing all school employees to pray as they see fit in the middle of the workday. That’s fine. The Kennedy decision talked about a private personal prayer. There’s nothing in this bill that limits prayer in that way. Any sort of restriction on religious activities would have to meet this very, very difficult burden. And I think it’d be very challenging for a school to say, even if the person did it in the middle of class or sort of did a prayer with students at the beginning of class, would have difficulty sort of restraining them. So it goes far beyond what the sponsor has said.
Liz Cavell:
Well, it’s a perfect example of the harm that was caused by the Kennedy decision, and whether the confusion over what Kennedy said is willful or just idiotic. It could be that these bill sponsors didn’t read the book. They just looked at the pictures. And so they think that Kennedy said, you can pray as you see fit at work or on the field, but really it upheld private personal prayer that didn’t involve students, but here we are, right? The Texas legislature feels emboldened to propose this law, and it didn’t pass this time, but I mean, there’s no sense of restraint or limiting prayer by employees to private off duty or limiting it to times when students aren’t involved or even limiting it to prayer that is not with students. I mean, it’s completely expansive. And of course, that’s what legislators are emboldened to do after Kennedy, because Kennedy was a total exercise in gaslighting and pretending that what Kennedy was doing was something other than what Kennedy was doing.
Alison Gill:
So just specifically the bill says, the right of an employee of a school district or an open enrollment charter school to engage in religious speech or prayer law on duty may not be infringed. And then it says, unless infringement is necessary to further a compelling state interest and is the least restrictive means, so that’s called a strict scrutiny test and basically says they have a right to engage in religious speech or prayer on duty, not off duty like the Kennedy decision actually, right? They literally said, it says downtime. It’s private, it’s personal. It doesn’t say anything about that in this language, does it?
Liz Cavell:
Right. And the Kennedy decision completely leaves out any concerns regarding the Establishment Clause obligations of the public school districts that employ these people that are going to be exercising their rights under bills like this I mean…
Alison Gill:
Or the children, right?
Liz Cavell:
Of course. Oh, yeah, no, but who cares about them? They’re not anything. You have this whole, “the rights of the school employee may not be infringed,” right? That’s free exercise, a specific free exercise being put into a bill and then put on steroids. But of course, we’re just completely ignoring the fact that there are serious countervailing constitutional concerns on the other side of the behavior of these people that, of course, the legislature doesn’t care about. And the Supreme Court signaled it is not important.
Rebecca Markert:
But I think this is deliberate. I don’t think that they’re misreading the decision. I think they are taking the decision pretty much the way Gorsuch did, where they are deliberately misreading the facts here. They’re just misreading the law to get the outcome that they want. And this is all very intentional. They want to push the law even further. And when these bills passed the Senate, when SB 19 and SB 17 passed the Senate during the regular session, the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick issued a statement which basically shows us the hand that they’re playing here. He wrote, "I believe that you cannot change the culture of the country until you change the culture of mankind. Bringing the Ten Commandments in prayer back into our public schools will enable our students to become better Texans." That’s their end game. So I don’t think they were misreading it.
Liz Cavell:
No, you’re totally right. They’re like, they’re seeing the power that’s been consolidated at the Supreme Court for this movement, and they’re saying it’s go time.
Rebecca Markert:
They see this as a green light.
Alison Gill:
If this passed and it was any other state, what we would do is probably challenge it in the district there. And then if we lose the challenge in the Circuit Court, then I’m just sort of playing this out for what it looks like in Texas. Now, if we end up in a place like the Northern District of Texas where they have these very conservative hands like hand picked judges, then we’re going to get this crazy off the wall decision just off the bat, and then even heading to the Fifth Circuit, it could just get worse. And that just leaves you, I mean, the Supreme Court takes very few cases and they could just let it hang. They don’t have to do anything, and we could end up with a very poor decision that’s now controlling for a significant part of the country. So if they pass laws like this, the hands of, it’s not just our organizations like church state focused organizations, it also happens in repro issues and LGBTQ issues.
It impacts so many different areas that are just sort of stymied by actually enforcing people’s constitutional rights because of the judicial setup. This is one of the reasons I’ve been stressing court reform. And not only do we need to reform the Supreme Court, we also need to reform the lower courts. So here we can’t have these single judge districts. It really just results in forum shopping. We need to set up avenues to sort of deal with these situations. Otherwise, you end up with this. It’s not fair for anyone to be able to, for a group of litigants to be able to pick exactly what judge you’ll get so they can drive their own outcome that impacts the entire country.
Liz Cavell:
And as you were winding that up, I’m like, time to throw it to our official podcast sponsor, court reform. We’ve reached that point in the episode. And it’s true because, right, because what we’re talking about here is just way out of bounds action by a state legislature that’s just totally beyond what the law allows infringing on people’s rights and freedom of conscience, including schoolchildren, and what’s supposed to be our systems bulwark against these types of incursions on our individual rights that are in the Bill of Rights and on minority rights are the courts, especially the federal courts. And the reason why we see these more and more extreme bills being proposed and making gains through the State House is because they know that those bulwarks are not sturdy, right? They know that they’re looking at one judge in a district who is some First Liberty lacky or some other Trump appointee who is a Christian nationalist, and then the Fifth Circuit. So there’s not a lot of pushback. And again, the checks and balances that are supposed to be provided by a strong federal judiciary just does not exist.
Alison Gill:
But wait, it gets worse. I’m saving the worst bills for last. To be fair, none of these have passed. So just to be clear, I mean, they could pass in the special sessions, but so far, none of these have passed. So there’s two more I want to talk about. One is Ten Commandments. There was a bill to basically say that a public elementary or secondary school shall display in a conspicuous place in each classroom (each classroom!) of the school, a durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments. Now, there is a Supreme Court decision called Stone v. Graham, 1980. That was a Kentucky state law that required the posting of Ten Commandments in each classroom. They struck it down. That was 1980, that was 40 years ago. And here we are in a situation where they’re trying to pass almost exactly the same law so they can get it up before the Supreme Court and get a different ruling that benefits the Christian nationalist side.
Liz Cavell:
And this is, again, this is a bill that says public, elementary and/or secondary schools. So all public schools shall display conspicuously in each classroom, the Ten Commandments. I mean, think about that. Think about what that means. If that passes, that means all of a sudden that every single room in every single public school must display. That means in Austin and in Plano, Texas, everywhere, Ten Commandments on the walls of our public schools for all the kids to see every single room that they go into. And of course, that was held to violate the Establishment Clause in 1980, as it clearly does. And here we are, and this bill has a lot of support. It hasn’t passed yet, but there has been a ton of energy spent debating and trying to push this bill forward.
Rebecca Markert:
Not only that, I mean, we don’t care which version of the Ten Commandments is posted. We think any version is unconstitutional to be posted in a public school. But this bill included the text of the Ten Commandments that must be displayed, and it was notably the version typically used by Protestants rather than Catholics. It was specifically from the King James version of the Bible. This bill also said that the poster of the Ten Commandments can’t contain any additional content beyond the Commandments themselves. So again, like we’ve said earlier, it is pushing the envelope. They’re trying to not only reverse the 1980 Supreme Court case, but the other litigation that has come up around the Ten Commandments that have found it to be unconstitutional when it’s there by itself. But constitutional, if it is accompanied by other documents or monuments like it was in the Van Orden case out of Texas,
Alison Gill:
It sort of compromised where he found one situation unconstitutional, where the monument was by itself and another situation, constitutional, where the monument was among several other types of monuments showing, contextualizing it within different frameworks of law. So trying to sort of overturn that sort of, I guess, compromise. I don’t think any of us would support it. Anyway, the compromise, we don’t think it’s appropriate, but still, that’s not good enough. It has to be their way or just their way. It just has to be their way.
Liz Cavell:
They’re pushing the most extreme version of this theocratic hellscape. But I want to point out, even the compromise conflicting Supreme Court opinions about Ten Commandments displays and when they’re legal on public property did not involve or specifically extend to a public school classroom, elementary school classroom. These were monuments at state capitals or in public buildings, not elementary school classrooms. And this envisions a solitary Ten Commandments that must be displayed in every public school classroom, which is a very different beast, and just goes way beyond, not just Stone versus Graham, but any of the Establishment Clause case law that existed in the public school context.
Alison Gill:
Yeah, yeah. There’s been a lot of states that have passed laws in recent years about having, In God We Trust posters in every classroom. And that’s more difficult to challenge because it’s seen as a civic religion issue, and it’s seen as something that is not inherently religious. So I think we disagree with that, but it’s America’s motto, voted by Congress, so it has some approval by the nation. So therefore, that’s harder to challenge. We’re talking about the Ten Commandments. It’s purely a religious text. Now, we see a lot of arguments and say, well, this is the basis of Western law. That’s a stupid argument. It’s not the basis of western law, any or American law in any reasonable way. It’s just not, there’s very little overlap. And the overlap is things like that shall not murder. Of course every country throughout the world has that law that’s not uniquely American or Christian. That annoys me so much.
Liz Cavell:
So much because a third of the entire text is directly related to belief in God. Worshiping idols has nothing to do with civic law. So I mean, it’s all crap. But I mean, here we are still talking about this bill because even though it expired in the regular session, I don’t think any of our organizations view it as completely dead, because it could be brought back in any special session, and it has fervent backing by its sponsors.
Alison Gill:
Yeah.
Rebecca Markert:
Well, let’s remember. They’re trying to make these kids better Texans, and we know that the only way to do that is for them to become religious and apparently specifically Protestant.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah, I mean, just trying to imagine this going into law and truly having it be like every single school principal in every single school district having to be like, okay, I guess we have to put these up in every single classroom. And what that leads to. I mean, in all seriousness, like Alison just pointed out, this is not In God We Trust, not that that’s not religious or inoffensive, because it’s the motto. This is the Ten Commandments. I mean, you’re going to have these huge, you have these massive population centers, urban districts that are so diverse. I mean, yes, it’s Texas, but this is going to, I just think, cause massive chaos and controversy and just be such an affront to so many people’s rights if it ever passes.
Alison Gill:
I do have to look at this. I’m not sure there’s any penalty for failing to put it up, which I guess is an interesting question. What happens in these school districts if no one puts it up and will they add penalties for failing to do so? But anyway, that’s a question for another day, I guess. Yeah. But we’re going to be watching this closely in the next special session.
The last bill I wanted to highlight is the one that actually did pass, and I think honestly it’s the worst of all of them, which is SB 763, the chaplain bill. So what this bill does is it allows school districts to hire or allow volunteer chaplains in schools, in place of school counselors. So I’ll repeat that. They get to replace school counselors with school chaplains. Now you might think, okay, well, chaplains are well-defined. No, they’re not.
They’re not well-defined at all. Basically, whoever says they’re a chaplain or has gone through a chaplain process of some sort, even if you’ve got a certificate on the internet, could be a chaplain. There’s some safety protections for people that are employed, but not for volunteers. So these people could just be sort of off the street. And of course, school counselors have to go through a lot of training, and they provide a lot of services to young people that chaplains are not qualified. I mean, necessarily an occasional chaplain might be qualified as school counselor, but that’s not the sort of role that they would be appropriate to play in schools. And putting aside all that, it’s going to give chaplains free reign to go into schools and do what they would proselytize or do anything else that they think is appropriate for themselves. There’s no guidelines on the bill that say that chaplains can’t proselytize that they have to serve all students, that they can’t promote their religious beliefs, that they can’t distribute materials, that the school district can’t just choose to bring in only chaplains of one religion, or that they can’t choose to exclude chaplains of other religions.
It’s, there’s so many problems with this bill. It’s very hard to even describe it in a way that makes it seem rational. And this bill was really pushed by school evangelism groups, basically vendors, people that provide school chaplains, and it’s their goal to evangelize children through school chaplaincy that’s being pushed by them. They wrote the bill when the restrictions, I mean, reasonable safeguards were proposed. They shot them down.
Liz Cavell:
And keep in mind as we’re talking about this bill, SB 763, unlike the other laws that we have been discussing, this one has passed both houses. It is now a law, or it becomes law this September, right?
Alison Gill:
Yes.
Liz Cavell:
So this is something that is now the law of the land in Texas and applies to all public schools in the state of Texas. This is really, really alarming. Let’s just talk a little bit about, for our listeners, what is a chaplain when we say this bill allows chaplains to be employed or to volunteer for public schools. What is a chaplain and what do we mean by chaplain? And Allison’s getting at the point that the bill itself doesn’t define what a chaplain should be for the purpose of being hired or allowed into a public school, but just in general, if that word has no meaning to you, a chaplain is a religious figure that provides pastoral care. There’s no secular component to being a chaplain. So I know that sometimes backers of these laws or of chaplains in schools like to create confusion around what chaplains do or what they’re qualified to do, but they’re just usually clergy who have some sort of position to provide spiritual counseling or spiritual care to somebody who is in some sort of usually kind of restrictive environment where they don’t have access to religious services like they’re in the military or they’re in prison or something like that.
Alison Gill:
I think that last part is very important. I mean, we hear arguments like, well, why is it okay to have chaplains in the military or in prisons, but not in schools? That’s where children are. Well, because if you are in the military, you might not be able to, I mean, the constitution guarantees everybody religious freedom, and if you’re in the military, you still have those guarantees, and the military has to do their best to provide that, and that’s why they have the chaplain system. Sometimes there’s overreach, and we can call out problems with it, but that’s why it exists, to make sure everybody has access to fulfill their religious beliefs because they might be shipped overseas or they might not have the ability to follow their religious beliefs. They don’t have flexibility about where they live or what they can do. The military life can be very regimented. And the same with prisons. They don’t have flexibility to just leave and go to a church or whatever they need to do to meet their religious beliefs. So the state has to provide some outlets for religious free exercise. Schools are not the same thing. Children are not confined in schools. They’re only there for a certain number of hours per day. Their family can definitely take them to their favorite indoctrination center. They can do whatever they want. There’s no equivalence whatsoever.
Liz Cavell:
I mean, keep in mind all of these contexts that Alison’s explaining, we’re talking about when is it appropriate or legal for government to supply or employ or even just provide whether there’s funding or not funding chaplains, pastoral care for citizens through the machinery of government. And that only makes sense where, as Alison says, there’s some sort of restriction on your ability to exercise your religion that is a result of the governmental institution that is in question. In other words, you’re incarcerated, your movements are restricted, you’re overseas due to your position in the government. So the government can alleviate a religious burden that you’re experiencing by giving access to chaplains. There’s literally no such thing going on in a public school. We’re not talking about any such situation. Of course, public school students that, like anyone else of us walking around in life, have unfettered access to churches, synagogues, imams, and all the things that you need to practice your religion in the community. There’s absolutely no reason to provide chaplains. But what they’re doing in Texas is trying to just totally erase the justification that Alison and I are describing right now and just say, yeah, no, chaplains are just another thing that public schools can substitute for school counseling or psychological services or counseling services. Chaplains are just as good, if not better than secular school counselors for filling this role in public schools. It’s really, really alarming.
Alison Gill:
Now, in the military, chaplains do provide some mental health services, but there’s also qualifications and limitations on them. They have to be selected by certain qualifying entities. It’s actually challenging to become a chaplain in the military. There’s processes that they have to go through and they have to get approval from some denomination in order to be able to become a chaplain. Those sorts of things were proposed in this bill and shot down. So there’s no limitations on who can be a chaplain if people are familiar with that, how you can sometimes in some states perform marriages by signing up on the internet and getting a certificate to perform marriages. You could do the same thing for being a chaplain.
So it’s kind of amazing. There’s just no limitations about who is qualified under this law, and there’s also no restrictions on their activities. Like in the military, for example, chaplains have to provide services to everybody. They can’t refuse to serve people. That’s the entire point. And they might refer you to a different chaplain that better meets your faith or other services if you’re non-religious, for example. But they can’t just refuse to serve you. Here there’s no limitations whatsoever on what chaplains can do. So it’s really pretty remarkable.
Liz Cavell:
It is. And just pressing further Alison on some of the amendments that were proposed and failed regarding qualifications, not only fewer qualifications than we see in the context of military chaplains, but also apparently prison chaplains are subject to more rigorous qualifying criteria than chaplains under this bill to enter our public schools. So that’s really stark. And again, like Alison says, there’s nothing in the law that explains or restricts what chaplains can or should or are allowed to do in their roles as employees and or volunteers for public school districts. Of course, as has become evident, and we’ll talk about in a minute, the whole purpose and project of backers and lobbyists for this bill is evangelism, right? They want chaplains in schools because schools are a mission field, but there’s nothing in the law that restricts proselytizing or restricts the ways in which these unregulated adults will interact with public school kids during the school day.
Alison Gill:
I mean, if you combine this with Kennedy, these people are unrestricted. They don’t have official duties. If they could just sit in the hallway and preach or talk about how evil LBGT students are or whatever the heck they want, I mean, there’s–
Liz Cavell:
Right, presumably nothing in the bill would suggest otherwise.
Rebecca Markert:
Well, that’s really alarming as a parent of young children that there are no qualifications for who these people are. They only need to pass a background check and only need to not be on the sex offender registry. And I get, as also a parent with young school children that, I mean, if I was to volunteer in the classroom, I would only have to pass a background check too, but they are bringing these people in to provide services that include mental health services, that include programs that talk to children about suicide prevention and things like that. And to not have somebody licensed or trained in that type of work, working directly with my kids, especially if I had a trans kid or somebody who is struggling, struggling with mental health issues. I would want somebody who’s trained and licensed to be able to do that and take care of my child. I do not want to have somebody who just passed a background check and isn’t part of the sex offender registry talking to my child about these serious issues. It should be a red flag to all parents in the state of Texas, and apparently was not since it did pass and is going into effect in September.
Alison Gill:
Well, let’s speak about going into effect means, which is basically that every single school district in Texas, so there’s like 1,100 school districts in Texas, have to take a vote between September 1st and March to decide whether they will allow chaplains in their schools and in what context. So that’s a lot of local activity, and we’re working on the ground with a coalition of different groups, including Texas Freedom Network and the ACLU of Texas, and Americans United and also Interfaith Alliance and several others to try to provide materials and educate folks about what’s happening and why and what they can do to sort of stand up for their children. We’re encouraging people to make sure that their school boards do not adopt this policy, but some school boards are going to adopt the policy. And even then, I think it’s really, really critical that they put in all the guidelines that Rebecca was just talking about, that we make sure that they try to adhere to constitutional requirements. Although frankly, I don’t think it’s really possible. I mean, the entire reason you’re bringing a chaplain to school is to proselytize because there’s no legitimate reason for them to be there as a chaplain. Is there?
Liz Cavell:
I mean, no, there’s this fiction that the backers and lobbyists for the bill are lying through their teeth in testifying that, no, this is not for proselytizing. And of course, these chaplains are not there to try and convert kids. They’re just there to provide counseling, and they’re on par with secular counseling services. But of course, we know that that’s not true because otherwise, what would be the harm of restricting access to chaplains who are undertaking that type of training or willing to be certified or have educator backgrounds or all of these things? I mean, the whole point is to give unfettered access to clergy to public school students, because you think that having religious leaders in public schools is good. Getting religion back in the public schools is a worthy goal. And the whole point is to make it easy and quick and unrestricted for public schools to put these people on their staff.
I mean, we’re not just talking about volunteers like me, or you would go volunteer in the classroom and pass a background check. These are people that could be on staff, they can be recruited to teach, even though they have to be educator certified. It’s not like you’re going to have to opt your students in to see these people. They’re going to have unfettered access to all students, just like any other staff member. And there’s no limits on what they can or can’t do in terms of interacting with students. So of course, it’s the tool of evangelism
Alison Gill:
Along those lines. There’s no duty to warn parents ahead of time, no duty to give them an ability to opt out or opt their students out. Chaplains are not required to serve all students. They might just say, well, we only offer college help for Christians. Are you going to be a Christian? I mean, who knows? Or we…
Liz Cavell:
Don’t counsel gay and trans students. No, or we do, or we
Alison Gill:
Do counsel them, but it’s all conversion therapy, right?
Liz Cavell:
Exactly. Yeah. Come get counsel. You’re striking on something big, which is there’s so much in terms of huge red flags and blaring sirens in terms of the harm that is going to be caused. But the flip side of that is the actual care and services that is going to be foregone that students are going to not be getting because they are in districts where board members or superintendents think that religion is the answer.
Alison Gill:
That’s one of the selling points of this was that there was a lack of school counselors in the states. They weren’t meeting their needs. So they’re like, I mean, that’s part of the selling point, right? Let’s, oh–
Liz Cavell:
I know, let’s let random strangers do it.
Alison Gill:
Yeah, exactly. But I mean, the reason for that, of course, is the way that they treat educators in Texas, A, and B, the way they’ve underfunded the school districts there, and they’ve shifted to things like vouchers. And actually, it’s interesting. These chaplains are eligible for funding, earmarked for mental health professionals, so they can actually, the funding that was meant to go for mental health professionals can instead be provided to these chaplains. So just another thumb in the eye there.
Liz Cavell:
And as usual, the biggest losers are public school students. Awesome. Well, I have a question that’s just sort of a punctilious how the law now operates. So school boards across the state have six months from the time the bill goes into effect, which is September 1st, which is now, to vote on whether or not or whether to employ or accept chaplains into their schools. Is it your understanding that it has to happen like every school board, whether they’re going to employ chaplains or not, has to take some sort of proactive vote on this within six months? Or is it such that districts can just do nothing and keep on going?
Alison Gill:
It’s my understanding that they’re required to, it’s not clear that there is a penalty if they fail to do anything, but they are technically required to have a vote within that period. I think we’re going to see a lot of quiet no votes that just pass under the radar in a lot of places. And we will see places where the school board has been taken over by Christian nationalists who are eager to put forth the most ridiculous policy possible vocally. And so we’ll see what happens. It’s one of the reasons we’re working as part of this coalition to spread awareness about this and create a toolkit that will be available to advocates. So we’re definitely going to put some links in the show notes about this if folks live in Texas and want to engage. I would also say that I know that FFRF, you folks and AU, Americans United, along with the ACLU, I think sent a letter to all school districts in Texas. Is that right?
Rebecca Markert:
That’s right. So FFRF, Americans United, and the National ACLU Religion Project and the ACLU of Texas sent a letter to all Texas school districts in late June outlining all of the constitutional issues with this new chaplain’s law. And we did promise to take action that is necessary and appropriate to protect the rights of Texas children and their parents. But ultimately, the letter was to urge these school districts to reject chaplain policy in their school or bringing on chaplains into their schools. So like Alison said, we just wait and see who is going to accept them and who’s going to reject them.
Alison Gill:
Do you want to talk about some of the legal impediments to bringing a suit against this? Why don’t you just sue ahead of time and get the law struck down?
Liz Cavell:
Yeah, that’s actually a great question because this is one, again, that has already been passed. It’s the law of the land in the state of Texas. Many of us wish that we could just sue right away challenging the law. And what are the impediments to that?
Alison Gill:
Well, it’s the difference between an as applied versus a facial challenge and what’s possible in this context. Right?
Rebecca Markert:
Well, and we don’t know if they’re going to employ chaplains at all, they could reject it. And if all the schools, theoretically, if all of the school districts in Texas decide not to do it, then there’s no case, right? They don’t have chaplains in their schools. So we have to see what the school districts are going to do first before we can take this case.
Liz Cavell:
And I mean, one of the many ways that the courts have slowly ground down the Establishment Clause to a nub is by further and further restricting who has standing and when to challenge a law or a government action under the Establishment Clause. Out of that comes a lot of these tricky situations where it’s pretty hard to find a plaintiff who can demonstrate harm even when a clearly unconstitutional bill or government action, like a presidential proclamation or something like that has been taken that clearly violates the Establishment Clause. Courts won’t hear our cases unless we have a plaintiff and we can demonstrate this really onerous showing of standing. And so that’s going to happen when one of these school districts actually votes to employ or have volunteer chaplains in their schools. And we have a parent or a student or many parents and students in that district who are going to be harmed and who we can sue on their behalf.
Alison Gill:
It really comes down to whether we’re doing a facial challenge against the law or an as-applied challenge against the law. So if it’s a facial challenge, you’re challenging the law itself and saying it’s unconstitutional, where there can be no applications of the law that are constitutional. And you can conceive of a situation where a school district puts all the right policies in place, brings in somebody says, okay, you’re just here as a volunteer and you run the baking event, so you help us get money so that we can send the team to finals or whatever, you know what I mean? Something totally anodyne and not at all problematic legally. And then that’s it. And then they brought in a chaplain and that could happen. And so therefore it becomes hard to say that this is facially avowed in every circumstance. So instead we’re resulting in having to do as applied challenges. So basically we’re waiting for a school district to bring them in and do something bad so that we can attack that school district. So it’s much more challenging, especially when, as I mentioned, there are 1,100 school districts in Texas, and just because we catch one school district doing something bad doesn’t mean that has any impact on any of the others. So it’s much more difficult to stop.
Liz Cavell:
And if you’re thinking that sounds really stupid because there’s nothing in the face of the law that would lead a school district to apply this in a way that is not constitutionally problematic. I mean, you’re absolutely right. Like we said, there’s no safeguards in the law. There’s no reason to think that this is not going to result in school districts taking action that would violate as applied the rights of students and parents. But it is sort of just this finicky way that we have to deal with challenging laws because again, there is conceivably a way that this goes into effect and doesn’t specifically violate the rights of any individual Texans. Fat chance.
Alison Gill:
Well, I think you’ve really emphasized the need for us to fight back against these bills. And I guess I want to mention that we have action orgs at American Atheists. I know FFRF has action alert systems. We encourage you to sign up because Texas is where we’re going to see a lot of these unique bills. They don’t end in Texas, right? We’re going to see them all across the country next year as well. And we really need help pushing back against them. We make it very easy. We tell you where the attention needs to be focused on lawmakers, provide all the language, all that sort of thing, but they really do need to hear from constituents in order to know that people care about these issues and they have to push back and do their best to fight against Christian nationalism.
Liz Cavell:
That’s right. And if you’re listening and you live in Texas, especially if you are a parent of someone in a public school district and you’re listening in Texas and you’re wondering, oh my gosh, my school board is going to be voting on this and who knows what’s happening, if this affects you or any of these issues come to your local school district and you’re unhappy or you’re affected or you want to push back, you can always reach out to one of our organizations and let us know, because like action alerts and pushing back against legislation when it comes to suing or taking any type of action to stop these school boards from doing these unconstitutional things, we need Texans, we need locals, people who are affected in the school district. So reach out to us
Alison Gill:
And also see the toolkit in the show notes, because that’ll have a lot of information, which will be really helpful.
Rebecca Markert:
There’s going to be a lot of show note information in this episode.
Liz Cavell:
Yes. Hopefully we have some people listening in Texas, because that’s always really helpful is people on the ground who can be sort of the boots on the ground for the national organizations that are working against this stuff.
Alison Gill:
So are we done messing with Texas?
Liz Cavell:
Never.
Rebecca Markert:
No. But at least for this podcast episode, yes.
Liz Cavell:
Alright, well stay tuned. Like we said, there’s a special session being convened in Texas, specifically on school vouchers. But of course, lots of ancillary action can happen. That’ll be this fall. First, they have to get to the small matter of impeaching Ken Paxton.
Rebecca Markert:
Their Attorney General.
Liz Cavell:
Good times.
Rebecca Markert:
So that is it for today’s episode. I do want to give a shout out to Alison who was competently discussing these issues while also battling her cats who kept crawling over her computer as we were discussing these issues through the entire episode. It was kind of fun for me to watch, but it didn’t seem to jar you at all. Alison. So kudos to you.
Alison Gill:
I’m used to it. Yeah.
Liz Cavell:
Herding cats all over the place.
Alison Gill:
All over the place.
Rebecca Markert:
So if you don’t already, please be sure to check out our Twitter and Facebook accounts and check out our website online we-dissent.org. We’d also love to hear how you are enjoying the show, so please remember to leave us a review wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And thank you for tuning in. I’m Rebecca Markert.
Alison Gill:
I’m Alison Gill.
Liz Cavell:
And I’m Liz Cavell. Thanks for listening.
Rebecca Markert:
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. Production support comes from Greta Martens and FFRF’s summer legal intern, Maddie Naisbitt, audio engineering provided by Audio for the Arts based in Madison, Wisconsin. Thanks for listening.
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