Alison, Liz, and Rebecca welcome AU Public Policy Counsel Rachael Stryer to review what came out of the state legislative sessions this year. They survey the laws state legislatures passed to force religion into public schools, use religion to discriminate against LGBTQ people, and divert public money to private religious schools.
Show Notes
Legislative trackers
ACLU
See your state ACLU for regional legislative tracking
Action Alerts
Bills and Cases Discussed
Ten Commandments Displays in Schools
Ongoing Lawsuits
Prayer in Schools
Alabama (HB 511): Requiring public schools to allow student-led prayer and requiring the pledge of allegiance
Idaho (HB 623): Requiring a 60 second moment of silence for prayer or meditation at the beginning of the school day
Chaplains
Alabama (HB 8): Permitting school boards to adopt policies allowing volunteer school chaplains into schools
Release Time
Classroom Instruction and Curriculum Policies
Tennessee (SB 1828): Requires public school history curriculums to teach about the positive impact of religion on American history and the influence of Judeo-Christian values
Idaho (S 1336) and Utah (HB 312 and SB 268): Requiring curricula to teach the influence of Christianity in American history
Vouchers
Columbus City School District v. State of Ohio
Healthcare Refusal
Utah (SB 174) and Iowa (HF 571): Gives healthcare providers and religious healthcare institutions the right to refuse to provide services that violate religious beliefs.
Foster Care and Adoption
Indiana (HB 1389): Allows government-funded child placement agencies to use religion as a justification for refusing to work with families, youth in care, and prospective parents. And to allow adoptive or foster parents the right to “raise a child in a manner consistent with [their] sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Elizabeth Rutan-Ram et al. v. Tennessee Department of Children's Services et al (AU)
Anti-Sharia law
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 Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Liz Cavell:
And I'm Liz Cavell with the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Alison Gill:
And I'm Alison Gill with National Women's Law Center.
Rebecca Markert:
And today we are joined by my wonderful colleague, Rachael Stryer, to talk about state legislative sessions, many of which are ending or have already ended for the year. But before we get into that, I want to give a brief introduction to Rachael. She is the Public Policy Council at Americans United. Before joining our team in January of 2025, Rachael was a legal fellow with Organized Power in Numbers where she provided legal support to worker and immigrant led organizing campaigns. She also clerked for Judge Keith Ellison in Texas. She is a graduate from Yale Law School and Stanford University. So welcome to We Dissent, Rachael.
Rachael Stryer:
Thank you so much for having me.
Rebecca Markert:
We are going to discuss the state legislative sessions. This is a show that we do every year where we do a roundup of the bills that we've been tracking over the last year. This recording is going to be dropping in June, so we're halfway through the year. I'd be interested in you telling us a little bit about what the bills are that we were tracking this year. Is it a record year? Are they all bad bills or are any of them good this year?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, absolutely. And just as a little bit of context because I know every organization is different. What we work on is generally, although not entirely bills that touch on religion explicitly. So for example, we would work on a bill that creates a religious exemption for a vaccine mandate, but not necessarily a bill that repeals a vaccine mandate entirely unless the sponsor explicitly cites religion in some way.
And we're increasingly seeing a number of frontal attacks on people's civil rights, especially LGBTQ people that go far beyond religious exemptions that we might have seen a few years ago. And so that's something that we're sort of navigating is where is our role on issues that we might have worked on and now have gone so far past the religion issue. All that said, we tracked over a thousand bills this year. That's pretty typical for us. Last year we had a weird lull, but over the last probably five years or so, it's been over a thousand bills each year.
Of those bills that we tracked, we opposed about half of them and most of the rest are ones that we're watching but not actively opposing. And then a much smaller number are bills that we support in some way and that includes bills like rolling back private school vouchers, extending civil rights protections and affirming access to gender affirming care, et cetera.
Liz Cavell:
These annual roundups are often quite sobering just to see the volume of bills that are being introduced every year to take away rights, to privilege one religion, to strip access to reproductive care. So this is tough.
Alison Gill:
I mean, you talk about a large volume, but the vast majority of bills don't go anywhere. Is that right, Rachael?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, that's right. The vast majority of bills don't go anywhere and get caught up at various points and committee if they even do get a hearing. And so we had a number of bills that we started out the session really worried about and only a very small percentage of them ended up moving and passing, which is always a relief and it's always a bummer to see the ones that do get through.
Rebecca Markert:
Let's talk about that a little bit because there are some states that are still in session, but there are some states that are done. There are some states where they're effectively done even though they haven't officially adjourned. So could you give a brief overview of where we are with the state of legislative sessions this year?
Rachael Stryer:
Absolutely. So we're recording this in beginning of May. I know it's coming out in June. Those states began their legislative sessions in January. Four states didn't hold any regular sessions this year. That's Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Texas. And then every other state had some form of regular session and those sessions vary dramatically in length from 30 days, which I believe is New Mexico to year end legislatures that are ongoing.
And about 23 states of carryover provisions, which means that they have two year cycles, either 25 to 26 or 26 to 27. So we saw some bills that were proposed and didn't move last year that ended up getting movement this year or some bills that were proposed this year that may move next year. About half of states have wrapped up the regular sessions at this point and that includes some of the states that were most active that you'll hear about, which includes Alabama and Tennessee.
And then some of the states that are still going, for example, Oklahoma have wrapped up their committee work. So that means we sort of know what are the bills that are at risk of passing, even if not all of them have passed so far. And then the last piece of sort of a surprise is that we might see some special or extraordinary sessions this summer. So those are generally convened to deal with specific issues like a budget, redistricting, or natural disaster. It's pretty rare that our issues come up in those special sessions so we know where things are going for the rest of the year.
Alison Gill:
It's interesting you mentioned Oklahoma because I know that's a state that has a lot of, let's say, unique legislative procedures. So even if something doesn't go through a committee, sometimes states are more likely to suspend their rules and do odd things that happens at the federal level, right? Especially Oklahoma.
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, one thing you may even see on the floor is gutting a bill and amending it with a totally different bill. So while I said we don't think there will be surprises, there can always be surprises.
Alison Gill:
I've learned some unique terms. I think hog housing is a bill term I learned from Oklahoma.
Rebecca Markert:
What does that mean?
Alison Gill:
I think that's what you might be talking about there, but I'm not 100% sure.
Rachael Stryer:
I have not heard the term, but I believe you.
Rebecca Markert:
Oklahoma is where we also a few years ago saw my favorite bill, which was the on that turned all the wildlife over to God.
Liz Cavell:
Oh yeah, such an important priority.
Rebecca Markert:
We talked about that in a previous episode. Another thing that we talked about in a previous episode was the state of Texas. And so they're not in every year. They have sort of an odd schedule. Did they have legislative session this year?
Rachael Stryer:
No, they were out this year. So we didn't see anything coming from them, although I know Rebecca and many other litigation teams are cleaning up what happened last year and we're certainly focused on the fallout from the voucher program that they passed. So there's certainly lots of work to be done in Texas, even though they did not have a legislative session this year.
Liz Cavell:
And are all four of the states that you mentioned that are not sitting this year on a two year cycle like Texas, like they go every other year?
Rachael Stryer:
I think they might just all be odd year sessions.
Rebecca Markert:
Oh, so Alison put in the chat that hog housing is just what she said it was. "A legislative maneuver where a committee or member strikes everything after the enacting clause of an existing bill and replaces it with an entirely new, often unrelated content. This tactic allows lawmakers to fast track new legislation by utilizing the legislative vehicle of a bill that has already passed through some procedural steps." That sounds like it shouldn't be allowed.
Alison Gill:
Yeah. It's the Wild West in these fate houses. They can pretty much do a lot of things you wouldn't think would be allowed because they can … I mean, they're the arbiters of their rules, right? So they can change them if the majority doesn't like them.
Rebecca Markert:
Hog housing. Wow. That's
Liz Cavell:
Madness.
Rebecca Markert:
That is something new that I learned today.
Well, let's turn to some of the trends that we saw this year. Religion in the public schools is always something that we're tracking is always seems to be a trend as well as reproductive justice and LGBTQ rights. So, tell us what were you seeing this year?
Rachael Stryer:
So we'll start with religion in public schools. That's a bread and butter issue for AU and one of the areas where we see the most action and have seen it the last few years, especially post Kennedy v. Bremerton, which was the 2022 football coach prayer case. As I mentioned before, Tennessee and Alabama were particularly active, although some of the bills we were especially concerned about didn't end up going through.
The first bucket of bills that we've seen a lot of action around is bills designed to put up posters of 10 Commandments in public schools. In the past couple of years, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas passed versions of this bill and we currently have acted lawsuits challenging those bills.
Rebecca Markert:
Americans United and the Freedom From Religion Foundation along with the ACLU, the national office and the state affiliates have filed lawsuits against the 10 Commandments laws in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. All of them are at various stages of litigation, but we did recently receive a pretty disappointing decision from the Fifth Circuit allowing the posters to go up in Louisiana and in Texas. That litigation is still ongoing, however, so we're not going to get into all of the details about it today, but we are fighting these in court and trying to uphold church/state separation in public schools. And
Alison Gill:
Rebecca, that's after a directly relevant Supreme Court case called Stone v. Graham, which the Supreme Court specifically said you can't have these displays in schools. So it's important to flag that for everyone that these are trying to overturn established Supreme Court precedents.
Liz Cavell:
Right. This is a lot like what we've seen in the reproductive space and so many of the other places where Christian nationalists are trying directly overturn Supreme Court case law and this is no different. This is not an open question. There is direct Supreme Court precedent on point, but states like Texas and others that Rachael's about to tell us about from 2026 are just ignoring that in order to try and set up the courts to roll back these rights.
Rebecca Markert:
And these are the bills that are the bad ones that we are trying to stop before they become a law. So Rachael, tell us a little bit about the ones that we saw this year on 10 Commandments.
Rachael Stryer:
So the gates really opened after those first three passed over the past couple years. So this year we saw bills proposing something similar in 14 states and two of those bills ended up passing. The first was in Alabama that was SB 99, which passed a bill requiring 5th through 12th grade history classrooms to post a set version of the 10 commandments. And then they're also requiring an accompanying very long and extensive historical context statement, which I can only imagine will make the posters extremely text heavy and pretty unreasonable for students in the classrooms.
Rebecca Markert:
Those kindergartners will love it.
Rachael Stryer:
Well, not kindergartners. Yeah, it's very long and extensive and it's hard to imagine what they're actually going to look like. I haven't looked up images, but it's just a lot of text. The other bill that passed was in Tennessee and they ended up passing a permissive bill that allows school boards to vote to adopt policies that will allow schools to display these posters in prominent locations in each school building. So a couple things that are different. It's permissive instead of mandatory and it's in a prominent location instead of in every classroom. And that passed after a very long fight between the Senate and the House about whether to pass a permissive or mandatory bill and it hasn't been signed by the governor yet, but it's something we're watching for.
I'll say about both of these that there's a couple things that are certainly reacting to the litigation and the things that they've seen as major vulnerabilities.
The first is really emphasizing the fact that this is some sort of historical document that informed the US Constitution and grouping it with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, even though it's like many legislators have pointed out the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written in the United States and the 10 Commandments, regardless of whether it did or did not inform is an external document like many others that served as one of many source documents. But we saw just a lot of emphasis on that that both made it into the bill text and also by sponsors to really try to emphasize that in debate, although other legislators sort of dropped the ball on that and talked about bringing back the second coming and bringing back paired to schools and all of that so not everybody got the memo. And then the other thing that we really saw was I think a real emphasis to try to avoid some of the stories that have come up in litigation about like really young kids going back to their parents and asking their parents what adultery is and things like that. And so you saw–
Rebecca Markert:
Like- like kindergartners.
Alison Gill:
I always found the argument that this is historically really important for our constitution, so ridiculous. I mean, the Magna Carta is more relevant to our Constitution, right? Or like for our Constitution, the Virginia law and religious freedom is more relevant to the First Amendment. I mean, there's so many things that are more relevant than the 10 Commandments. And if we're going to go back to 10 Commandments, then why not the codes of Hamarabi? It's really kind of cherry picking, right?
Liz Cavell:
Do you think it's a pretext, Alison?
Alison Gill:
I think it's a pretext.
Rebecca Markert:
This is hot takes here on We Dissent. Hot takes.
Liz Cavell:
I'm always curious, Rachael. So these two that pass, maybe you don't know this without the bill text in front of you. I know the Tennessee one is permissive and that's a little bit different, but are they actually prescribing what the posters should look like including what the 10 Commandments text should say as the states of Alabama and Tennessee, are they actually prescribing the words?
Rachael Stryer:
That's a great question. So the Alabama Bill did prescribe the words. It's a little bit different and it's simplified. So the ones that have passed previously, Rebecca, correct me if I'm wrong, but they use thou and adultery and manservant. The Alabama one is quite simplified and it says, "You shall not, you shall not. " And it cuts out some of the trickier language. It does have the word adultery in it. It does have the word covet, but it is not exactly the same language as the other three that have passed. And then in Tennessee, the competing bill had prescribed language, but the one that ended up passing does not have any prescribed language.
Liz Cavell:
So introduced in 14 states and the other 12 just died in committee?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, they got no movement or they died in committee. I think a lot of states are waiting to see what would happen with the Fifth Circuit. So I anticipate that there will be a lot more movement next year depending on what happens from here. Those were the two that ended up getting all the way to the finish line.
Rebecca Markert:
Wow. Well, they are not the only bills involving religion in the public schools. We've also seen bills about prayer in schools. Is that correct?
Rachael Stryer:
So second set of bills we saw this year were bills around prayer and schools. Again, something that we've seen a lot post Kennedy. The US Constitution protects students' rights to voluntarily pray and express religious viewpoints when they're at school as long as this activity is voluntary, it's student led, it's student initiated and it doesn't coerce other students or disrupt the school day. But a couple bills have passed this year. First was in Alabama, which passed a bill that creates a referendum that would require school boards to adopt a policy allowing student led prayer and then also requiring the pledge of allegiance. A second bill passed in Idaho that would require a 60 second moment of silence for prayer meditation at the beginning of the day. These were sort of more benign, but we saw a lot of proposals with much more egregious prayer period bills that would've allowed teachers to initiate prayer and would've set aside time at the beginning of the day for prayer in which students that weren't participating would have to leave the room or otherwise really feel excluded or pressured into joining the prayer.
So some of those got momentum, but didn't end up passing.
Liz Cavell:
The Idaho bill did pass though, the 62nd.
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah. The Idaho and the Alabama bills passed.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah. Also case law directly on point. So aiming directly at case law that says that schools cannot set aside special time for prayer at the beginning of each school day. So love that from Idaho. And then on the Alabama Bill, is the bill text fleshed out on what they mean by student led prayer? Because as you noted, the First Amendment already protects students' rights to non-disruptively and voluntarily pray at school on their own in a voluntary student initiated way.
Rachael Stryer:
So it really just captures what already exists. It says the prayer must be initiated by and led by a student. No student may be required to participate and local policies must ensure that students have the opportunity to opt out of participation in the Pledge of Allegiance or prayer. So it's pretty watered down, but I think it's just beginning to contribute to the conversation of opening space for policies that affirm prayer.
Alison Gill:
It's a little bit internally inconsistent too. I mean, it's right after the pledge allegiance at the beginning of the day, right? And then it says each school, local school board of education shall have a policy that allows prayer to be conducted, but it has to be initiated by a student. So they have to have a policy and I guess it's supposed to be like a sham and then some students going to stand up and try to initiate it, right? It's a little bit strange. There's an expectation that it will happen because they have to have a policy allowing it, but-
Liz Cavell:
But you initiated it students.
Alison Gill:
Yeah, exactly.
Liz Cavell:
It wasn't us that initiated this with the bill that we passed and then the school board policy that had instated it. Yeah, no, you're onto something. It's so funny. Right. That is what it's trying to set up, right? It's like this actual forced time for student led prayer to be public and coercive and foist upon everyone else.
Rebecca Markert:
Well, and did the students feel like they couldn't pray? Because I feel like that is not a thing. What's that old joke? As long as there are tests in school, there's prayer in school. I don't understand why we're passing these things that are just affirming rights that already exist.
Rachael Stryer:
Absolutely. And I think it's moving towards communal prayer, right, from an individual prayer and opening the door for more formal policies, although I think this one doesn't quite get there in a way that we saw some other proposed bills do more formally.
Alison Gill:
I agree. Yeah, that makes sense. It's not really about the students praying. I mean, we're talking about Alabama and Idaho, so I'm pretty sure they realize students can pray there. It's all about sort of institutionalizing this.
Rebecca Markert:
Exactly. Yeah. Talk to us about chaplains and release time in public schools. Those are other areas where we saw bills this year.
Rachael Stryer:
So this is a couple of other areas where we see a few bills come up every year. The first is chaplains. So a number of states have adopted policies that allow chaplains in public schools despite the constitutional bar on public school sponsored religious activities. Legislators argue that chaplains will help address shortages of school counselors and can provide mental health services to students, but chaplains are clergy members who are trained to provide religious and spiritual care and not to serve as replacements or qualified school counselors.
These bills look different. Some of them allow volunteer chaplains. Other actually allow for the employment of chaplains. The one that passed this year, also in Alabama, would permit school boards to allow volunteer school chaplains. So they're not paying them, but your local reverend comes in for a couple hours a week and because the school doesn't want to pay for qualified school counselors who have mental health training, instead the pastor provides that care and does it in a way that he is trained, which might not be one that is accessible to students of other faiths.
And then another type of policy that we see a lot over the last few years that came up is release time policies. So these are policies that authorize public school students to leave school property during the school day to receive religious instruction. Release time policies have been around for a long time. You may talk to parents who have experienced release time policies. New York has had one for a long time, but we're increasingly seeing policies that require school districts to create formal policies to allow students to attend programs that provide religious instruction and even allow students to receive academic credit for attending these programs. And often they're sponsored by an organization like LifeWise, which is an evangelical organization that has the capacity to establish a program maybe across the street from the school or something like that while students who may belong to minority faith or do not have a religious affiliation are often left behind or left out while their friends go and eat pizza and learn about religion.
So this year the Georgia legislature passed a bill. The governor hasn't signed yet, but I don't think there's any expectation that he won't. And that bill requires local school boards to permit release time for at least an hour a week and permits academic credit as well.
Alison Gill:
And also, I think you pointed out that allows the courses to be held on school property, which directly violates, as far as I know, the Supreme Court precedent on this. So I'm curious about that.
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, absolutely. So there's a clause in there saying that courses should be held on school property equally with other groups. This is a little bit confusing because to me that looks like something that might happen as after school programming, which happens in a lot of schools. I'm not really sure what other organizations are doing on campus teaching during the school day for credit, but it's certainly something that raised my red flags as well because that is something that is explicitly unconstitutional and something that is a red line that school districts haven't crossed yet. So I think it's a little bit of conflating the two and opening the door, but I'm not sure what it's actually going to look like in practice.
Alison Gill:
That makes sense. Just going back to chaplains, I'm curious, Rebecca, I wanted to ask you about this because it's been a couple years now since these chaplain bills started being introduced in passing and I'm just curious if we've seen any litigation challenging them yet and what that looks like because I mean, they're so egregious.
Rebecca Markert:
Right. We have not seen any litigation. There's none to my knowledge. I don't know if you know of any, Liz, in the last couple of years since we've talked about these. I
Liz Cavell:
Think like what's happening that's different and like Rachael is describing, the ones that have passed or been introduced in different states are slightly different. A lot like the 10 Commandments laws, some of, or maybe several of the ones that passed a couple years ago are permissive. They allow school districts to employ or adopt chaplain policies and give them a little bit of freedom of how to do that in terms of the system by which they come in and are employed and school districts are not required to do it. So it's putting a lot on individual school districts to be basically like among the first in the nation to adopt these policies, to employ clergy in their schools, to rove about and talk to their kids with no qualifications and who knows what kinds of background checks. You know what I mean? It's like in addition to like the liability being opened up because these schools actually do still have establishment clause obligations, their students have a right to be free from religious coercion while attending their schools.
And so I mean, it's not quite as immediately widespread as these bills have passed. We're not seeing public schools eagerly implementing these programs widespread and then those filtering down to the way our organizations usually interface with these things in practice, which is people on the ground contact us and say, "This is what's happening in my school district or my kids' school district. Oh my gosh, there's this chaplain. He comes around at lunch and sitles up to the kids and it's creepy and here's the stuff he hands out and here's how the school is giving him access to students." And so without those details kind of filtering down through to our organization, we have not quite found a specific iteration of this program to challenge through litigation.
So maybe there's a lot happening in some of these states or this is going to be ramping up soon, but I don't know if many school districts are actually adopting and implementing these practices at scale, even though these laws are extremely problematic and violate the establishment clause and set up huge red flags and things that our organizations would sue over.
I don't know how much of it's actually happening in practice. Maybe that will ramp up as more states pass these bills with school districts that are more risk tolerant. I don't know, but we're not seeing it.
Alison Gill:
I know in Texas there was a whole campaign after they passed it to urge school districts not to pass policies. And almost, I think every state that's passed one of these has permissive, like it's up to the school boards and school districts to decide whether if they want to have a policy or not.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah. And there's been some pretty creative advocacy around that, especially from the Satanists who have gone in and say, "That's great. We're so excited to send in our leadership to service chaplains in schools." And there's a number of articles, especially in Florida of school boards that have voted down policies after that.
Liz Cavell:
Okay. Well, that's chaplains. What else have we seen in 2026, Rachael, that's in the like religion in schools category?
Rachael Stryer:
The last bucket that I think is worth highlighting is classroom instruction and curriculum policies. So we've seen this every year, but increasingly sets of bills pushing for curriculum changes that emphasize the role of Christianity in US history and government. This year in Tennessee, we saw a bill that requires public school history curriculums to teach about the positive impact of religion on American history and the influence of Judeo-Christian values and it cites two pages long of examples of that, which is everything from George Washington's direction regarding chaplains in the Army to the historic role of the Black Robe regiment to the impact of Billy Graham and beyond.
And then we saw some bills coming out of Idaho and Utah that are a little bit more vague, but just require curricula changes to teach about the influence of Christianity on American history. That's something that we're seeing over and over again is just this overemphasis on Christianity's impact on our structures of government and founding documents.
Rebecca Markert:
Were these bills passed or did they die?
Rachael Stryer:
These are three examples of bills that pass. We saw a number of others that died. These come up all the time, but these are the three that got through.
Alison Gill:
And these are bills, but a lot of times things that happen through curriculum don't happen through a legislative process. They happen through being pushed by the state school board or by changes through the Department of Education in a state. There's been a big push recently in some states and by the Trump administration to do more classic education, what they're calling classic education, which is really just sort of right-wing propaganda. That might not make it into bills necessarily, but it could still definitely influence schools.
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's something we saw in Oklahoma and I know is something that our litigation team did a lot of work on.
Liz Cavell:
Well, okay, that's more religion and public schools legislation than I wanted to know about Rachael, but it's a big category. The next kind of bucket that you have outlined here is kind of adjacent to religion and public schools, but it's its own kind of separate beast. It has a lot to do with state funding and public school education. So why don't you talk about vouchers?
Rachael Stryer:
Like you said, we have emphasis on pushing religion into public schools and then also directing funds that could go to public schools to fund religious private schools. So this is certainly a related and two-pronged attack. And so over the past few years, we've seen a number of states creating or expanding programs to fund private school vouchers, which overwhelmingly go to private religious schools.
Politicians will often claim that these programs are supposed to help low income families have access to private schools, but we're increasingly seeing states adopt what we call universal or near universal voucher programs that have no limits on participation based on the income of the family. And what we see over and over again is that the students that benefit from these programs are students from wealthy families who generally already went to private school, but now get to do so with all of our taxpayer dollars.
The other thing to note about these is that these programs cost states billions of dollars and can be devastating to state budgets in totality as well as particularly their public school budgets and lead to massive waste fraud and abuse. For anybody who's interested in this, they should do some research on Arizona's voucher program, which is funding things like trip to Disneyland and $16,000 for Legos while their public schools are really, really struggling to survive.
Alison Gill:
Have any other states passed universal vouchers in the last year or two?
Rachael Stryer:
So in the last couple years, a number of states have, I don't have a list in front of me, but that was a lot of action over the past couple years. And we also just saw states that had pushed back over and over again fall. So Texas is an example of a state that had rejected vouchers over and over and adopted it last year. So we saw a lot of expansion the last couple years. This year, partially because so many states have already adopted and partially because the focus was on the federal voucher program. We actually had fewer conversations about state programs. So I think South Dakota lifted their income cap, but for the most part, most of the action was on adopting the federal voucher program.
Alison Gill:
I just love South Dakota as an example because it's one of the most rural states in the country, right? It is incredibly rural and there's not schools, voucher schools to attend and vast majority of the state. So it's just very, very bad for the vast majority of people that live in South Dakota. And that doesn't matter because there's really just an agenda here, which is to build this alternate taxpayer funded religious school system.
Rachael Stryer:
And on the other side of that, depending on the state, it also provides very lucrative tax benefits to wealthy donors. It's a tax credit voucher program. But the big action this year was on the federal voucher programs. Last summer, Congress included a tax credit voucher program in its big budget reconciliation package, which they called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
This is a program that gives massive tax benefits to wealthy donors that donate to what was called scholarship granting organizations for school related expenses that then go to students to fund private school tuition or maybe some other programs, although we're not exactly sure what will and won't be allowed and states are supposed to be able to opt into the program, which will begin in 2027. There's still a ton of open questions about what the program's going to look like. We don't know if states can limit where funds go.
We don't know if states can put in place protections Like non-discrimination requirements or reporting requirements. We don't know how the program is going to interact with the many existing state voucher programs and there's not even any sort of formal mechanism for opting in yet. And all of this is awaiting rulemaking, not from the Department of Education, which you might expect, but from the Internal Revenue Service because this is apparently a tax issue and not an education issue at all.
Despite all of that, a number of states are rushing to opt into this program. At least 27 states have done so since the program passed last summer and that breakdown is largely although not entirely on partisan lines. So that's where most of the voucher conversation has been this year is opting into trying getting these funds and participating in this federal program even though nobody actually knows what it's going to be or how to opt into it.
Alison Gill:
Just to clarify, we're talking about carve outs from federal taxes, not state taxes. Is that right?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah. So this is going to be from federal taxes. It's a one-to-one carve out and the pitch is that states won't owe anything. In reality, we know that any sort of reporting and accountability costs are going to come from states. And also there are implications for public schools when kids start to go to private schools. That is going to have a lot of implications for state education policy more broadly.
Rebecca Markert:
When you say that the program's set to launch in 2027, does that mean the academic year, 2027, 28, or does that mean fiscal year 2027? Because that's coming up really soon.
Rachael Stryer:
That's a great question. I think it's January 1st.
Liz Cavell:
I think it's important to note when we talk about vouchers that nobody supports them except for special interest groups and Christian nationalist legislators. Anytime that vouchers comes up for an actual popular vote and there are a number of states who have done popular referendum, like whether or not to repeal existing voucher programs or whether or not to adopt or expand voucher programs, people vote against them or to repeal them and recognize that they completely undermine public schools and public education and that in general they have been proven not to work or not to achieve their stated goals. And you mentioned Arizona. I'll just add that where Rebecca and I are based here in Wisconsin is a "see also" for a case study in the abject failure of a state voucher program.
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, I think that's a great point. Everybody votes them down in states and you saw last year that this was a standalone bill in the federal legislature and then they ended up having to hide it in the reconciliation package because that's the only way they could get it passed.
Alison Gill:
I know a few years ago there was a case at the Supreme Court court called Espinoza, which invalidated Montana's No Aid Clause, which is basically a constitutional clause that says you can't fund religious schools. Several of the states have much broader versions of that that say you can't fund private schools at all, which might be able to stand up better. I'm just curious if there's been efforts in states to sort of proactively add those things in. I'm thinking about that and also efforts to sort of reign in just in case there's another charter school case, reign in the charter school spending as well proactively in some of these blue states.
Rachael Stryer:
That's a great question, that I know of. There's an interesting case in Ohio right now, a lawsuit going on around these issues that is specifically about guarantees of public school funding and the way in which private school vouchers are impacting that. And I do think there's beginning to be conversations about what it would mean to roll back some of these voucher programs.
Liz Cavell:
A similar lawsuit has been filed here in Wisconsin against the Wisconsin legislature by law forward and a bunch of public school districts and PTA organizations and basically challenging a number of aspects of how the Wisconsin legislature has failed to fund the public school system. But I think diverting money to private school voucher programs is a huge part of that.
Alison Gill:
I have another question on this that's sort of related, which is there's now going to be this Supreme Court case about discrimination with government funding and how that impacts vouchers and other sorts of government funded programs. I'm curious if there's been any sort of, if you've seen any bills, that was just happened like a couple weeks ago that that was granted cert. Have you seen any sort of bills about that? I know that for example, after the Carson v. Makin case in Maine, this Maine legislature passed a law clarifying some of the non-discrimination protections that attached to their funding for schools through the voucher program to say, "Okay, well, if you're going to take Maine's money, you have to not discriminate with it. " And that's what we're talking about here, whether that's acceptable or not, or if that is somehow a violation of one's religious freedom.
So I guess I'm just curious if there's been any sort of movement in that area.
Rachael Stryer:
I don't know of any prominent bills that are really smartly seeking to adress that in part because they are backed into a corner, right? I think especially if Supreme Court decision goes the way that we think it will, I don't know what that's going to mean for state non-discrimination law that makes funding requirements, ties them to non-discrimination requirements, right? I'm just not sure what that's going to look like or what the future there is. I think states just don't know what to do with that, but maybe that there are some creative solutions that we're just not aware of there. I'll just say it on all levels, that is the next front for the right. I think we can talk about that a little bit in the foster and reproductive rights space and certainly something we're seeing at the federal level as well.
Liz Cavell:
Yep. Step one, get taxpayer dollars to fund your religion. Step two, reject all strings attached to that public funding, not to discriminate or to in any other way be accountable to the public.
Rebecca Markert:
Yep, that's definitely the playbook.
Alison Gill:
We'd love to talk more about the bills about reproductive rights, about affecting LGBTQ people, using religion to discriminate. So what's been happening in those areas?
Rachael Stryer:
So these are two areas where we're seeing a lot of overlaps in bills that invoke religion as a way to permit discrimination and allow denial of services. And a couple of examples of the types of bills we're seeing are healthcare refusal bills and foster care and adoption bills. So in the healthcare refusal space, we saw a couple of bills pass this year, on coming out of Utah and one out of Iowa that gave healthcare providers and religious healthcare institutions the right to refuse to provide services that violate religious beliefs. So that includes, but for both of these states, isn't limited to services like abortion, artificial insemination, contraceptives, or gender affirming care. Iowa Bill also defines medical practitioners very broadly to include anyone who facilitates or participates in healthcare services. So that could include record making, referral, dispensing, et cetera. And what that means in practice is that in a small rural clinic with a small administrative team, a single administrator's refusal to prepare records could be enough to stop somebody from getting the care that they need.
And we can even imagine someone refusing to provide an unmarried person who's pregnant with prenatal care or something like that because these bills are so broad and allow sort of any religious objection.
Alison Gill:
I mean, these could allow any form of discrimination really. I mean, there's sort of a haven to allow discrimination. It's interesting. I think that's something that's often overlooked in some of these bills, not all of them, but the Iowa Bill is a good example of this. It imports the ministerial exemption and applies it to employees at the hospital. So the ministerial exemption applies to churches and says, well, labor laws, nondiscrimination laws don't apply because the church gets to decide who its own ministers are. And this says, "Well, we get to in the same way, figure out employment practices, contracting practices, everything in relation to our religion and therefore these other laws don't apply." And I've seen that in several different bills. It doesn't get as much of a headline, but it's really, really significant potentially and could affect the ability of doctors, nurses, everyone who are at these hospitals to do their jobs.
Rachael Stryer:
That's really interesting and something that I had not caught.
Alison Gill:
Yeah. I have the exact language here and it's very similar. So it says basically these hospitals shall have the right to make employment staffing contracting and admitting privileged decisions consistent with the entity's religious beliefs. And some of them have even more flexible language, but it's pretty concerning.
Liz Cavell:
Got to love a hospital with religious beliefs.
Alison Gill:
It's so interesting because some of these bills, like the Utah ones, especially I was looking at, it really lays out the religious beliefs, the hospital and the employee and if they conflict, the hospitals always dominate. They sort of make carve out. If you're a doctor, you have religious rights, unless you're at a religious hospital, then their rights predetermine everything because we know who's really important. It's the people with the money, right?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah. And you also see some of these bills, I don't think either of these, but some of them also extend the same protections to insurers.
Alison Gill:
Not just insurers, but payers, which means employers who are self-insured too, which means your boss could have veto power over your insurance.
Liz Cavell:
So absurd where we are. Where like any entity can have religious beliefs like an insurance company, a hospital, an insurance payer and their religious beliefs, those personal things that can also inhere in a entity or a corporation so much more important than an individual human being's right to attain care. So you got to ask yourself, why did I go into a caring profession?
Alison Gill:
Well, that's it. These complicated bills are just, they're not a real problem. This so infrequently happens and when it is, it's worked out by the processes that already exist in these hospitals, right? It's not a real problem. It's just a way for them to sort of intrude into healthcare and stick religion in further.
Rebecca Markert:
I was going to ask, and we didn't put it in the outline, so I apologize, Rachael, if you're not ready to discuss this, but I just was interested in hearing if there were any more gender affirming care bills, like bans that were passed or are there like sports bans, bills that are going on? Are there bathroom bills, those types of things?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, that's a great question. I think there was a lot of action this year, but this goes to my caveat at the beginning, those might have been religious exemptions five years ago and now they're just outright bans in a way that they are beyond the scope of the work that AU does. Various LGBTQ organizations have really taken the lead on that and we are in coalition with them, but I don't feel like I have sort of like a comprehensive analysis of where those passed, but there were so many defasating bills. I think Kansas's driver's license bill is like one clear example of that.
Alison Gill:
I thought something else was interesting about the Utah bill is it tries to inform people in some ways about the denial of care. It requires them a person or a hospital that doesn't provide services to inform the Department of Health, which is interesting. A few years ago I helped pass in Colorado a healthcare transparency bill, which is a positive measure that sort of helps disclose when denial of care happens so that if folks are concerned about it, they can look at the Department of Health and look up their hospital and see what services they do or do not offer, which I think is valuable. But here Utah sort of makes a nod towards that. I don't think it'd be as effective here because it just doesn't have the right provisions to really spell things out clearly or make sure they get in patients' hands. But it's interesting that they saw that as a need.
I find that Utah sometimes tries to walk a line of trying to seem reasonable with their non-discrimination laws, for example. They passed some, but they had a lot of religious exemption, but they actually, you saw more conservative members actually pass a non-discrimination law that was LGBTQ inclusive, for example. So I feel like it's an interesting state. It's very different from a lot of other states in some ways when it comes to religious exemptions.
Rachael Stryer:
So another thing we're seeing in this using religion to discriminate piece is foster care and adoption bills, which I find one of the most maddening types of bills that I encounter. Indiana passed a bill that would allow government funded child placement agencies, which are frequently religious, to use religion as a justification for refusing to work with families, youth in care and prospective parents and to allow adoptive or foster parents the right to raise a child in a manner consistent with their sincerely held religious beliefs.
Just to break that down, that means two things. It first means that an evangelical foster agency could deny Catholic, Jewish, or same-sex couples the right to foster kids. It also means that they can place LGBTQ kids with parents who refuse to support or affirm their gender identity or expose these kids to conversion therapy. These are like a litle bit internally inconsistent with each other, but they're both very harmful and they both place the religious beliefs of the agency and the foster adoptive parents over the best interests of these kids who are in really vulnerable positions at the worst times of their life.
Rebecca Markert:
I'll also just note that Americans United has a lawsuit over a foster care situation in the state of Tennessee where a Jewish couple was denied the right to foster to adopt a child because they were Jewish and the agency was a Christian agency that said that the prospective foster parents, their beliefs didn't align with the agencies and that's why they were refusing to place a child with them and that litigation is also ongoing. So these are very real, very sad things that are happening in these states.
Alison Gill:
This is an area I've followed in the past and one concern when they sort of shield the foster parents and sort of say, "Well, you get to sort of raise these foster kids according to your beliefs," which is just kind of absurd to me. We're talking about words of the state, right? We're talking about foster children. There's just this attitude I find sometimes that children belong to parents, that they're sort of your property and you have the right to raise a child in your religion that's been recognized by the Supreme Court as a constitutional right. But here we're talking about foster parents, so it shouldn't even be relevant. But regardless, what I was going to say is that this might subject them to things like conversion therapy, which are incredibly dangerous and forgive other types of behavior frankly, which could be potentially dangerous based on their religious beliefs or ideology.
Liz Cavell:
Could foster parents in this scenario or they have a right under this law to refuse to vaccinate kids in their care on schedule because it's against their religion?
Alison Gill:
As long as you can't characterize it as neglect, yes. I mean, I read it and there's an opt out for neglect, but you can definitely make an argument there, a strong one.
Liz Cavell:
I mean, that's madness. It's bad enough that we allow these religious exemptions that basically amount to medical neglect or all out child abuse based on parents' religion. Now we have to extend that to foster parents, kids who are temporarily in the care of basically state sanctioned guardians and their rights are paramount to inflict their belief system on kids in ways that interfere with their physical and mental wellbeing. It's just like madness. And did you say, Rachael, where these bills passed this year?
Rachael Stryer:
The one bill that passed this year was Indiana and we've seen a number of these past in the past. A lot of them have just been about agencies. This second part of the parents I think is a little bit newer.
Liz Cavell:
The foster care piece is newer?
Rachael Stryer:
The parent piece, right? So there's the one that says that an agency can discriminate based on their beliefs in placement and then you have this parent part, which is really troubling.
Liz Cavell:
Okay. Well, I hate it all. Let's move on. That's sort of like the bucket for legislative efforts that are anti-LGBTQ/licensed to discriminate, but you have this whole separate section noted in our outline about bills that are like the resurgence of anti-Sharia law. So tell us about this, what's going on and what did we see in 2026 and why is this happening?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, absolutely. So I added this, as opposed to bills that are using religion to discriminate, this is just religious discrimination. And it somewhat came out of nowhere. These were bills that were really common in the mid 2010s. We saw a lot of them and they essentially say that courts can't enforce foreign laws that violate a person's rights under domestic law or violate public policy.
The question you would ask is when and why courts would ever do that? And the answer is they really don't. These bills don't really have that much legal impact and they're based on these totally baseless claims that Sharia law is infiltrating our legal system and taking over entire American communities. And they're just part of this growing anti-Muslim animus and we've heard some really troubling statements from politicians and elected officials saying that Muslims are anti-American and just using some really inflammatory and upsetting language.
And we saw what seems like coordinated bills pass in four states, Tennessee, Florida, Iowa, and Idaho, as well as a slightly different bill that is also fueled by anti-Muslim sentiment in Arkansas. And a couple of them also in the same bill also include provisions that relate to either designating or giving enhanced criminal liability for terrorist organizations to really underline whatever point they're trying to make in their Islamophobic messaging. I think these in themselves have very little legal impact but represent a really troubling trend towards attacking religious minorities or political benefit.
Rebecca Markert:
So when you say these are coordinated attempts to pass these bills or the bills were coordinated, how so?
Rachael Stryer:
I mean, I think the big thing is just they came out of nowhere and all of a sudden we saw them in four states and they often use the same language and they're the same language we saw 10 years ago. It's very confusing, right? A lot of them have the same lines around violating people's rights under domestic law or public policy and it's sort of like, what issue is this addressing?
Alison Gill:
The background these things when they come up is just sort of ridiculous. Maybe there's like a propagating and right-wing media, like a story about something that happens and it gets blown up and then like a nonprofit that works on these issues will put out like a model or whatever and it'll just get propagated a few states. So that's sort of how this sort of thing blows up. And you find the weirdest bills sometimes that just have these waves of resurgence as if it were a real issue that really happens in this country and it does not.
Rebecca Markert:
Well, it does seem like with a lot of things that we've been seeing in the last year, it's everything that's old is new again and that's really upsetting. There's not an epidemic of Sharia law being implemented across the country. Is that right, Rachael?
Rachael Stryer:
That's my understanding. Anything we're seeing Christian nationalism being implemented across the country, but I guess that's okay.
Liz Cavell:
I mean, have these people heard the good news? There's an establishment clause here. No one can do Sharia law. Famously we are a non-theocratic secular nation. So I mean all we have to do is just somehow get the message to these legislators and I think they're going to be really happy. This is madness.
Rebecca Markert:
It is madness. Well, I kind of always like to close out the shows specific to legislation and the legislative sessions with any sort of fun or entertaining bills that you've seen like the one that I mentioned at the top of the show dedicating all the wildlife animals in the state of Oklahoma to God instead of the DNR. Did you see any of those types of bills this year? It is also, I should say, in an election year we always do see a lot more sometimes of these crazy bills.
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah. I tried to crowdsource this and we couldn't come up with anything nearly as fun. The on that I think stuck out as the most ridiculous bill we came across was a Tennessee bill that did not pass but got some traction that tried to forbid public employees and especially school employees from taking any action to ensure compliance with the establishment clause or church state separation unless there's a specific court decree or a directly on point ruling from the US Supreme Court.
Rebecca Markert:
You mean like Stone versus Graham?
Rachael Stryer:
Exactly. It's ridiculous and it's unconstitutional on so many levels. It's just saying ignore appeals courts.
Liz Cavell:
That letter you got from the Freedom From Religion Foundation?
Alison Gill:
How does that even work? You have to engage in prayer at all times, right? I mean, otherwise you'd be in compliance by accident, right?
Rebecca Markert:
In compliance by accident.
Rachael Stryer:
I truly don't know what they're doing here other than, there was a long preamble about how church state separation is made up. Then they throw the establishment clause in which you can't say is made up because it's in the constitution. People are doing all sorts of things to try to test the boundaries and invite litigation and this was probably one of the more extreme versions of that, which did move forward, but did not end up passing.
Alison Gill:
Well, that's good.
Liz Cavell:
Unbelievable. That was also in Tennessee?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah. Tennessee had quite a year this year.
Liz Cavell:
Quite a year. I'm sure they solved all their residents' other problems, nothing better to do. Uh, Rachael!
Rebecca Markert:
Well, we're getting towards the end of these legislative sessions. Again, many of our listeners always like to know what can they do to stop bills that they don't like or even proactively support bills that they do like. What are your tips for an average citizen to advocate for or against a bill?
Rachael Stryer:
My biggest tip is to remember that you are not alone and that these bills are extremely unpopular.
aWe did some polling last summer in Oklahoma that showed that the overreach of the former state superintendent, Ryan Walters, who was pushing a lot of Christian nationalist policies created a really significant backlash in which people who may be deeply religious and even seek to bring their religion into the public sphere felt that what he did was inappropriate and wrong and went far beyond the boundaries of religious freedom in the state. And I think this is a real moment where we're seeing overreach in so many different states and being brave and talking about it with your neighbors and community and realizing that so, so many folks in your community are just as upset and annoyed as you are as the first step, paying attention, getting in touch with legislators and being sure that you're just as loud as the folks on the other side is so, so important.
Even if it doesn't cause somebody to come out in opposition to a bill, it may mean that they say this is too much of a headache and they kill it in committee or before it even gets to committee. And so it's really, really important to be a thorn on their side and to invite other folks into doing so as well. And then lastly, you should follow AU and get our messages and the messages of all of our allies.
Alison Gill:
Can I just add that there's some really great trackers online based on what you want to follow? I know ACLU does some. AU has a tracker for legislation, is that right?
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah, we have a tracker as well.
Alison Gill:
So if you're interested in seeing what's going on in your states, you can look at that and see exactly what bills they're concerned about, what the status of those bills are. And that can be really helpful and it facilitates you reaching out to lawmakers if you're concerned about things. And if you sign up for action alerts with some of these organizations like AU, for example, then they can tell you when it's best to take action because they'll help you know where the letter needs to go and make sure that they're able to sort of get it to the right place.
Liz Cavell:
Yeah. So in addition to AU you can do that at FFRF AF. That's the action fund. It's our C4 arm and that's where all of our legislative tracking and action alerts on legislation, both state and federal comes from.
Alison Gill:
And you can sign up for action alerts at National Women's Law Center as well.
Liz Cavell:
Yep. You're going to see a lot of those broader issue areas that Rachael's talking about that blast far beyond like the religious exemption field and just go into pure discrimination or-
Alison Gill:
Absolutely. But we do a lot of things on like denial of care, for example, and we're expecting a lot happening in that area and there's quite a few others that were very relevant to this discussion.
Rachael Stryer:
Right.
Alison Gill:
I just want to list one of the resources. I helped work on it when I was at American Atheist, which is the State of the Secular State's report report has a scorecard for every state. So if you want to see what the laws look like in your state so you know what to help work on, it's at atheist.org/states and you can take a look and see. It's a really terrific report, I think, if I do say so myself, which looks at all the different states and the laws both positive and negative that if impact church/state separation .
Liz Cavell:
Yeah, that's a great easy guide and it's really tricky to even get a handle on like what's going on in each of the individual 50 states that there's so many bills that get introduced that never go anywhere, you don't know where they are or how much of a threat is one bill versus another. And obviously some of these are very extreme and if they were to move would be very alarming. And so it's good to have some resources that can kind of ground you in what the priorities are in any individual state. So check us all out.
Rebecca Markert:
Yeah. And I'll just say too, I mean sometimes it takes a few sessions for some of these bills to become law. And so for example, some of the 10 Commandments bills that we were talking about before, they keep getting reintroduced and even though they died this year, maybe they're reintroduced next legislative session and they get the momentum.
So it's really important to stay vigilant and even if it died to make sure that it's not being resurrected in a future year. So always, always be in touch with your representatives to let them know that you're watching and that you are opposing these measures, especially when they detract from true church state separation.
Alison Gill:
Or hog housed.
Rebecca Markert:
Or hog housed. Our new word of the day. Well, Rachael, I really want to thank you for taking time out of your really busy day to come and talk to us about the legislative sessions from 2026. It was a really important discussion to have and we just really appreciate your time.
Rachael Stryer:
Yeah. Thank you all so much for having me.
Rebecca Markert:
Well, that is it for today's episode. I'm Rebecca Markert.
Alison Gill:
I'm Alison Gill.
Liz Cavell:
And I'm Liz Cavell. If you haven't already, please follow us on our socials. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and X, and please also remember to let us know how you're liking the show by leaving us a review. This is one of the best ways to help new listeners find our show, so please review us and you can also find us at we-dissent.org. Thanks for listening.
Rebecca Markert:
We Dissent is a joint production of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the National Women's Law Center, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It is hosted by attorneys, Liz Cavell, Alison Gill, and me, Rebecca Markert. Other production support comes from Greta Martens. Audio engineering is provided by audio for the arts based in Madison, Wisconsin. Thanks for listening.
