Liz Hayes
Associate Vice President of Communications
[email protected]
Americans United for Separation of Church and State is celebrating an important victory after the Tennessee Supreme Court refused to grant the state’s request to review an intermediate appellate court’s ruling in the case of Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram, a Knox County couple challenging Tennessee’s funding of a foster care agency that denied them services because they are Jewish.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State denounced the decision of House Speaker Mike Johnson to appoint former U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser denounced plans to install a statue of the divisive Rev. Billy Graham in the U.S. Capitol.
Plaintiffs represented by Americans United and allies in a lawsuit challenging Trump-era rules that weakened protections against religious proselytization and coercion in the delivery of federally funded social services announced Friday, May 3, 2024, that they are dismissing their case, pointing to new rules recently enacted by the Biden administration that restore religious-freedom safeguards for people who use these services.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser urged the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm that EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, requires hospitals to provide stabilizing abortion care to pregnant patients seeking treatment during medical emergencies: "No one in America should be denied emergency medical care because of someone else’s beliefs."
Americans United, joined by four religious freedom and civil rights organizations, urged a California appeals court to rule that Cathy's Creations, a Bakersfield bakery, does not have a religious-freedom right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State joined more than 100 reproductive rights, civil rights, religious and other social justice organizations in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires Idaho hospitals to provide stabilizing abortion care to pregnant patients seeking treatment during medical emergencies.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser called out the Christian Nationalist agenda behind the U.S. Supreme Court case FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a challenge to the FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.
Americans United celebrated the federal appeals court opinion issued in the lawsuit Garrick v. Moody Bible Institute. The decision allows a sex-discrimination lawsuit filed by former communications instructor Janay Garrick to proceed against Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
The Do No Harm Act will help ensure that our laws are a shield to protect religious freedom and not used as a sword to harm others by undermining civil rights laws and denying access to health care.
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