Americans United intern Emily Midyette attended the Oregon high school that recently was in the news for allegedly discriminating against LGBTQ students and forcing at least one of them to read the Bible in school as punishment. Midyette discusses some of the other church-state separation problems she experienced at North Bend High School.

As we await the U.S. Supreme Court’s imminent ruling in the legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban, new reporting has highlighted more problems with the ban beyond the obvious that it is unconstitutional because it singles out one religious group for disfavor.

America has a foundational document – the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. The story of how our nation got that document (which, by the way, is secular) and the story of how we went from a small band of theocratic settlers in Massachusetts to a country that celebrates religious freedom for all is a fascinating one.

Religious freedom is a fundamental value, but it does not permit government-funded providers to discriminate against the children and families they are supposed to serve.