Maggie Garrett

Maggie Garrett is the Vice President for Public Policy for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Maggie has been working on church-state separation issues for more than 20 years. Although she started her civil liberties work as a litigator, she now works in the public policy arena. She represents Americans United before Congress and the Biden Administration, and she oversees the state legislative program.

Much of Maggie’s work focuses on ensuring that public funds are used for public schools. For the last eight years, she has served as the co-chair of the National Coalition for Public Education (NCPE), a coalition of more than 50 national organizations that opposes private school vouchers. She is also the chair of the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination (CARD), which is the national coalition that fights against policies that allow religiously affiliated social service organizations to use taxpayer funds to discriminate. And Maggie leads Americans United’s work to protect the Johnson Amendment, which is the provision in the tax code that ensures tax-exempt nonprofits, including houses of worship, do not endorse or oppose political candidates.

Maggie has spoken about church-state issues in television and radio appearances and has been quoted in numerous major newspapers. She has presented on church-state issues across the country, participated in Congressional briefings and testified numerous times before state legislative committees.

Before Maggie joined AU’s Public Policy Department, she served as the Legislative Director/Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Georgia, where she litigated high-profile cases on issues including the separation of church and state, free speech, reproductive rights and voting rights. She also lobbied the Georgia General Assembly on issues such as private school vouchers, reproductive rights, free speech and religious freedom. She was also a Fellow at the ACLU of Alabama, where she participated in litigation to remove Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments display from the Alabama Supreme Court building, and she was the first Madison Fellow at Americans United in 1999.

Maggie graduated from Hamilton College, cum laude, and graduated with honors from The George Washington Law School, where she was the Production Editor of The George Washington Law Review. In 2016, she was awarded the Allen Thornell Political Advancement Award from Georgia Equality for being “the most responsive attorney in reviewing legislative language” they’ve ever worked with and for her diligence and dedication to the First Amendment.