We Need Better Protection for Religious Liberty in Education
Religious liberty is not merely about the right to practice your faith in your place of worship. It is about the right to live out religious truths in society.
Faith-based schools exist precisely because parents, families, and communities want education to be grounded in truth, virtue, and eternal goals. These schools are not just private versions of public schools; they have missions to cultivate wisdom, moral integrity, and service to others based on religious tenets.
Yet, increasingly, government officials are attacking schools’ religious freedom. For example, the Lyceum, a small, Catholic prep school in South Euclid, Ohio, was forced to sue to protect its rights when the local city council passed a sweeping ordinance that required the school to hire teachers and enroll students who disagree with its mission and teachings on matters of human sexuality, such as hiring teachers in same-sex relationships.
Violations could be punished by fines and even jail time. Initial drafts of the ordinance contained an explicit religious exemption. But the city council chose to remove those protections from the final text, forcing the school to give up its faith—which it would not do—or close.
Religious education teaches character traits like seeking the good of others, provides a framework for understanding the world, strengthens community bonds, and offers a path to personal purpose and spiritual growth. Government officials should encourage schools that develop our citizens in such a positive way, not discriminate against them and their religious teachings.
The Supreme Court has long recognized that parents have a fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing, including their education. For many, this means sending their children to schools that integrate faith and learning. Yet there are many school-choice programs designed to exclude religious schools.
For example, the Supreme Court famously held that Maine improperly excluded religious schools from a Town Tuitioning voucher program in Carson v. Makin. What’s less well known is that, while the case was pending before the high court, the Maine Legislature amended its laws to make the vouchers contingent on schools complying with the State’s LGBTQ orthodoxy in hiring and admissions. That litigation is ongoing.
And in Colorado, the state excluded Darren Patterson Christian Academy from a state-funded grant for pre-school programs unless the academy agreed to hire employees who do not share its faith and to alter internal rules and policies based on the school’s religious doctrines about sexuality and gender—including those that relate to restroom usage, pronouns, dress codes, and student housing during field trips. Such laws punish families and children by depriving them of the religious schools they want to attend and of the religious education parents want their children to receive.
The United States is witnessing increasing attacks on our religious schools, and Michigan is another prime example.
Following a Michigan Supreme Court decision holding that “sex” discrimination includes sexual orientation and gender ideology, the legislature amended its education laws to require all Michigan schools to hide the truth about marriage and gender ideology. Under the amended law, the school that Fr. Robert Sirico founded, Sacred Heart Academy, must hire staff who seek to overturn the Catholic Church’s teaching about marriage, must use preferred pronouns, and must allow males who identify as girls to play on female athletic teams and change in girls’ locker rooms. The academy must refrain from teaching—or even posting on the school’s website—Saint Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body or Pope Francis’s condemnation of gender ideology.
When faith-based schools requested a religious exemption, the legislature refused to grant one, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the discriminatory law. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has fought ferociously to defend the law against Sacred Heart’s free-exercise and free-speech rights.
The president of the United States has the power to direct executive agencies to ensure that federal funds do not come with strings attached that violate conscience and to require that states and local governments respect religious liberty. He should exercise that power. The president can also appoint department leaders who will protect religious liberty instead of eroding it.
Most importantly, he can use the presidential platform to encourage Congress to enact laws that robustly protect religious schools’ ability to carry out their mission and to explain to the nation why protecting religious liberty is fundamental.
For its part, the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken with clarity on these issues.
In Our Lady of Guadelupe v. Morrissey-Berru, the court reaffirmed the ministerial exception, recognizing that faith-based schools have autonomy to choose teachers who will pass on the school’s religious teachings. At Alliance Defending Freedom, we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will supplement the ministerial exception by recognizing that religious organizations have the right to hire co-religionists, too.
For example, if a Catholic school believes that every employee’s duties include inculcating the Catholic Church’s teachings in the school’s students, the school shouldn’t be forced to hire a secular atheist in the cafeteria who desires to turn students away from God and the Church.
In the trilogy of cases that began with Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, the Supreme Court held that government officials cannot discriminate against religious schools in funding and other benefit programs. What started as a ruling supporting the right of a preschool to participate in a playground-resurfacing grant program grew to include the tax credits at issue in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue and the tuition vouchers in Carson v. Makin. But as the Maine Legislature’s shenanigans to circumvent the Carson decision make clear, there is more work to do.
Just last term, in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court definitively pronounced that parents have a First Amendment right to direct their children’s upbringing and education consistent with the parents’ faith. As the Court reasonably held in that case, a Maryland public school board’s “introduction of [ ] ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks—combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and to forbid opt outs—substantially interferes with the religious development of their children and imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that [the Court’s decision in] Yoder found unacceptable.”
“Many Americans, like the parents in this case,” the Court continued, “believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly. But the challenged storybooks encourage children to adopt a contrary viewpoint.”
Parents have the right to know when public schools press sexual propaganda on students and to opt their children out of such indoctrination.
Together, these Supreme Court decisions instruct that church autonomy and the freedom of faith-based schools are central to our constitutional order. Yet pro-LGBTQ activists have decried decisions like Mahmoud and have promised that their fight to make religious families bend the knee to LGBTQ orthodoxy will continue.
Religious liberty in education should not be a partisan issue. It is a matter of human dignity, family rights, and national flourishing. Our nation will continue to benefit from generations of young people formed in both knowledge and virtue if faith-based schools are free to live out their missions and families are free to choose them. Conversely, if that liberty is impaired, our country will be worse for it—educationally, culturally, and spiritually.
The federal government should protect religious liberty in education. Doing so will ensure that faith-based education remains a beacon of truth, hope, and human flourishing for generations to come.
