First Liberty Institute and attorneys at Jones Day announced that the IRS closed its investigation of Grace Church in St. Louis, Missouri. The IRS’s decision to close its investigation, first opened in 2022, during the local school board elections where the church researched candidate websites and reported that information to church members.
First Liberty Institute and Winston & Strawn LLP, on behalf of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, the Coalition for Jewish Values, the Louis D. Brandeis Law Society, and the Independence Law Center filed friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of Dr. Peter Gross, urging the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to grant him a new trial after his first was scheduled on Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar and has been observed by faithful Jews for millennia.
First Liberty Institute and the law firm Mayer Brown LLP announced that the Wasatch County (UT) School District will now allow first grade teacher Taryn Israelson to post a voluntary prayer support chain in the school’s faculty lounge after she was previously told it must be removed.
First Liberty Institute announced today that the West Ward (MI) Elementary students whose songs were nearly censored for their religious content will now be allowed to sing in the school talent show.
Today, at a White House ceremony celebrating the National Day of Prayer, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating the President’s Religious Liberty Commission, and appointed Kelly Shackelford, President, CEO, and Chief Counsel to First Liberty as a member of the Commission.
Late yesterday, First Liberty Institute sent a letter to officials at West Ward Elementary School in Michigan urging that they allow two elementary school students to sing popular songs by Brandon Lake and Colton Dixon at an upcoming school talent show. School officials told the students just two days before auditions that allowing the second-grader’s song was a problem because it had “very clear language about worshipping God,” and that the issue with the fifth-grader’s song was that “not everyone believes in God.”
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