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.”
Today, First Liberty Institute and attorneys from Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, LLP, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP, and Spengler Nathanson presented argument in the Sixth District Court of Appeals of Ohio asking the court to reverse a lower court’s decision that would allow the City of Bryan to stop Dad’s Place’s efforts to serve people with desperate needs.
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral argument in St. Isidore v. Drummond, a case involving the constitutionality of the Oklahoma Charter School Board’s approval of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School for inclusion as a charter-school. First Liberty Institute represents Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, the State Board of Education, and the State Department of Education.
First Liberty Institute and the law firm Mayer Brown LLP sent a letter to the Wasatch County (UT) School District demanding first grade teacher Taryn Israelson be allowed to post a voluntary prayer support chain in the school’s faculty lounge. After she received approval from the Human Resources manager for the prayer chain, the principal at J.R. Smith Elementary told her it must be removed.
Jonathan Mitchell of Mitchell Law LLP argued before the Court of Appeals for the Third District of Texas today on behalf of Judge Dianne Hensley, who received a reprimand from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct for recusing herself from performing same-sex weddings. In June 2024, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of Judge Dianne Hensley, sending the case back to the lower court to review the merits of her claim that the SCJC violated her sincerely held religious beliefs by issuing the reprimand. First Liberty Institute is co-counsel in the case.
Yesterday, former First Liberty Institute client and U.S. Navy SEAL Phil Mendes participated in the inaugural meeting of President Donald Trump’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias in the federal government.
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