Appeals Court Gives Its Blessing to Post
Ten Commandments in Texas Classrooms
A Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments is constitutional, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.
The opinion cites four First Liberty victories that reestablished freedom for displays, education and monuments reflecting America’s religious history. One case in particular, our U.S. Supreme Court victory in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, overruled an old case called Lemon v. Kurtzman that wreaked havoc on religious displays throughout the country..
“We conclude the Texas law does not violate either the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause,” read the opinion of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This is an important victory for religious freedom,” said First Liberty President, CEO & Chief Counsel Kelly Shackelford, ”and we applaud the 5th Circuit for upholding the Constitution.”
“The Ten Commandments are part of our nation’s history and tradition,” he added. “Banning them from schools because they are religious is not justified by the Constitution and would undermine a comprehensive education for America’s students.”
First Liberty filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the display of the Ten Commandments. We filed on behalf of 46 members of Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Chip Roy.
Thanks to First Liberty’s landmark Supreme Court victories, a seismic change to religious freedom law is taking place.
The Lemon case—which stifled religious freedom for more than 50 years—was weakened by the Supreme Court in our victory for the Bladensburg Peace Cross in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association. That ruling mandated a presumptive lawfulness for established symbols, displays and practices.
In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Court rejected Lemon entirely and returned the nation to the original understanding of the Constitution, writing that “the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’”
As the Supreme Court has explained, the Ten Commandments “have an undeniable historical meaning,” including “historical significance as one of the foundations of our legal system,” and such “acknowledgments of the role played by the Ten Commandments in our Nation’s heritage are common throughout America.”
“The 5th Circuit correctly concluded that posting the Ten Commandments in schools clearly meets the Kennedy ‘history and tradition’ test,” Shackelford explained.
And the ripple effect of those wins is being felt in the culture. We’re just at the beginning of the biggest shift in favor of religious freedom we’ve seen in our lifetime. In Texas and states all across America, faith and religious expression are being restored where they rightfully and legally belong. Cities and local governments are also taking action to display the Ten Commandments and other testimonies to our country’s heritage of faith.
This historic reawakening of our First Freedom is happening thanks to YOU.
Thank you for standing strong with First Liberty and clients like Coach Kennedy, Faithful Carrier Gerald Groff, The American Legion, and many more everyday heroes. Your faithful support is why huge doors of opportunity are opening to bring faith and religious expression back to what America’s Founders intended.
A City in Alabama Doesn’t Want Men
to Recover from Addiction
The City of Rainsville, Alabama told a local ministry it must stop helping men struggling with addiction.
Total Recovery Ministries operates a program that helps men overcome substance abuse, gambling, pornography, and many other life-controlling problems. Grounded in Christian values, the ministry guides men to lead productive lives centered on faith.
The ministry purchased a facility and applied for a permit to use it as a residential space where it would house program participants and other ministry visitors. The city rejected the proposal and sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding that all ministry efforts be stopped within 30 days.
First Liberty sent a demand letter to the city explaining how it is violating state and federal law, as well as Total Recovery’s constitutionally protected freedoms. We’re asking the city to grant a permit so the ministry can continue its compassionate and vital work.
Ministries and churches are being attacked and harassed for living out their faith and caring for the most vulnerable. Your support can ensure Total Recovery—and ministries across the country—are free to fulfill their divinely-inspired calling to serve their community. Please give to First Liberty today.
In Case You Missed It:
Religious Liberty Commission Holds Final Hearing
The Religious Liberty Commission held its final hearing on April 13. The Commission heard powerful testimonies from people of all faiths impacted by religious discrimination, and discussed the past, present and future of religious freedom in America.
First Liberty President and CEO Kelly Shackelford shares about the generational impact of the Commission’s forthcoming recommendations. He talks about the historic opportunity to protect America’s founding principles and ensure religious freedom thrives in our country.
What happens next? The Commission will deliver its final report to the President in a planned Rose Garden Ceremony on the National Day of Prayer in May.
Leading The Conversation | First Liberty in the News
Federal Appeals Court Upholds Texas Ten Commandments Law – President, CEO & Chief Counsel Kelly Shackelford quoted in The New York Times
Podcast | Religious Liberty: The First Freedom – President, CEO & Chief Counsel Kelly Shackelford in Radio Free Hillsdale Hour
Does the First Amendment Protect Progressive Bakers from Serving Republicans? – Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence in The Daily Signal
Video | Biden DOJ Monitored Pro-life Families, Gathered Private Data – Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys in NewsMax
Civics is Not Enough: A Proposal for the Study of American Civilization – Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy Research Fellow Jacob Wolf in Reading Wheel Review
Justice Clarence Thomas: The Supreme Act of Courage
by Jorge Gomez, Director of Content Strategy
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently gave a stirring speech at the University of Texas at Austin in which he urged young Americans to stand up for our nation’s founding principles.
As part of a lecture series commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas underscored the need for courage at a time when our most sacred rights, freedoms and values are under attack.
“As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the very values announced in it have fallen out of favor,” Thomas said.
“The devotion expressed in the final sentence of the Declaration, the willingness to do anything for our principles that has, throughout American history, been most indispensable,” he continued. “It is that devotion that we are missing today, and that we must find in our hearts if this nation is to endure.”
Thomas also pointed to modern progressivism as one of the biggest threats to the ideals found in the Declaration.
“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government,” Thomas warned. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the Government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.”
The Justice said that Americans must heed the lessons of history and nations where progressive ideology eventually “led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen.”
“Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism,” Thomas said, “and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based.”
Despite many clear and present dangers, Thomas offered encouragement and hope. He said that the values and truths listed in the Declaration are transcendent and withstand the test of time. In fact, it is because of truths that Americans found the will to fight and press forward through the darkest moments of America’s history.
“At home, at school, and at Church, we were taught that we are inherently equal; that equality came from God; and that it could not be diminished by man. We were made in the image and likeness of God,” Thomas said. “We knew that life, liberty and property were sacrosanct. These truths were self-evident to the adults in our lives and were taught to us as undeniable truths.”
“That proposition was not debatable and was beyond the power of man to alter. Others, with power and animus, could treat us as unequal but they lacked the divine power to make us so,” he added, referencing the Civil Rights Movement. “Those around us could endure with dignity the insults of segregation because they knew that, in God’s eyes, they were equal.”
“Those ideas have been so powerful that they convinced our nation to finally end segregation. They continue to be so powerful today that they have inspired people throughout the world to throw off the shackles of their oppressors.”
He encouraged students to be strong in their faith.
“It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when someone around you expects you to ‘live by lies.’ It may mean confronting today’s fashionable bigotries, such as anti-Semitism. It may mean standing up for your religion when it is mocked and disparaged by a professor.”
Thomas concluded his remarks with a firm call to action, encouraging students in the audience and people watching online, to renew their commitment to defending the freedoms that define America.
“By all means, celebrate the Declaration of Independence,” he said. “It is the most important act in American history, the foundation of our Constitution and, as Lincoln said, ‘the sheet anchor’ of our Republic.”
“But, I implore you to celebrate it by standing up for it, by defending it, and by recommitting yourselves to living up to its ideals. Channel the courage of the men who faced down a king and signed it. Or a President who led the nation in a civil war rather than permit this house to be divided by the great contradiction of slavery. Take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion.”
Editors’ Picks | Stories Around the Nation
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Opinion | Church-State Separation Rightly Understood – WORLD
Trump Joins America Reads the Bible, Shares 2 Chronicles from Oval Office – The Christian Post
Opinion | Two Visions of Religious Liberty – First Things
Coast Guard Agrees to ‘Structural Protections’ for Religious Personnel – EWTN News
Rise in Young Men’s Religiosity Realigns Gender Gaps – Gallup News
