If you care about LGBTQ rights, then you should be concerned about Brett Kavanaugh as the U.S. Supreme Court pick. His record shows that he believes religious beliefs can be used to justify discrimination.
Ignoring the best interest of children, a few House Republicans have proposed allowing federally funded adoption and foster care agencies to use religion to discriminate against prospective parents and children in need. Americans United joined hundreds of civil rights and child welfare organizations this week in urging members of Congress to reject this cruel proposal.
House Republicans amended a spending bill to include language that would allow adoption and foster care agencies that receive federal funding to discriminate against qualified prospective parents and children in need based on the agency’s religious beliefs. The result: Kids could be denied stable, loving homes with prospective parents who are LGBTQ, single, previously divorced or even the “wrong religion.”
President Donald Trump announced last night that Brett Kavanaugh is his nominee to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice. The president has shown that he has little respect for the separation of church and state, so it is no surprise that he has chosen a nominee who rejects this fundamental value as well
Americans United filed a lawsuit yesterday challenging multiple actions by the Trump-Pence administration—including back-room deals with the University of Notre Dame—that would deny countless women access to contraception.
Citing flagrant defiance of federal law and the US Constitution, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) and the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), along with their co-counsel Macey Swanson LLP, filed suit today in the US District Court for the Northern District of Indiana against the US Departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Labor, and the University of Notre Dame.
The US Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop opinion is having an immediate and wide-ranging impact. The Arizona Court of Appeals cited the Masterpiece opinion when it ruled against Brush & Nib Studio, one of several businesses around the country that, like Masterpiece, is trying to use religious beliefs to justify discrimination.
June marks Pride Month, a month dedicated to celebrating the strides made toward LGBTQ equality and the many LGBTQ activists who fought to achieve them. This Pride Month and every month, Americans United is proud to stand with our LGBTQ neighbors and oppose discrimination in the name of religion.
Every legislative session, AU tracks hundreds of state bills that, if passed, would undermine religious freedom in nearly every state. We often see trends arise across states. Lawmakers in different states introduce similar bills, and sometimes even the same exact bills with the same exact language. And we can usually figure out why that happens: conservative lobbying groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and state Focus on the Family affiliates often shop model bills around to state legislators, who then introduce these model bills in their states. The lobbying groups also share strategies with legislators to help pass their bills. The result: Similar harmful bills appear and pass in many different states in a nationwide onslaught.
This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 7-2 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The decision is a bit of an odd duck. The court repeatedly reaffirmed our nation’s commitment to combating discrimination against LGBTQ people in businesses open to the public. Yet the court holds in favor of a bakery that refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State today expressed disappointment over a US Supreme Court ruling in favor of a Colorado bakery that sought to discriminate against LGBTQ people on the basis of religious beliefs. But the organization said it was relieved that the narrow ruling does not create sweeping new rights to discriminate.
Americans United filed a friend-of-the-court brief yesterday in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California v. Azar—a challenge to the Trump-Pence administration’s new rules that would allow employers and universities to use religion to deny their employees and students health insurance coverage for birth control.
