Religious Liberty Is Fundamental to Diversity
When people complain about polarization in America, religious freedom sometimes takes the blame. How can people who disagree about such fundamental questions of life form one nation?
Actually, Americans have been finding ways to live with disagreements for centuries—since before we were a nation. And the religious liberty protections of our First Amendment have been central to our success at navigating such difficult times. That is why I am welcoming the new year with optimism, rather than dread, as I look out on all the ways religious liberty is helping build a stronger and better country—even amidst all our disagreements. This is true in many areas of the law, including parents’ rights in education, equal funding for faith-based schools, and protections for religious minorities in the military.
In public schools, religious parents are working to ensure that they can direct their children’s education in accordance with their beliefs. Last year, the Montgomery County, Maryland school board decided to suspend parents’ ability to opt their elementary-aged children out of reading storybooks that promote one-sided gender and sexual ideology. The school board won't even tell the parents when the books are being read. My firm, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, represents a diverse group of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian parents who sued the Board in federal court last spring. They are standing up against what they believe to be storybooks that are age-inappropriate and inconsistent with their faith. They are not calling for book bans or an overhaul of classroom curriculum; they understand that different parents have different viewpoints. They simply want to know when the lessons are going to take place and the choice to opt their own kids out of lessons that conflict with their deeply held religious convictions. The opt-out was status quo for over fifty years in Montgomery County, until the school board abruptly removed it in violation of their own policies and Maryland state law. Our disagreements over sex and gender shouldn’t undermine a basic truth that almost everyone can get behind—moms and dads know what’s best for their children and should guide their education.
That’s especially true for parents of children with special needs. You shouldn’t have to check your faith at the door when seeking to provide your children with the extra help they deserve and need to thrive. We are trying to make that a reality in Loffman v. California Department of Education, in which a group of Los Angeles area Jewish families and schools are fighting California politicians who are punishing religious parents by blocking state and federal education funding from going to religious schools that educate kids with special needs. Similarly, in Colorado, a Catholic family and Catholic parish preschools are asking a federal court for the ability to participate in the state’s universal preschool funding program. After promising all Colorado parents of prekindergartners 15 hours of free education per week, the state flip-flopped on its promise and excluded all Catholic preschools in the state.
Both court challenges aim to allow parents to receive the vital resources they need to help educate their children. In a free society, no one should be left out in the cold for wanting to raise their kids consistent with their religious beliefs.
This year will also see religious minorities fighting for equal rights to serve in the armed forces. Military recruitment is down-- the Department of Defense is acknowledging one of the “greatest challenges” in military recruitment history—but the federal government continues to defend guidelines that exclude Sikhs, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews from maintaining religiously required beards and headgear while serving. Brave Americans like Navy sailor Edmund Di Liscia and Marine Captain Sukhbir Toor should not have to face unconstitutional barriers to defend our nation. That’s particularly important now, with wars raging both in Europe and in the Middle East.
The military context reveals an important truth about our commitment to religious liberty: it is a way to use our differences to make us stronger. We are stronger when we find ways to accept willing and talented Americans of different faiths who want to serve in the military. We are stronger when we allow more schools to serve more children, including our special needs children. We are stronger when we include parents in educational decisions for their own kids.
Religious liberty won’t solve every problem that we face in 2024. But we should take heart that it will continue to be part of the solution, and it will help us continue to live with our differences in a way that makes us better.
Mark Rienzi is president and CEO of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America.
