For Immediate Release Contact: Sarah Henry, (202) 238-9088 ext. 105, shenry@americanhumanist.org (October 28, 2019, Washington, D.C.) – Attorneys at the American Humanist Association (AHA) have joined with other organizational legal teams to submit an amicus brief in support of adoption services free from religious discrimination. In December 2018, New Hope Family Services, a child welfare agency that receives public funding, filed a lawsuit arguing that a new regulation mandating nondiscrimination in adoption practices violated the agency’s religious freedom. Their complaint was dismissed by a district court in New York in May 2019, leading to the current appeal by the adoption agency. “Pub

For Immediate Release Contact: Sarah Henry, (202) 238-9088, shenry@americanhumanist.org (Washington, D.C., October 17, 2019) – Impressionable first grade students will no longer be attending a Christian play at a private Christian college after the American Humanist Association (AHA) legal team raised constitutional concerns. The field trip, intended to take place today, unquestionably promoted Christianity by asking students to attend a depiction of the explicitly Christian biblical story of Jonah and the whale. After school district officials resisted their responsibility to uphold the Establishment Clause, Monica Miller, AHA’s Legal Director and Senior Counsel, warned Cherokee Community S

For Immediate Release Contact: Sarah Henry, (202) 238-9088, shenry@americanhumanist.org (Washington, D.C., October 15, 2019) – Incarcerated humanists at Nash Correctional Institution, in Nashville, NC, just attended the facility’s first ever humanist meeting. This victory has been a long-fought battle. After the North Carolina prison system refused to recognize humanism, the American Humanist Association’s legal team intervened. The case was filed in February 2015 on behalf of Kwame Jamal Teague, an incarcerated member of the American Humanist Association, after prison officials failed to heed a warning letter sent in July 2012. In March 2018, the court ruled in favor of the nontheist organi

For Immediate Release Contact: Sarah Henry, (202) 238-9088, shenry@americanhumanist.org (Washington, D.C., October 14, 2019) – Attorneys at the American Humanist Association (AHA) sent a letter late Friday to officials at the Cherokee Community School District in Cherokee, Iowa, on behalf of a parent of a local first grade student. The student's class plans to visit a private Christian school (Northwestern College) in Orange City, Iowa, to attend a performance of "Jonah and the Giant Fish" on Thursday, October 17, 2019. Promoting attendance at a depiction of an explicitly Christian biblical story undoubtedly promotes Christianity. As the letter notes, “a public elementary school scheduling a

For Immediate Release Contact: Sarah Henry, (202) 238-9088, shenry@americanhumanist.org (Washington, D.C., October 10, 2019) – The American Humanist Association (AHA) legal team just admonished leaders at the Bay St. Louis-Waveland School District in southern Mississippi after repeated constitutional violations. These egregious violations of the constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state include a football coach who hosts weekly meetings for the team at a local Baptist church and repeatedly invokes Jesus in his accounting class. “The Constitution emphatically prohibits public school teachers from proselytizing Christianity to students during school hours and during extracurricu

This article originally appeared on TheHumanist.com. Today, in what will surely be one of the most discussed days of the 2019 term, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in three cases concerning the scope of Title VII’s prohibition against workplace discrimination “because of the individual’s . . . sex.” (42 U.S. Code § 2000e–2(a)(1-2). At issue is whether the words “because of the individual’s sex” address not only disparate treatment based on hostility toward an employee’s sex-assigned-at-birth, but also an employee’s gender identity (R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC) and sexual orientation (Bostock v. Clayton County and Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda). The potential fallou

For Immediate Release Contact: Sarah Henry, shenry@americanhumanist.org, (202) 238-9088 (Washington, D.C., October 4, 2019) – Humanist and nontheist activists across Kentucky have joined with attorneys at the American Humanist Association in a warning letter following Governor Matthew Bevin’s (R) blatant Christian proselytization in a recent public video. On October 1, 2019, Bevin shared a video promoting Focus on the Family’s “Bring Your Bible to School Day” on his collected official social media channels. The video, in addition to endorsing the flagship event of the Christian nationalist group, flouts the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The American Humanist Association’s conc

For Immediate Release Contact: Sarah Henry, (202) 238-9088, shenry@americanhumanist.org (Washington, D.C., October 3, 2019) – The American Humanist Association received written assurances yesterday from the Manhattan Beach Unified School District in response to a warning letter sent to district administrators more than two weeks ago. Monica Miller, Legal Director and Senior Counsel at the American Humanist Association, warned that Mira Costa High School officials were in violation of the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent as they discouraged students from protesting the Pledge of Allegiance. On September 11, 2019, the principal announced that he was “personally offended by any teacher