The long-running legal dispute over the land known as Chí’chil Biłdagoteel — loosely translated in English as “Oak Flat” — has taken another turn. A federal court halted a planned transfer of the land, which was scheduled to take place as soon as June 16 of this year.

Hundreds of faith leaders and dozens of faith organizations — including BJC — are raising their collective voices this week against dangerous new legislation that would create a national school voucher system. Their urgent message? Keep the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) out of the budget.

Oklahoma v. Drummond is a critical case, testing whether longheld Establishment Clause principles in the public school context will endure under the current Supreme Court’s trend away from protecting the institutional separation of church and state.

In oral argument in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, the U.S. Supreme Court probed the issue of whether and to what extent parents of young schoolchildren enjoy a right under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to opt their students out of curricular activities that conflict with their religious beliefs.

If the Court holds that states can or even must accept religious schools as charter schools, it would upend decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. As BJC’s brief says, “The state may not directly fund religious instruction. That line has long preserved both faith and freedom. It should be respected here.”

In a letter to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, dozens of faith leaders – including Christian leaders – explained why returning an enormous, permanent Ten Commandments monument to the grounds of the Kentucky Capitol is a bad idea.

A lawsuit filed by several Quaker congregations challenges the Trump administration’s new policy as a violation of religious freedom protections under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the freedom to associate under the First Amendment, and as a violation of various provisions of the Administrative Procedures Act.