Religious freedom in nation's schools examined by Religious Liberty Commission

WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- The third meeting of the Department of Justice's Religious Liberty Commission Sept. 29 examined a range of religious liberty issues related to public and private schools, as well as reflections on recent instances of violence at houses of worship.

President Donald Trump in May signed an executive order creating the commission, which includes Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, among its members.

The commissioners gathered at the Museum of the Bible in Washington to examine what recommendations they should make to the president about promoting and protecting religious freedom in a report next spring. Neither Cardinal Dolan nor Bishop Barron were in attendance.

The commission's third hearing focused on religious freedom in public schools, a similar topic to their second hearing earlier in September.

Trump addressed the commission's previous hearing in September, during which he said the Department of Education will issue new guidance "protecting the right to prayer" in public schools.

Neither Trump nor the Department of Education has yet to offer details about what that guidance may include. The Trump administration previously reduced the workforce at the Department of Education and stated its intent to scale the department back.

Hannah Ruth Earl, faith director for the Department of Education, said in comments at the hearing the department's goal is to "return education to the states," and "ensure that religious stakeholders have a voice in policy making," even as they "fulfill our instruction to facilitate the closure of the department."

"And I want to underscore the commitment, because I'm not sure everyone understands this quite candidly: how committed we are at the department to fulfilling the directive to shut it down. It impacts everything we do every day," Earl said. "But that requires parents and communities and state leaders to take the charges that we are giving them."

Formally closing the department would require congressional authorization. Legislation to do so would be unlikely to clear the Senate's 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Elsewhere in the hearing, Nicole Garnett, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, argued there are "hundreds" of state and federal laws that discriminate against religion.

"All states impose religious restrictions on charter schools, which are privately operated," argued Garnett, who was involved in the legal effort to establish the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School as a publicly-funded religious school in Oklahoma.

An evenly-divided Supreme Court in May sidestepped a major ruling in the St. Isidore case over what may have otherwise been the nation's first Catholic charter school, effectively blocking the effort.

Witnesses also included Joe Kennedy, a former Washington state high school football coach at the center of a controversy over his public post-game prayers on the field.

"I was a brand new Christian, and I didn't know how to navigate these systems," Kennedy said of suddenly becoming "the poster boy" for prayer in public school settings.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 found that his practice was protected by the Constitution, but Kennedy later resigned.

"We won," he said. "We fought for seven years. We went through, me and (Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute), went through the court systems twice as Supreme Court. Yet nothing has changed fundamentally -- not on the ground, not on our level."

However, the panel also considered issues surrounding private schools, including testimony from Father Robert Sirico, a Catholic priest who alleged his parish school was improperly prohibited by Michigan law from including faith commitment in its hiring criteria. In its ongoing case, the parish said Michigan's civil rights statute's definition of sex to include sexual orientation prohibits them from freely hiring employees according to the tenets of their faith.

"Religious schools should not be forced to abandon their mission or compromise their faith. Parents should not be presented with a false Solomonic choice of fidelity to conscience or access to education that reflects their deepest convictions," he said.

Father Sirico, pastor emeritus of Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Grand Rapids, argued that private religious schools should be free to act in accordance with their faith tradition, but said he was not advocating imposing those traditions broadly.

"I want to be clear that I'm not advocating the creation of a theocracy," he said. "I'm very happy to have a competition, a cultural competition of ideas."

Father Sirico, co-founder of the Grand Rapids-based libertarian think tank Acton Institute, expressed confidence in winning such a competition of ideas, but stressed, "theocracy is bad, both for religion and for society."

Witnesses and commissioners also spoke of the death of Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder and conservative activist, who was killed Sept. 10 by a sniper during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem.

After his death, Kirk received praise from his allies in conservative politics for his willingness to debate and his advocacy for their cause. However, in discussions about his legacy, his critics also pointed to his controversial political rhetoric on subjects including race, persons experiencing same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, and immigrants.

Jentezen Franklin, an evangelical pastor, gave remarks at the commission's hearing about his relationship with Kirk. But he also mourned the lives lost from the deadly Aug. 27 mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis and those lives taken by another mass killing Sept. 28, the day before the hearing, where a gunman targeted Sunday worship at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan.

Faith leaders, Franklin said, "don't have the luxury of disunity anymore," emphasizing he felt an obligation as a Christian pastor to "speak up for the Mormons that died yesterday and ... for the Catholics that died, their precious children."

"If ever we needed to stand together and stand up for what we believe and the faith, it's time for pastors and preachers to do that," Franklin said, adding, "We're all needing to stand together as never before."