Washington, D.C., June 29, 2026 – The following is a statement from Secular Coalition for America Executive Director Steven Emmert in response to the Religious Liberty Commission’s final report.
“The Religious Liberty Commission’s final report is not a blueprint for protecting religious freedom. It is a roadmap for expanding religious privilege.
At its core, the report asks Americans to accept a fundamental shift in the relationship between religion and government. Instead of defending the First Amendment’s promise that government will remain neutral toward religion, the Commission argues that government should play a greater role in advancing and accommodating religious interests—even when doing so comes at the expense of other Americans’ constitutional rights.
That is not religious liberty. It is religious favoritism.
The Commission repeatedly invokes America’s founding principles while overlooking one of the Founders’ greatest achievements: creating the world’s first secular constitutional republic. Our country’s Founders understood that the government should neither promote religion nor inhibit it. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause work together to protect everyone—people of every faith and people of no faith.
The report treats the separation of church and state as an obstacle to be overcome rather than the constitutional safeguard that has preserved religious freedom for nearly 250 years.
It also ignores the reality of modern America. Nearly one-third of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated. Millions more belong to minority faiths that have historically relied on a secular government to protect them from religious discrimination. Yet the Commission’s recommendations overwhelmingly reflect the priorities of a particular religious worldview while giving scant attention to the rights of Americans who do not share those beliefs.
Religious freedom is not strengthened when public schools become battlegrounds for religious influence. It is not strengthened when taxpayer dollars are used to advance religious instruction. It is not strengthened when religious beliefs become the basis for denying other people equal treatment under the law.
Religious liberty belongs to every American—not just the most politically powerful or the most religious.
The Commission’s report arrives at a moment when the wall separating church and state has been steadily weakened through legislation, executive action, and court decisions. Rather than serving as a warning against further erosion, the report embraces it.
Americans should reject this vision.
Our country has welcomed extraordinary religious diversity because the government has generally refrained from taking sides in matters of faith. That constitutional balance has protected places of worship from government interference, protected individuals from government-imposed religion, and allowed believers and nonbelievers alike to live according to their own consciences.
The Secular Coalition for America will continue fighting for that vision: a nation where government neither favors religion nor discriminates against it, where every American enjoys equal rights regardless of belief, and where the Constitution—not religious ideology—guides public policy.
Religious liberty is too important to be redefined as religious privilege.”
Steven Emmert,
Executive Director
Secular Coalition for America
