Law School Groups Help Launch Website to Shine Light on Religious Discrimination Across the United States

On April 3, 2025 Notre Dame Law School’s Education Law Project and Lindsay & Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic, in partnership with the EPIC Coalition and Teach Coalition, launched an interactive website that documents laws and regulations that discriminate against religious organizations across all 50 states. The website aims to help researchers, advocates, and policymakers identify state laws that potentially violate the First Amendment by denying religious believers equal access to a wide variety of public programs.

Across the country, hundreds of state laws deny religious organizations the ability to participate in otherwise available public programs, merely because they are religious. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that such religious discrimination violates the First Amendment. Yet these exclusions remain in every state, denying support to faith-based organizations that provide an array of desperately needed services, including education, healthcare, poverty support, social welfare, and more.

The new website provides a database highlighting state statutes and regulations that prohibit religious organizations from participating in public programs on equal footing with their secular counterparts. Although the database does not express a view on the ultimate constitutionality of any particular law, its authors hope that the repository may be the first step towards identifying—and finally changing—those that do violate First Amendment rights.

“The First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religion guarantees the equal treatment of religious believers and institutions in public life and public programs,” said Nicole Stelle Garnett, John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and director of the Education Law Project. “That means that the government may not discriminate against faith-based organizations or compel them to erase their identity to access public resources that enable them to serve the common good.”

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down religious discrimination in programs like these,” said John Meiser, associate clinical professor and director of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Clinic. “But the Court can’t inspect every law. The real work of giving practical effect to these constitutional rulings falls to our nation’s policymakers to make things right.”

The website identifies a range of state regulations that exclude religious organizations from government programs, including:

• Charitable Funding: States like Massachusetts, Georgia, and Colorado explicitly exclude religious charities from receiving donations of surplus goods or employee-directed contributions—even when they provide essential services like food, shelter, or addiction recovery.

• Social Services: Maryland, Illinois, and New York block faith-based

• organizations from receiving grants to operate juvenile facilities, adult daycare centers or serve at-risk youth—limiting care options for the most vulnerable.

• Special Education Services: States like California, North Dakota, and Montana bar school districts from contracting with religiously affiliated institutions for special education, even when secular institutions are eligible.

• Preschool Funding: States such as Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Oregon deny religiously affiliated preschools access to public funding for early childhood education programs.

• Arts and Cultural Funding: Laws in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and New Jersey exclude religious organizations from receiving grants for arts and cultural initiatives.

Students in Notre Dame Law School’s Education Law Project and Lindsay & Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic and Notre Dame Law School’s Education Law Project play a key role in the project, providing legal research and analysis to identify laws that discriminate against religion.

By cataloging these policies, the website will equip legal advocates and religious organizations with the tools to challenge restrictions and promote equal treatment under the law. As awareness grows, the initiative aims to encourage meaningful legal reforms that ensure faith-based organizations are not excluded in government programs simply because of their religion.

For more information, visit the website here.