2025 year in review — Legal team finds success taking on new and old challenges
By Patrick Elliott
When I meet new people and tell them that I work at FFRF, I receive one of two typical responses. They often say, “That must be so hard right now” or “You must be so busy.” Yes, both things are true. Over the last year, we have faced significant challenges to the separation of state and church. The legal department at FFRF has also been busy with advocacy and taking on new lawsuits.
We saw state legislatures push religion into public schools despite clear Supreme Court precedent prohibiting those actions. We saw old adversaries bring FFRF to court (Hey, isn’t it our job to sue people?). We have continued to face unprecedented resistance by Christian nationalists but have made strides and secured significant legal victories.
In 2025, we filed a record number of lawsuits and joined forces with other civil rights groups to do so. We focused much of our advocacy work on protecting public school students from coercive religious activity. We have renewed energy and have implemented legal strategies that seek to reestablish state/church separation via state constitutions given the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent diminished view of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Here is an overview of our legal work in 2025:
Litigation
In 2025, FFRF favorably settled three lawsuits and filed 11 new court challenges, adding to our three other ongoing cases. Increasingly, we have worked with partner organizations to challenge state laws that significantly violate constitutional rights. I will address some of the highlights from our caseload.
Ten Commandments cases
We have been actively fighting state laws that mandate displaying the Ten Commandments in all classrooms in Arkansas and Texas. We are winning each of those cases so far.
In June, FFRF and a coalition filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven families with children in Arkansas. In August, the Western District of Arkansas issued a preliminary injunction for the plaintiffs, prohibiting school district defendants from putting up the displays. We later added two school districts to the lawsuit and the court ordered the districts to remove all Ten Commandments displays while the case proceeds toward a final resolution.
FFRF was also part of three similar coalition lawsuits in Texas. In July, the coalition filed suit on behalf of 16 families in Texas to block posters from going up. On Aug. 20, the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction for the plaintiffs that prohibits the sued school districts from displaying Ten Commandments posters while the case continues. In September, the coalition filed a second Texas lawsuit on behalf of 15 additional families against their school districts. A second judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered Ten Commandments displays to be removed. Finally, the coalition filed a class action lawsuit in December against all Texas school districts not involved in the prior cases. That case is proceeding before a judge in San Antonio and a ruling is expected this year.
A similar Ten Commandments lawsuit filed in 2024 in Louisiana is now before the full court of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A district court judge and three-judge panel had previously ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
State constitutions matter!
FFRF has worked to protect public funds, public property and public school students via lawsuits filed under state constitutions.
FFRF and a coalition filed a lawsuit on behalf of a group of Quincy, Mass., residents to halt the planned installation of two large religious statues of Catholic saints at the entrance of Quincy’s new public safety building. The lawsuit centers on Mayor Thomas P. Koch’s 2023 plan to construct two 10-foot-tall bronze statues of Catholic saints and place them at the entrance of the building, which will house the headquarters of Quincy’s police and fire departments. The statues would cost taxpayers at least $850,000. The trial court issued a preliminary injunction against the placement of the statutes and the case is now on appeal.
A second lawsuit under a state constitution was resolved in record time. On June 9, FFRF and its partners filed a lawsuit on behalf of residents of Jefferson County, Ill., seeking removal of a 7-foot-tall Ten Commandments monument from the Jefferson County Courthouse lawn. The monument was first placed in the courthouse lobby and later moved to the front lawn of the courthouse. In July, the monument was relocated to the West Salem Trinity Church in Mount Vernon. On July 29, a joint motion to dismiss was filed and affirmed “the monument will not return to county property.”
The final state court case was a challenge to the nation’s first religious public charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The substantive claims brought in this case were resolved when the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4, which affirmed the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in the similar lawsuit, Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board. The court ruled that it would be unconstitutional for St. Isidore to operate as a religious public charter school. This case was voluntarily dismissed in July as a result of the favorable Drummond decision.
New opportunities
In January of 2025, FFRF filed a lawsuit challenging a Wisconsin law that exempts two rental properties owned by religious entities from paying property taxes. The law in question was specifically created to benefit properties owned by a Catholic congregation and a Presbyterian church. Both apartment buildings are designed for student renters and are extremely profitable properties. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit are FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, taxpayer David Peterson and FFRF itself.
In October, FFRF filed a lawsuit on behalf of a South Carolina resident challenging an election policy that requires poll workers to swear a religious oath. Election officials would not permit the resident to take a secular affirmation in place of the oath.
Old foes lose again
FFRF won a lawsuit over prayers at a California school board’s meetings in 2016, which was affirmed on appeal in 2018. In 2025, the board for the Chino Valley Unified School District filed a motion to reopen the case, arguing that the injunction issued in 2016 should be lifted. In October, the district court ruled in favor of FFRF and declined to modify the injunction. The board has filed an appeal (again).
Former Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters sued FFRF last year. You read that right. FFRF was sued by a state official for doing the work that we do. It appeared that the lawsuit was in response to letters FFRF sent to public schools in Oklahoma objecting to school-sponsored religious activities. The district court granted FFRF’s motion to dismiss in August. Walters not only lost the lawsuit, he also lost his government position when he resigned in September.
FFRF attorneys have also been busy preparing informative friend-of-the-court briefs. We filed seven such briefs in cases around the country.
Nonlitigation advocacy
We primarily resolve disputes through letters of complaint to government officials or by providing information to members and other complainants pursuing matters on their own. FFRF’s legal intake team handles incoming complaints over constitutional violations at no cost to complainants. In 2025, our intake attorneys processed 1,892 incoming state/church contacts. Our attorneys sent 603 letters of complaint to government agencies across the country.
While we work on matters from all over the country, a disproportionate number of complaints last year originated in one region of the country. We handled a higher number of complaints per capita from Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
In 2025, FFRF was able to achieve 212 victories through nonlitigation efforts. Those victories will continue to come in through 2026. The vast majority of the victories we achieved involved protecting public school students from religion.
These victories include stopping a first grade teacher in Georgia’s Jenkins County School System from leading her class in prayer prior to lunch every day. After letting a Christian band perform and distribute religious pamphlets to elementary schoolers, the Davidson County School District in North Carolina took action to ensure there will be no repeat performance. Libraries in Omaha, Neb., will remain open on Easter Sunday in the future. Isabella County, Mich., removed a bible quote it had installed on the wall of its new jail facility. And, nine school boards across the country have stopped opening their meetings with prayer since last year after being contacted by FFRF.
Education
The FFRF legal team works to provide legal education and highlight the importance of state/church separation. This endeavor is becoming increasingly important given the ultra-conservative majority of the Supreme Court and its fixation on increasing religious privilege for Christians by strengthening the Free Exercise Clause and diminishing the Establishment Clause.
FFRF attorneys regularly respond to news media requests on legal issues related to religion, including 61 interviews or responses in 2025. We also frequently write or speak on FFRF media platforms about our work. In addition, FFRF attorneys were featured speakers at 11 events last year.
FFRF jointly produces the “We Dissent” podcast with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It is a monthly podcast featuring FFRF Deputy Legal Director Liz Cavell and secular women attorneys discussing religious liberty issues in the state and federal courts and our joint work to keep religion and government separate.
Looking ahead
FFRF is already preparing new cases and working to respond to significant threats to the First Amendment in 2026. First, we are pursuing Freedom of Information Act requests related to several Trump administration religious initiatives. Second, we are preparing to file a new lawsuit to ensure that public schools are not publicly funded religious schools. Third, we will continue to provide excellent results for students and parents through our advocacy letters.
Patrick Elliott is FFRF’s legal director.
