Religious Liberty

Religious Liberty

Kansas School Board Undermines Science Standards (Again)

Senate OKs Education Relief Bill Including Troubling Voucher Mechanism

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Statement of PFAW President Ralph G. Neas on the Senate’s Katrina school vouchers bill

Progressive Broadcaster Squelched

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Bipartisan Senate Rejects Bush Torture Policy

Under Cover of Katrina, Bush Advances Right-Wing School Voucher Plan

Government-Funded Religious Discrimination in Head Start Programs

House Votes To Reauthorize Usa Patriot Act

Supreme Court Reaffirms Constitutional Principle of Government Neutrality Toward Religion in Split Decisions on Ten Commandments

The Supreme Court today reaffirmed the constitutional principle of government neutrality toward religion, which protects every American’s religious liberty, while ruling in two different ways in cases involving public displays of the Ten Commandments.

Groups Cross Political Divide to Defend Due Process

People For the American Way Foundation and the Rutherford Institute filed a joint amicus brief in the case Padilla v. Hanft in support of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd, which found that the government could not indefinitely detain Jose Padilla, an American seized on American soil and detained without charge since 2002 – instead it must either charge him with a crime or release him. The joint brief, drafted with the Chicago office of Sidley & Austin, was filed in the U.S.

Status in the 110th Congress

What Can You do to Maintain Constitutional Liberties and Freedom in America?

Dept of Ed Goes Silent on FOIA Requests after Facing Criticism in Vouchers Report

PFAW Foundation Files Suit, Seeks Unlawfully Withheld Records

Washington, DC – Yesterday, People For the American Way Foundation (PFAWF) filed suit against the U.S. Department of Education in federal court in the District of Columbia over the Department’s unlawful failure to disclose certain records concerning the new federally funded school voucher program in the District of Columbia. The law firm of Jenner & Block is co-counsel with PFAWF in this lawsuit.

Department of Education documents show legislated priorities not met, inconvenient information obscured by program administrators

Washington, D.C. - Documents obtained from the U.S.

Flaws and Failings

D.C. voucher proponents have attempted to obscure limitations on “choice” actually available to students in the voucher program

Flaws and Failings

As a matter of education policy, the federally-mandated D.C. voucher program is unsound and unwise, authorizing the expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize private schools that are effectively unaccountable to the public for their use of those funds. Moreover, as this preliminary examination of the D.C.

Flaws and Failings

¹ See Pub. L. No. 108-199, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004. The provision creating the D.C. voucher program was included in this multi-billion-dollar omnibus appropriations measure after a separate bill that would have created a voucher program in D.C. failed to receive Senate approval on its own.

Flaws and Failings

In early 2004, Congress passed, and President Bush signed into law, an omnibus appropriations act that also created a new federally-funded school voucher program in the District of Columbia, the first such federally-funded voucher program in the country.

Flaws and Failings

DOE’s documents indicate that of the more than 1300 students who were awarded vouchers for the 2004-05 school year, fewer than 75 attended D.C. public schools that are most “in need of improvement” -- the highest priority group specified by Congress