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Doug Jager, a band student of Native-American ancestry, complained about the Christian prayers at his Georgia public school's football games. Rather than address his concerns, the school lectured him on Christianity and proposed an alternative that appeared neutral yet would result in the continuation of the Christian prayers. In striking down the school's proposal, Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. understood some of the ramifications of state-sponsored Christianity. Despite Supreme Court rulings limiting Christian invocations at public-school events, government-sponsored Christian prayers and Christian symbols remain plentiful in the United States. This proliferation of government-sponsored Christianity around the country both reflects and strengthens Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism maintains that the United States is and should be a Christian nation, and Christian nationalism's defining characteristic is the belief that religious identity and national identity overlap completely. Christian nationalism necessarily implies a hierarchy based on religion, with Christian insiders who are true Americans and non-Christian outsiders who are not. Moreover, studies show that those with strong identification with Christian nationalism have more hostile attitudes towards out-groups, religious and otherwise. That hostility paves the way for hostile public policy. Consequently, Christian nationalism does not simply lead to symbolic exclusion from the community and nation; it may lead to actual exclusion. Thus, as the sociological evidence establishes, the potential harms of government-sponsored Christianity are not just offense but also discriminatory attitudes and discriminatory policies. The insight embedded in Establishment Clause doctrine that the government should not favor one religion over others is validated by contemporary social science. As a result, instead of eviscerating separation of church and state, the Establishment Clause ought to be recognized as more important than ever.

This Article argues that the Supreme Court's use of originalism is opportunistic because sometimes the Court relies on it, and sometimes it does not. This inconsistency is evident in two recent decisions with significant Establishment Clause consequences: Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014) and Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2017). In Town of Greece, the Supreme Court applied an originalist analysis to uphold the government's policy of sponsoring predominantly Christian prayers before town meetings. In Trinity Lutheran Church, the Supreme Court failed to conduct an originalist analysis of direct government funding to churches before ordering a state to award a cash grant to a Christian church. The Court's inconsistent application-even when dealing with a single clause-raises the possibility that the Court's use of originalism is based less on principle than on desired outcomes.

As recent headlines reveal, conflicts and debates around the world increasingly involve secularism. National borders and traditional religions cannot keep people in tidy boxes as political struggles, doctrinal divergences, and demographic trends are sweeping across regions and entire continents. And secularity is increasing in society, with a growing number of people in many regions having no religious affiliation or lacking interest in religion. Simultaneously, there is a resurgence of religious participation in the politics of many countries. How might these diverse phenomena be better understood? The Oxford Handbook of Secularism offers a wide-ranging and in-depth examination of this global conversation, bringing together the views of an international collection of prominent experts in their respective fields.

Picture a county clerk who refuses to issue a marriage license to an LGBT couple or a city bus driver who insists on wearing a hijab. The clerk is fired for failing to fulfill job responsibilities and the bus driver for violating official dress codes. Both claim that their termination violates the First Amendment speech and religion clauses. There is a well-developed First Amendment government employee speech jurisprudence. Less developed is the doctrine and literature for First Amendment government employee religion. The existing Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence usually does not specifically account for the government employee context. This Article attempts to fill that gap by developing a government employee religion doctrine based on the existing government employee speech doctrine. Part I summarizes government employee speech doctrine. Part II imagines a parallel government employee religion doctrine and applies it to the opening hypotheticals. It concludes that government employees who are religiously opposed to an aspect of their job would lose their religion claims for multiple reasons. In contrast, employees who wish to wear religious garb have much stronger claims. Part III addresses two concerns with my proposed government employee religion doctrine. One criticism is that government employee speech doctrine is too flawed to serve as a model. Another is that speech and religion are too dissimilar to base one on the other.

The ever-expanding Free Speech Clause has made possible claims that would have been unthinkable until recently. This symposium Essay examines the compelled speech claims of two hypothetical county clerks who believe that marriage should be limited to unions between one man and one woman, and who argue that forcing them to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples compels them to speak in favor of same-sex marriage in violation of the Free Speech Clause. When a government employee such as a county clerk speaks, she may not be speaking as just a private individual. She may also be speaking as the government. This governmental component affects each side of the speech versus equality analysis. First, the Free Speech Clause interests in speech are weaker (sometimes to the point of extinguishment) when the speech is not purely private. Second, to the extent the government employee's conduct is the government's, then it amounts to state action, and the Equal Protection Clause is triggered Part H addresses the free speech claims of a county clerk who is terminated after she informs a same-sex couple that by reason of her beliefs, she cannot grant them a marriage license. The outcome here is straightforward: she loses. Because her refusal will be treated as the government's own, her individual free speech interests are at their lowest while the government's equal protection interests are at their highest. Part III addresses the free speech claims of a clerk who has found a coworker willing to cover for her, but her supervisor declines to accommodate her and instead fires her for refusing to do her job. The analysis here is more complicated, as it raises questions about expressive conduct, official duties, and expressive harms.