Analysis
Key Developments in State Legislation in 2024
During the 2024 legislative session, we saw the tide of negative legislation that characterized the 2022 and 2023 legislative sessions abate somewhat, even in the face of a tumultuous general election and an erratic U.S. Supreme Court term. While state legislatures still considered many bills that would undermine civil rights and religious equality, fewer harmful policies passed - with a few notable exceptions - and numerous states passed positive legislation. However, the conspiratorial thinking and polemic rhetoric that has dominated politics at every level continued apace in 2024, even ramping up as voters prepared to make their choice in the 2024 presidential election. Many of the election’s major issues, including immigration, inflation, and Project 2025, primarily impact or are impacted by federal law. But for policy areas where state law is dominant, such as public education and health care access, state legislation was greatly impacted by the national discourse.
The 2024 legislative session was marked by particularly visible and persistent efforts to push religious ideology into public schools, both through legislation and the actions of state leaders. We have warned for some time that, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022) decision, it is more challenging for schools and advocates of church-state separation to protect against religious encroachment. We are now seeing the result of this terrible decision in states like Oklahoma, where Christian nationalist and State Superintendent Ryan Walters has repeatedly sought to impose his agenda on schools. Walters was a vocal supporter of the effort to publicly fund the nation’s first religious charter school in Oklahoma, and when that was struck down by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, he issued a mandate that, “effective immediately, all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum across specified grade levels….” And while he currently has little power to enforce this mandate, Walters also assembled a committee of white Christian nationalists and revisionist historians to revise the state’s social studies curriculum standards, which could have a significant long-term impact on education in Oklahoma.
Several other states also considered or adopted changes to curriculum standards in 2024 that incorporate Christian nationalist elements. Over the last several years, we have seen conservative educational institutions like Hillsdale College and propagandists like PragerU increasingly seek to influence teachers and insert their materials into classrooms. In 2023, Texas modified their law regarding supplemental outside materials both to require strict approval by the state Board of Education and to remove the requirement that materials be “reviewed by academic experts in the subject and grade level.” PragerU, whose biased materials could never meet such a standard, subsequently announced it was an approved educational vendor in Texas, as they have also done in Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Montana, Arizona, and Florida. In one of their videos available for use in public school classrooms, disgraced former lawyer John Eastman claims “the founding fathers never intended for church and state to be completely separate. They saw religion, specifically religions based on the Bible, as indispensable to the moral foundation of the nation they were creating.”
School chaplain bills represent another avenue through which Christian nationalists hope to push religion into secular public schools. The first school chaplain bill passed in Texas in 2023, and in 2024, we saw more than 20 such bills introduced in 14 states. These bills have little popular support, and they are broadly opposed by secular, interfaith, and education organizations. In fact, only a handful of the more than 1,200 school districts in Texas adopted school chaplain policies after the law went into effect.
Even so, Florida and Louisiana passed school chaplain laws in 2024, and Louisiana even went so far as to shield chaplains from liability for any improper activities at school, a level of protection that would never be afforded to teachers and other staff. Louisiana also passed a bill to mandate that every state-funded school and university display the Ten Commandments. The U.S. Supreme Court previously struck down a similar Kentucky law in the Stone v. Graham (1980) decision, but Christian nationalists in Louisiana likely hope the Court will take up this issue and reverse their previous decision.
An Oklahoma bill regarding released time presages another potential method by which religion can subvert public education. Released time policies allow students to leave the school premises to receive religious education, and most states have long allowed districts to set such policies. The bill that passed in Oklahoma makes it the second state where released time is mandatory for every school district, and schools must provide credit for religious classes offered during released time. Released time detracts from education time, makes teaching and school administration more difficult, and is unfair to the nonparticipating students, many of whom are nonreligious or religious minorities. When administered poorly, these programs can also result in bullying, religious coercion, and significant constitutional violations.
Partner Perspective: Released Time Programs Are Coercive and Undermine Secular Public Education
Since 2022, a growing number of states have adopted new universal school voucher laws that have no eligibility limitations. Despite the massive cost overruns, negative educational outcomes, and outright fraud associated with such laws, 2024 saw an acceleration of this trend with Alabama, Louisiana, and Oklahoma passing universal school voucher legislation. Universal vouchers have the potential to significantly undermine public education by diverting an increasing amount of taxpayer funds to pay for private, religious education year after year. In Arizona, for example, the deficits resulting from the state’s universal voucher program were so egregious that they forced the state to drastically cut its budget in other areas, including funding for public education, colleges, and universities.
The implementation of Ohio’s universal voucher program, which passed in 2023, presents another disturbing and likely unconstitutional scenario. Every other state with a voucher program or federal funding streams that support private education has restrictions that prevent religious educational institutions from using the money to build religious schools or buildings. Based on church-state separation principles, parents can pay for tuition for their children with vouchers, but religious schools can’t directly receive funding from the state in order to provide religious education or build churches. That is exactly what is happening in Ohio, where the state is providing millions of dollars directly to religious schools to allow them to renovate buildings and build classrooms. Through this legislation, Ohio is building out a separate religious education system. If left unchecked, it is likely other states will follow this example.
While there were fewer book bans passed in 2024 than in recent years, the negative impact of these bans on public education was made plainly evident. For example, vague and confusing book bans in Florida and other states led school districts to pull a wide range of books with any sexual content, including classics like Hemingway and even the dictionary. There were reports of police searching classrooms and libraries for particular books, of lawmakers circulating lists of banned books to school districts at the behest of hate groups, and of lawmakers slashing funding for schools and public libraries that refused to comply. Numerous lawsuits have found several of these laws and book bans to be unconstitutional, and even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called for a limit to the ability of individuals to challenge books in schools. Nevertheless, several states considered legislation that would criminalize librarians, usually by broadening the definition of criminal laws against “obscenity” to include books that provide sex education or have LGBTQ-related themes. Idaho and Utah passed such criminalization measures this year, while Iowa passed legislation that censors both libraries and classroom discussion of LGBTQ content, enforceable through punitive discipline rather than criminalization. In response to these continuing attacks on education, more than a dozen states introduced legislation to prohibit book bans, and these measures passed in Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington. These developments show that opposition is coalescing against the rampant censorship driven by white Christian nationalists, and over time, through local advocacy, legislation, and court victories, progress can be made to protect public education and free expression.
Over the last several years, right-wing politicians have increasingly used trans people as a wedge issue to garner political support, and the 2024 general election has been more of the same. Co-opting religious narratives, Christian nationalist lawmakers have referred to trans people as “filth,” “unrighteous,” “demons and mutants,” and “groomers” — the last implying that they are pedophiles — and electoral campaigns have spent collectively hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-trans messaging. Fortunately, there is little evidence that this rhetoric is impactful. A majority of Americans support nondiscrimination laws for trans people, and few find this to be a particularly salient issue. Nevertheless, the barrage of hate certainly has a negative impact on trans people, particularly trans young people, and the harmful state laws passed by Christian nationalist lawmakers has seriously jeopardized the civil rights of trans people in nearly half the country.
In 2022, numerous states passed legislation banning trans youth from participating in school sports, and in 2023, many of the same states prohibited trans youth from accessing necessary health care. However, anti-trans legislation in 2024 was more diffuse and difficult to categorize. Collectively, these bills may be described as impacting the day-to-day lives of trans people and undermining their ability to function in society. For example, Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina all passed bills limiting the ability of trans people to access bathrooms in government-owned buildings, including schools. States like Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Montana, and Texas made it significantly more difficult or impossible for trans people to get identity documents that match their name and gender, either through legislation or policy changes. And at least six states legally defined “sex” under state law in a binary way that denies the existence of trans people. While these bills are less easily understood than the bans on trans athletes and medical care, they impose significant negative consequences on the daily lives of trans people. However, compared to the previous couple of years, there were fewer anti-trans bills passed overall in the states, perhaps because these legislative issues are more obscure.
While nearly half of states restrict or ban medical care for trans youth, in 2024 Tennessee became the first state to restrict out-of-state travel for care, making it a civil offense. States that seek to protect access to trans health care have rightly been concerned about this eventuality, and many have passed shield laws to protect doctors and parents of trans youth. In 2024, Maine, Maryland, and Rhode Island passed similar shield laws. However, it is notable that conservative lawmakers and media stridently attacked this legislation, especially in Maine. They falsely claimed it would allow children to receive care without parental consent and remove children from parents’ custody if they refused to provide trans health care. Similarly, after Minnesota Governor Tim Walz became a vice presidential candidate, an effort was made to mischaracterize the shield law he signed into law in 2023 as allowing courts to sever parental rights or seize children from parents who fail to provide gender affirming care. It is unclear whether these types of bad faith interpretations will impede the passage of shield laws in other states.
The U.S. Supreme Court considered two cases this term that had the potential to drastically limit access to abortion and reproductive care. First, in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, religious medical providers sued to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of mifepristone and the guidelines for appropriate usage for medication abortion. In 2023, medication abortion accounted for 63% of all abortions in the U.S. Ultimately, the Supreme Court said the religious doctors lacked standing to challenge the FDA’s rule.
Unfortunately, we’ve already witnessed a backlash in state legislatures. Louisiana swiftly passed a law to make mifepristone a controlled substance, meaning that individuals can face criminal penalties for possessing the drug without a prescription. Mifepristone is an exceedingly safe drug, and its use is critical for medical care beyond abortion such as miscarriage management, stomach ulcers, and certain hormonal conditions. Because of this change, hospitals in Louisiana must impose restrictions on mifepristone that make it more difficult to access during emergencies, which will endanger patients.
Second, the Court considered Moyle v. U.S., in which the U.S. Department of Justice challenged Idaho’s exceedingly strict anti-abortion law which only allowed abortion when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.” DOJ said that this state law violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals to stabilize patients to prevent serious health harms. Doctors and hospitals were left in a legal quagmire due to these conflicting requirements, with the result being that patients were denied care until they were on the verge of death, or they were airlifted to other states to receive essential care. Although Justice Jackson urged the Court to make a decision regarding the applicability of EMTALA, the Court remanded the case without an opinion, effectively leaving this conflict unresolved. This is not the worst outcome, as many legal observers were concerned the Court could limit the applicability of EMTALA or overturn it altogether. At the same time, states are passing more and more restrictive anti-abortion laws that continue to endanger the lives of patients.
Similar to its legislation targeting medical care for trans youth, Tennessee compounded its already injurious anti-abortion law by passing a bill to prevent patients from receiving care in other states. Lawmakers passed a bill criminalizing adults who help minors travel to get an abortion without parental consent, labeling it “abortion trafficking.” Tennessee is the second state to pass such a law, as Idaho passed a similar law in 2023 that has since been tied up in litigation and has not yet gone into effect.
Another development after the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion access, has been the dramatic increase in state funding provided to “crisis pregnancy centers,” religious and tax-exempt organizations that rely on deception and shame to prevent abortions. Reproductive Health & Freedom Watch, an organization that tracks crisis pregnancy centers, estimates they receive over $1.7 billion annually and that more than $500 million has been allocated by state legislatures to these organizations between 2021 and 2024. This funding is notoriously difficult to track because it is often hidden in budget bills, but it is increasing over time and allowing these organizations to pursue their religious mission on the public’s dime and with little to no public oversight.
Fortunately, bucking a trend from previous years, no state passed a broad denial of care law in 2024. On the other hand, New York passed a health care transparency bill to ensure that hospitals make it clear when they have policy-based exclusions for various types of care, such as LGBTQ health care, abortion and reproductive care, and end-of-life care. (Note that this bill had not yet been signed by New York Governor Hochul as of our publication deadline.) This type of legislation is important because when hospitals deny care for nonmedical reasons, they generally do not inform patients, and so patients lack the information necessary to make decisions about their care. In 2023, American Atheists worked with lawmakers in Colorado to develop and pass the Patients’ Right to Know Act, comprehensive health care transparency legislation that requires hospitals to disclose to patients when they deny care for nonmedical reasons. Colorado agencies worked to successfully implement this law, and it went into full effect on October 1, 2024.
Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) are broad religious exemptions that apply whenever religious exercise is substantially burdened by state action. In effect, this creates a widely applicable exemption that religious individuals and organizations can use to insulate themselves from state law by claiming that the state is infringing on their religious exercise. In 2024, Iowa, Nebraska, and Utah passed state RFRAs. RFRAs passed in the 1990s and 2000s were modeled on a federal version of the statute, which Congress passed in 1993, but more recent bills have been exceedingly broad. Although they are supposed to apply to government action that burdens religious exercise, some RFRAs define “government action” to apply even to private individuals and organizations enforcing their own rights in court against religious organizations.
For example, soon after Iowa’s RFRA was enacted, it was interpreted by a court to prevent private citizens from suing a church under existing Iowa law to challenge its tax exemption. The court found that, under the new RFRA, even bringing the religious organization to court to defend itself was too much of a burden on religion, as the state could have enforced the tax provision itself if desired. This case is notable because it is one of the first interpretations of this type of broad state RFRA, and the decision could impact the ability of individuals to bring claims for violations of labor laws, nondiscrimination laws, and potentially even contracts with religious venues or medical malpractice laws against religious hospitals.