The extent to which we protect the constitutional rights of young people strongly influences how much they respect and understand those rights as adults. As the Supreme Court noted in an early student rights case, “That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.” The ACLU works to educate young people about their rights and safeguard those rights in public schools and other settings.

The right to practice religion, or no religion at all, is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. It is sometimes wrongly imagined that the ACLU does not vigorously protect rights of freedom to exercise religion, particularly of Christians. In fact, the ACLU defends both the right against governmental establishment of religion and the right to freely practice one’s religion without governmental interference. These rights operate hand in hand, and together ensure that freedom of belief (and non-belief) can flourish.