The rulebook has changed: what the DOJ's new religious liberty guidance means for you
On July 23, the Department of Justice quietly replaced one of the most consequential documents in American religious liberty law that most people have never read. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an updated memorandum on federal religious liberty protections, superseding the guidance Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued in October 2017. The press release landed the next day. Every federal agency is now required to follow it.
Here is why a memo matters. Most religious liberty disputes never reach a courtroom. They happen at the counter of a federal benefits office, in an HR meeting at a federal contractor, in the fine print of a grant condition. The guidance is the rulebook agencies consult before those disputes ever become cases. When the rulebook changes, thousands of small decisions change with it.
What actually changed? The 2017 memo predates nearly a decade of Supreme Court decisions that reshaped this field. The update writes those decisions into the government's own instructions: Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, where a Catholic foster care agency could not be excluded from a city program for its beliefs about marriage; Kennedy v. Bremerton, the praying football coach; Carson v. Makin, which held that a state offering tuition aid cannot exclude religious schools; Groff v. DeJoy, which strengthened workplace religious accommodations; Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin, on religious tax exemption; and Mahmoud v. Taylor, last term's ruling that parents may opt their children out of certain public school instruction that conflicts with their faith.
