Contact: Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 212-371-3191, pr@catholicleague.org
 
NEW YORK, June 20, 2014 /Standard Newswire/ -- Bill Donohue welcomes the new school religion law in North Carolina:

Yesterday, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed into law a bill that protects the religious liberty rights of teachers, school personnel, and students. It passed 106-9 in the House, and by a margin of 48-1 in the Senate. Religious freedom, including voluntary student-led prayer, is now secured. Nothing in the law is coercive.

Militant secularists are determined to scrub the schools, and society in general, clean of the public expression of religion. Their opposition to the free exercise of religion, and their twisted interpretation of the plain meaning of the so-called establishment clause, puts them in the historical camp with tyrants. The Framers would not recognize what they have done to the First Amendment.

Just last week, a stellar high school student from Brawley Union High School in Brawley, California was told he could not exercise his constitutional right to speak about his faith at graduation; he did so anyway. This should never be allowed to happen again, anywhere. When students making obscene speeches in public are defended on First Amendment grounds, and students electing to speak about God are denied, it calls for a new law.

The North Carolina bill is the kind of legislation that is needed in every state. To that end, we are contacting the governors in the other 49 states asking them to adopt the North Carolina law as a model in their own state. We are also sending them a copy of the law that Governor McCrory signed.