As public-school students return to classrooms for the new school year, some could face an unexpected test: religious indoctrination.

Thanks to various state laws enacted during the 2023 legislative session, some schools could try to impose official prayer, proselytizing, or other religious messages on students. But even if state law purports to allow these activities, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not. Public schools are not Sunday schools, and we’ll be watching to make sure it stays that way.

Among the top offenders we have our eye on is Texas. Although state lawmakers narrowly failed to enact a bill requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms, they succeeded in passing a law that authorizes public school districts to employ, or accept as volunteers, chaplains who will “provide support, services, and programs for students.” In a letter sent to every school board throughout Texas, we warned officials that “permitting volunteers to act as chaplains and proselytize students in public schools — let alone employing them — would violate the First Amendment.”

Another state we’re monitoring is Idaho, where lawmakers passed a bill purporting to allow any public school employee to “pray at any time he is otherwise free to engage in personal conversations or other personal conduct.” Under this broad provision, a teacher could try to claim a right to kneel in prayer in front of students as they file in for homeroom or while they’re taking an exam, as long as the teacher would be permitted to send personal texts or read a book during that same period.

A Religious Public Charter School in Oklahoma? Not on Our Watch.

A religious school can’t be a public school, and a public school can’t be religious. These fundamental legal tenets have long protected both...

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Unfortunately, Idaho is not alone. Kentucky enacted a similar measure in March of this year, and North Dakota lawmakers considered a comparable law. While the North Dakota legislation did not pass, it could be re-introduced in the next legislative session. These and other recent measures aiming to inject officially sponsored religion into public schools are no doubt inspired by the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton, which upheld the right of a public school football coach to pray at the 50-yard-line after games. Idaho even dubbed its teacher-prayer statute “Coach Kennedy’s Law.”

But despite state lawmakers’ wishes to the contrary, Kennedy did not authorize the broad promotion of prayer or religion by public school staff. The Supreme Court was clear about the limits of the ruling. Coach Kennedy’s prayers were quiet and private and not endorsed by the school. They fell outside his official responsibilities, did not involve or coerce students, and were not conducted in the presence of a captive audience. All of these factors were essential to the court’s ruling in Kennedy, and employee prayers that do not share these features remain unconstitutional.

As frustrating as the Kennedy decision was, it did not give public school officials free rein to promote their religious beliefs and practices to students. To the extent that lawmakers or public school officials in Texas, Idaho, Kentucky, or North Dakota — or any other state — mistakenly believe otherwise, we’re putting them on notice: Students still have the constitutional right to a public education free from religious indoctrination and discrimination. It’s that basic.

In the past year, Mary Wood has gone through an ordeal that’s increasingly familiar to teachers, librarians, and school administrators across the country: She is being targeted by activists who want to censor what books are in libraries and what discussions happen in classrooms.

Mary is an English teacher at Chapin High School in Chapin, South Carolina. As originally reported in The State, she assigned Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” a nonfiction book about the Black experience in the United States, as part of a lesson plan on research and argumentation in her advanced placement class. District officials ordered her to stop teaching the book. They alleged that it violated a state budget proviso that forbids a broad range of subject matter involving race and history.

“Between the World and Me” was published in 2015 as an open letter by Coates to his son, reflecting on currents of hope and despair in the struggle for racial justice in the United States. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, whose judges said, “Incorporating history and personal memoir, Coates has succeeded in creating an essential text for any thinking American today.”

Coates’ book has been the target of censorship campaigns across the country where book banners are targeting books by and about people of color. In the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, 30 percent of the titles banned were about race, racism, or featured characters of color, according to PEN America. South Carolina is one of five states where book bans have been the most prevalent, alongside Texas, Florida, Missouri, and Utah.

Mary Wood has found herself right in the middle of this nationwide attack on the right to learn and the freedom to read.

The following is an interview with Mary about her experience. It has been edited for length and clarity. For more information about how you can fight back against the wave of school censorship in South Carolina, join the Freedom to Read South Carolina coalition and visit our Students’ Rights page. You can learn more about how the ACLU is defending our right to learn nationwide here.

American Civil Liberties Union

Defending Our Right to Learn | ACLU

What you need to know about the new string of classroom censorship and book ban attacks impacting students and teachers across the country.

ACLU: You assigned “Between the World and Me” to an Advanced Placement (AP) Language Arts class. Tell me about that.

Mary Wood: So the lesson plan began with a couple of videos to provide background information about the topic. It discussed racism, redlining, and access to education, which are all topics that Ta-Nehisi Coates covers in his [book]. That was to prepare students. Then I provided a lesson on annotation of texts according to AP standards and expectations, things which should be helpful for them on their essay and in collegiate-level reading and writing. Finally, I provided them with information about different themes that the book touches on, under the umbrella of the Black experience in modern America.

The idea was for them to read the book, identify quotes from the text that covered those different themes, select a theme for themselves, and then research what Coates said about that theme on their own to determine whether or not what he was stating held water — if they agreed with it, if it was valid. The goal was for them to look at a variety of texts from a variety of sources: “Here is an argument. Is it valid?”

We were listening along with Coates’ Audible recitation of the book, and they were to be annotating as they went along. We didn’t get that far — we didn’t get to the part where they do research — because we didn’t finish the book.

ACLU: You and your teaching of this book have been a topic of discussion now at a few school board meetings. At one of the recent meetings, several people noticed that Ta-Nehisi Coates himself showed up and sat with you in the boardroom. Tell me a little bit about how that came about and what it meant to you for him to be there.

Mary Wood: I had given an interview on “The Mehdi Hasan Show,” and Ta-Nehisi’s publicist reached out and asked for my information, and he called. He wanted to talk about what had happened, and he was concerned not for his book specifically, but for censorship in general. He offered that support, and I thought it was a really special and notable thing for him to do.

ACLU: You’ve been personally the subject of all kinds of public comments, from vitriol on the one hand to deep support on the other, and it’s all happened in the town where you grew up. What have you learned about your community while going through this?

Mary Wood: It’s not as staunch as I perhaps thought. I think it’s really easy to assume that the loudest voices are the only voices, but I have seen a different side of that. I saw teachers show up. Teachers in general are afraid to speak out, but the ones who did spoke out in ways that haven’t really happened before. I think that this is important, and it was important to them, so much that they were willing to come out of their comfort zones.

ACLU: How are you feeling about the upcoming school year?

Mary Wood: I’m feeling very anxious, honestly. I don’t know what to expect. The [July 17] board meeting had a wonderful showing of support, not just for me but for educators in general and for the material that we teach. Trusting us is really helpful.

If you look at the board meeting before that, there was a lot of discussion about me deserving to be terminated. One person made a comment that they’ll be keeping their eyes on us. Despite all the kind words and support from the last school board meeting, that one really sticks with you. It stuck with me anyway.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how I’m going to be received by parents and students. I think it’s unfortunate how I’m definitely considering every single thing that I do — and not that I wouldn’t before, but you’re on this heightened alert.

ACLU: This is a challenge that a lot of teachers are facing right now. Is there any advice you’d give to teachers, librarians, anybody who finds themselves in the spotlight like you’ve been?

Mary Wood: I would say it’s important to really look at the policies that are in place. Even though from my perspective I did not break a single policy, I was still said to have. I think it’s really important to not acquiesce just because somebody says something. That doesn’t mean that it’s true.

I would say be bold and don’t back down. Look for resources. Maybe I’m fortunate enough that this story did make national headlines so that it drew attention from the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, from the National Education Association, from other people who are really valuable resources. If I could do anything, it would be to find a way to bring this all together.

This blog was originally published by the ACLU of South Carolina.

If you applied for a new job in the last few years, chances are an artificial intelligence (AI) tool was used to make decisions impacting whether or not you got the job. Long before ChatGPT and generative AI ushered in a flood of public discussion about the dangers of AI, private companies and government agencies had already incorporated AI tools into just about every facet of our daily lives, including in housing, education, finance, public benefits, law enforcement, and health care. Recent reports indicate that 70 percent of companies and 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies are already using AI-based and other automated tools in their hiring processes, with increasing use in lower wage job sectors such as retail and food services where Black and Latine workers are disproportionately concentrated.

AI-based tools have been incorporated into virtually every stage of the hiring process. They are used to target online advertising for job opportunities and to match candidates to jobs and vice versa on platforms such as LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter. They are used to reject or rank applicants using automated resume screening and chatbots based on knockout questions, keyword requirements, or specific qualifications or characteristics. They are used to assess and measure often amorphous personality characteristics, sometimes through online versions of multiple-choice tests that ask situational or outlook questions, and sometimes through video-game style tools that analyze how someone plays a game. And if you have ever been asked to record a video of yourself as part of an application, a human may or may not have ever viewed it: Some employers instead use AI tools that purport to measure personality traits through voice analysis of tone, pitch, and word choice and video analysis of facial movements and expressions.

Many of these tools pose an enormous danger of exacerbating existing discrimination in the workplace based on race, sex, disability, and other protected characteristics, despite marketing claims that they are objective and less discriminatory. AI tools are trained with a large amount of data and make predictions about future outcomes based on correlations and patterns in that data — many tools that employers are using are trained on data about the employer’s own workforce and prior hiring processes. But that data is itself reflective of existing institutional and systemic biases.

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Moreover, the correlations that an AI tool uncovers may not actually have a causal connection with being a successful employee, may not themselves be job-related, and may be proxies for protected characteristics. For example, one resume screening tool identified being named Jared and playing high school lacrosse as correlated with being a successful employee. Likewise, the amorphous personality traits that many AI tools are designed to measure — characteristics such as positivity, ability to handle pressure, or extroversion — are often not necessary for the job, may reflect standards and norms that are culturally specific, or can screen out candidates with disabilities such as autism, depression, or attention deficit disorder.

Predictive tools that rely on analysis of facial, audio, or physical interaction with a computer are even worse. We are extremely skeptical that it’s possible to measure personality characteristics accurately through things such as how fast someone clicks a mouse, the tone of a person’s voice, or facial expressions. And even if it is possible, predictive tools that rely on analysis of facial, audio, or physical interaction with a computer increase the risk that individuals will be automatically rejected or scored lower on the basis of disabilities, race, and other protected characteristics.

Beyond questions of efficacy and fairness, people often have little or no awareness that such tools are being used, let alone how they work or that these tools may be making discriminatory decisions about them. Applicants often do not have enough information about the process to know whether to seek an accommodation on the basis of disability, and the lack of transparency makes it more difficult to detect discrimination and for individuals, private lawyers, and government agencies to enforce civil rights laws.

Employers must stop using automated tools that carry a high risk of screening people out based on disabilities, race, sex, and other protected characteristics. It is critical that any tools employers do consider adopting undergo robust third party assessments for discrimination, and that employers provide applicants with proper notice and accommodations.

We also need strong regulation and enforcement of existing protections against employment discrimination. Civil rights laws bar discrimination in hiring whether it’s happening through online processes or otherwise, so regulators already have the authority and obligation to protect people in the labor market from the harms of AI tools, and individuals can assert their rights in court. Agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have taken some initial steps to inform employers about their obligations, but they should follow that up by creating standards for impact assessments, notice, and recourse, and engage in enforcement actions when employers fail to comply.

Legislators also have a role to play. State legislatures and Congress have begun considering legislation to help job applicants and employees ensure that the uses of AI tools in employment are fair and nondiscriminatory. These legislative efforts are diverse, and may be roughly divided into three categories.

First, some efforts focus on providing transparency around the use of AI, especially to make decisions in protected areas of life, including employment. These bills require employers to provide individuals not only with notice that AI was or will be used to make a decision about their hiring or employment, but also with the data (or a description of the data) used to make that decision and how the AI system reaches its ultimate decision.

Second, other legislation requires that entities deploying AI tools assess their impact on privacy and nondiscrimination. This kind of legislation may require impact assessments for AI hiring tools to better understand their potential negative effects and to identify strategies to mitigate those effects. Although these bills may not create an enforcement mechanism, they are critical to forcing companies to take protective measures before deploying AI tools.

Third, some legislatures are considering bills that would impose additional non-discrimination responsibilities on employers using AI tools and would plug some gaps in existing civil rights protections. For example, last year’s American Data Privacy and Protection Act included language that prohibited using data — including in AI tools — “in a manner that discriminates in or otherwise makes unavailable the equal enjoyment of goods or services on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability.” Some state legislation would ban uses of particularly high-risk AI tools.

These approaches across agencies and legislatures complement one another as we take steps to protect job applicants and employees in a quickly evolving space. AI tools have an increasingly important and prevalent role in our everyday lives, and policymakers must respond to that immediate threat.