The Trump administration ordered every federal agency to strengthen religious liberty safeguards in a new Department of Justice memorandum, the first major overhaul of the government's religious freedom guidance since 2017.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's DOJ released the updated directive on Thursday, replacing guidance originally issued during Trump's first term. The new memorandum tells executive agencies to weigh religious liberty concerns earlier when drafting regulations, enforcing federal law, and handling workplace accommodation requests from employees of faith. It draws on nearly a decade of Supreme Court rulings that the department says have "clarified and strengthened constitutional and statutory protections for religious exercise."
Two of those rulings figure prominently. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Court held that a public high school football coach's postgame prayer was protected by the First Amendment. In Groff v. DeJoy, the justices tightened the standard employers must meet before denying a religious accommodation, ruling that refusal is justified only when it would impose a substantial hardship, a higher bar than many federal agencies and private employers had been applying. Both cases were litigated by First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal organization that immediately praised the updated guidance.
The memorandum lays out several concrete directives for the executive branch. Agencies must accommodate religious expression in the federal workplace whenever the law requires it. Religious organizations can compete for federal grants and contracts on equal footing with their secular counterparts, a provision aimed at ending what religious liberty advocates have long described as quiet discrimination in the grant process.
The guidance also reaffirms the constitutional right of churches and religious bodies to govern their own internal affairs without government interference. And it highlights recent Supreme Court precedent recognizing parents' rights to direct the religious upbringing of their children, a principle that has taken on sharper political significance as court battles over religious expression in public schools have multiplied in recent years.
Beyond the memorandum itself, the DOJ's Office of Legal Policy will continue reviewing proposed regulations and other government actions to ensure they comply with federal religious liberty protections. That ongoing compliance review gives the guidance operational teeth, it is not simply a statement of principle but a directive that agencies will be measured against.
The department did not elaborate on enforcement specifics. Fox News Digital reported that a DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the practical impact of the updated guidance.
Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel of First Liberty Institute, issued a statement backing the move. He thanked President Donald Trump "for his strong efforts to protect America's first freedom, religious freedom."
Shackelford framed the guidance as a safeguard against bureaucratic overreach:
"The updated guidance will ensure that the federal government will respect the religious liberty rights of all Americans when implementing the President's policies."
First Liberty has a direct stake in the outcome. The organization represented the plaintiffs in both Kennedy and Groff, the two Supreme Court victories the DOJ now cites as cornerstones of the revised memorandum. For Shackelford's group, the guidance translates courtroom wins into day-to-day federal policy.
The broader legal landscape around religious liberty has shifted considerably since the original 2017 guidance. The Supreme Court has continued delivering landmark rulings touching on individual rights, and the updated DOJ memorandum attempts to fold that body of precedent into a single working framework for the executive branch.
A related but distinct development also drew attention. A Fox News video segment embedded alongside the guidance story described a DOJ investigation into Major League Baseball over religious freedom concerns. The segment, featuring Fox News correspondent Kayleigh McEnany, focused on reports that players received warnings for displaying Bible verses on their hats. McEnany emphasized that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, one of the statutes cited in the new DOJ guidance, requires employers to reasonably accommodate employees' religious beliefs, and she questioned what she characterized as MLB's apparent double standards on the issue.
The article did not detail the scope or current status of the MLB investigation, and it remains unclear whether the probe is a direct outgrowth of the updated guidance or a separate enforcement action. But the pairing of the two stories illustrates the administration's willingness to apply religious liberty protections beyond the federal workforce and into the private sector where federal law reaches.
That willingness matters. For years, religious liberty advocates argued that favorable Supreme Court rulings meant little if the executive branch failed to translate them into enforceable policy. The 2017 guidance was a first step, but it predated the Court's most consequential religious freedom decisions. The gap left agencies operating under outdated instructions, and, critics contended, gave bureaucrats room to sideline religious accommodation requests.
Several questions remain open. The full text of the memorandum has not been publicly released, and the DOJ has not specified which Supreme Court decisions beyond Kennedy and Groff are incorporated. It is also unclear whether the guidance carries binding legal force on agencies or functions as advisory direction, a distinction that could determine how aggressively noncompliant agencies are brought into line.
No opposition statements from civil liberties organizations, Democratic lawmakers, or federal employee unions appeared in the reporting. That silence may not last. Previous religious liberty directives from the Trump administration drew sharp pushback from groups that framed accommodation mandates as potential cover for discrimination. How the updated guidance handles the tension between religious exercise and other civil rights claims will likely shape the next round of legal challenges, and the composition of the Supreme Court that hears them could matter as much as the policy itself.
For now, the directive sends a clear signal from the Justice Department: federal agencies are expected to treat religious liberty not as a secondary concern to be balanced away, but as a constitutional right that shapes how regulations are written, how grants are awarded, and how employees are treated. The federal judiciary has been moving in that direction for years. The executive branch is catching up.
Religious freedom is the first right listed in the First Amendment for a reason. It should not take a memorandum to remind federal agencies of that, but apparently it does.