Alumni Interview: Hirsh Joshi

“For years, there have been people trying to bring down the wall of separation brick by brick,” says Hirsh Joshi, a member of the legal staff at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national non-profit with 40,000 members. (Image by Romulo Udea)

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. I’ve always been interested in what different groups believe.   

I was a poli-sci major. I really hadn’t been thinking of law school; I was thinking more about a graduate degree in poli-sci. But then I was talking to Professor Joe Hinchliffe, PHD ’02 LAS, and he mentioned that a lot of poli-sci students do independent studies on U.S. Supreme Court cases. I thought of something that had been in the news a lot, what everyone was calling “the gay wedding cake case.” So, I wrote my independent study on Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. And I caught the law bug and attended the University of Missouri School of Law.

During my first year of law school (2020–21), I witnessed attacks on our electoral process, a massive attack on the Capitol and some awful behavior by lawyers—people like Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani filing frivolous lawsuits to decertify an election. That was sad to see so early in my legal career.

It’s easy to get discouraged, but you can either throw your hands up or be part of the solution. I tried the latter. That led me to the Mizzou Law chapter of the American Constitution Society. In my second year, I became chapter president. We were named student chapter of the year in 2022 and I was selected an ACS Next Generation Leader. My mantra was, “It’s important for law students to learn not just to be good lawyers but also to be lawyers for good.”

Now I’m on the legal staff of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. We’re a national non-profit with 40,000 members, working to keep government and religion out of each other’s business. We’re best known by Ron Reagan’s 30-second TV ads, in which he tells of FFRF’s efforts “to keep state and church separate, just like our Founding Fathers intended.” For someone with my interests, it’s a dream job.

“In some sense, what we do is like playing Whac-A-Mole: It never stops.” —Hirsh Joshi, ’19 LAS

Most of my work time is spent sending cease-and-desist letters to government actors who violate that separation. My area includes several southern states, so I’m particularly busy. I also send letters to Illinois and Missouri, which I take pride in, given my connection to those states.

Most actions start with a complaint from someone local calling attention to a violation. It can be anything: a Bible verse painted on a police station wall, a Ten Commandments poster in a courthouse hallway, a teacher who brags on Facebook about proselytizing students, a high school football coach who baptizes players after practice, or a prayer recited in a middle school graduation ceremony.

We typically begin with a letter pointing out the problem and asking the party to cure the mistake. I let them know that when they wear their government hat, they aren’t allowed to demonstrate a preference for religion over non-religion, or Christianity over all other faiths.

If they push back, I may ask them to pick a religion they don’t subscribe to and imagine seeing that faith’s “holy words” and images on the wall of their school or city hall. They really don’t have an answer to that. Very often they just deflect.

In cases that are especially persistent and egregious, we sometimes go to litigation. When we post TikTok videos about wins, we get hundreds of expressions of support. I take a lot of pride in representing people who have been subjected to a governmental wrong.

Sometimes people respond that there’s no such thing as state-church separation because those words aren’t in the U.S. Constitution. I can talk about the history of the Establishment Clause and Thomas Jefferson’s writings. Or I can cite Matthew 6:5-6 in the Bible, in which Jesus warns against hypocritical people praying in public.

We hear from people who argue that inserting religion—usually they mean Christianity—into government affairs is a tradition. After all, they say, the word God is in the Pledge of Allegiance and on U.S. currency. But those examples aren’t engrained in our history. They were changes made in the 1950s in response to what was seen as “state-sponsored atheism” in communist countries. In fact, the word God isn’t in the Constitution, and that was intentional on the part of the Founders.

About 37 percent of Americans aren’t Christian. Among Gen Z, a third have no religion at all. The next phase of American history is going to require a coalition of people from all religions and no religion.

For years, there have been people trying to bring down the wall of separation brick by brick. Lately, some are looking to take a wreaking ball to the wall and do it all in one swing. The wall has to be defended.

In some sense, what we do is like playing Whac-A-Mole: It never stops. I could work 24 hours a day. I’d just need a lot of coffee.