It’s not banning Christians from teaching in Minnesota to force all new teachers to repeatedly and publicly endorse what Christianity calls evil, claims a Minnesota factchecker.
“Because the law does not contain any language banning teachers from practicing not only Christianity but any religion, KARE 11 found the claim [that Minnesota’s teacher licensing board has banned Christians from teaching in public schools] to be false,” wrote Minnesota TV station KARE 11’s Samantha Fischer in a Friday “fact check” responding, but not linking, to a Federalist article published Aug. 27.
Sure, Christians can teach in Minnesota public schools. All they have to do is publicly deny their faith. See? So obviously there’s no ban on Christians teaching in Minnesota!
Fischer seriously reasons that Minnesota hasn’t banned Christians from teaching because it hasn’t directly stated, “Christians may no longer teach in Minnesota public schools.” It has only required Minnesota public school teachers to publicly confess and then regularly teach what their religion and basic observation of the natural world declares is false: that a man can become a woman.
For that is what the regulations plainly and directly state. Starting July 2025, all people applying for a teaching license in Minnesota, a license required to teach in Minnesota public schools, must “foster[] an environment that ensures student identities such as … gender identity, sexual orientation … are … affirmed, and incorporated.” In every classroom, teachers must “affirm” and “incorporate” every “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” Period. Here’s a screenshot of the portion of the final regulation that stipulate this.
The regulations also specifically require teachers to demonstrate that they regularly give students materials promoting queer sex. No Christian can do that in good conscience. It would be a sin, and according to Matthew 18:6, one so grave as to earn the offender something worse than death by drowning.
Here’s a screenshot of that portion of the regulations.
These requirements are a ban on Christians teaching in public schools in the same way that requiring all public school teachers to regularly support eating pork would be a ban on Muslims teaching in public schools. It would also obviously be flatly unconstitutional compelled speech. One could also easily argue it expressed anti-religious bigotry.
To be sure, Minnesota’s new regulations are also a ban on Muslims, Jews, and atheists teaching in public schools, given that many people of those faiths also recognize that people cannot have a gender identity other than their given sex. But one cannot fit every single fact into a headline, or the headline wouldn’t be the headline, it would be the article.
What’s more, even Fischer could tell that banning people who can’t pee standing up from teaching would ban (most?) women from teaching. You can bet if that were the requirement, she’d be right out there calling the pee rule a “Woman Teacher Ban” and freaking out about it on whatever platform she could find.
Remember how a temporary pause on visas from some countries, among which were majority-Muslim countries, was forever labeled a “Muslim ban?” Factcheckers didn’t go to town on that label, of course. But because these are icky Christians we’re talking about, they get not even preschool-level attempts at connecting dot one and dot two.
Alright, if we’re going to play this stupid game, I’ve got some nitpicky but legitimate factchecking for Fischer. While she was unable to prove anything The Federalist reported is factually incorrect, her “fact check” contains some false information. She describes the regulations imposing this religious test for public office with inaccurate language, in two different inaccurate ways.
Once, in the line quoted above, she calls these regulations a “law.” They are not a law. A law is passed through a legislature and signed by the executive. That did not happen with these teacher licensing requirements. They were created and passed by an unelected state bureaucracy, one appointed by the current candidate for vice president on the Democrat ticket, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Another indication of this is these regulations’ approval by extraconstitutional “administrative law” judges rather than Article III constitutional courts. Sure, that’s college-level political knowledge clearly far above the pay grade of most “journalists,” but even third graders can learn the old “Schoolhouse Rock”-level fact that proposals don’t achieve the status of law without approval by both a legislature and executive.
Four times, including in her subhead, Fischer also inaccurately describes these regulations as “guidelines.” (By the way, here she also contradicts her description of these regulations as a “law,” because a law is not a “guideline.”) She calls them “new teaching licensure guidelines” and “updated guidelines for Minnesota teachers.”
These are not “guidelines.” They are regulations. Guidelines can be disregarded at will. Regulations are binding. They are requirements. People caught not obeying them are punished in some fashion.
One might expect that a professional writer, especially one who writes about government, could understand and communicate this important distinction, but alas. Professional communicators don’t need to understand words anymore, just which political party’s rear to lick. (And if you find that offensive, check your bigoted heterosexual instincts!)
The teaching license regulations, which Fischer linked to and quoted, even describe themselves, on the first page of text, as “requirements!”
“Who is required to meet the Standards of Effective Practice?” says the first page of text, an FAQ. It answers directly below: “All teacher candidates completing an initial teacher licensure program in Minnesota and all teachers seeking an initial Tier 3 license via the licensure via portfolio process.” It goes on: “Who is required to hold a teaching license in Minnesota? A teacher who provides instruction in a public school or charter school is required to hold a license aligned to the field and grade level taught.”
Here’s a direct screenshot of that page.
So, to recap: A man who wants to be a heartbeat away from ruler of the free world has banned members of the nation’s largest religious group from working in the largest source of public employment, and one of the institutions that is supposed to be guarding basic American constitutional liberties is lying to cover it up. This is fine!