The galling thing about AA/NA in the US is that judges often mandate attendance as condition for release of a DUI. The problem being, this violates the defendants 1st amendedment rights by the state forcing a religion on him.
So, while it has been a common practice, the tide is turning fairly rapidly against it in the legal system.
The text of the first amendment of the United States of America reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
AA (in my understanding) doesn't force any religion. The 12 steps (link http://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/smf-121_en.pdf) talk about "a power greater than ourselves". There's no reason that couldn't be the judge assigning the sentence, in this case.
When you force people into a program that references some idea of God you are doing exactly that..
Doing a quick Google search, it appears that at least one court has found mandated AA unconstitutional: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Appeals-court-says-req...
"Do this or go to jail" is pretty much the definition of something which is -- legally speaking -- compulsory, not voluntary.
Its voluntary in the trivial sense that a conscious choice is involved, but not voluntary in the legal sense (or the substantive sense of a free choice made without threat of force.)
Which is why its not an independent First Amendment issue, but a Fourteenth Amendment issue, however, as it is well-settled law that the scope of the rights considered fundamental to the concept of ordered liberty and thereby incorporated against the States under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment includes the entirety of the protections of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment, the usual legal analysis of religious freedom issues, whether state or federal, is under the First Amendment logic applied the same way whether the government involved is state or federal.
> nor is it making a law.
It is either (a) enforcing a law that Congress or a state legislature made (which law, if it violates First Amendment religious freedoms, violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when a State does it or the applicable clause of the First when the federal government does it) or (b) depriving someone of Constitutional liberty without a basis in law in the first place (which also violates the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment when a State does it, and the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment if it were a federal court.)
Your understanding is incorrect on two levels; first, AA are religious even if in a somewhat generically deistic way, and not secular in and of themselves, second, the actual AA groups in a particular area to which defendants are permitted to choose are often even more specifically religious than AA-on-its-own, to the point of being affiliated with specific established religious institutions other than AA itself.