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Nov. 8, 2022 - Tulsi Gabbard Show
01:13:01
The Right to Religious Liberty - With Jay Sekulow | The Tulsi Gabbard Show
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It sounded like something from Star Wars when she said that.
Exactly!
Exactly!
When Senator Feinstein said that, I thought, how did she think of that as an appropriate thing to say, or saying you're disqualified from serving as a judge because the dogma lives deep within you?
Right.
So, what does that mean?
Who is she to judge someone's personal relationship with God?
Yeah.
Aloha, everyone.
Today, we're going to be talking about one of the things that made me feel really uncomfortable in the Democratic Party, and frankly, it was one of the reasons that I left.
Now, today's Democrat Party has become hostile, openly, outwardly hostile towards people of faith and spirituality, actually trying to remove God from every facet of our public life.
Now, this isn't hyperbole or just my opinion, but We see many examples of exactly how they're doing this.
Back in 2004, the Democratic Party platform included seven mentions of God.
Their most recent platform in 2020 mentions God just once.
During that same 2020 DNC convention, several of the caucus and council meetings actually chose to omit the words, under God, from the Pledge of Allegiance.
And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
That clip speaks for itself.
We've seen other examples of high-profile Democrats who are actually mocking and openly discriminating against people of faith.
President Obama once ridiculed Americans for clinging to their guns and religion.
It's not surprising then that they get better and they cling to guns or religion or Antipathy to people who aren't like that.
A way to explain their frustrations.
So now it won't surprise you that Vice President Kamala Harris, back when she was a U.S. Senator in 2018, made a comment that membership in the Catholic service-oriented pro-life charity organization, the Knights of Columbus, was disqualifying for the nomination of federal judge Brian Boucher.
But you know what she didn't reference, what she didn't talk about, is other members of the Knights of Columbus, like President Kennedy or Senator Ted Kennedy.
The other senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, famously scolded Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a Senate hearing.
You know, Justice Barrett, a devout Catholic, claiming that, quote, the dogma lives loudly within you, viewing Justice Barrett's faith as a disqualifying factor.
I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma.
The law is totally different.
And I think in your case, Professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.
And that's of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for.
You know what's of concern is that we have U.S. senators serving in office who are blatantly ignoring Article 6, Section 3 of the Constitution, which says, quote,"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." What they're doing here is nothing less than religious bigotry through and through, and it's a direct assault on religious liberty.
This is something I've experienced directly both when I was running for Congress as well as when I ran for president, where I had the mainstream media and those who were opposing my candidacy directly attacking my religion, writing smear pieces, throwing baseless accusations at me, all to try to invoke suspicion in voters To try to get them to not vote for me, not support me.
Now, this is something that President Kennedy faced when he ran for president.
This exact kind of religious bigotry.
He was attacked by the media.
He was attacked by people of other religions who, again, publicly disqualified him, invoked suspicion in other people, fear-mongering, fomenting these suspicions and fears, all because President Kennedy was Catholic.
Now, he responded to this head-on, citing the Constitution, citing the First Amendment, during a really powerful speech that he delivered to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September of 1960. Now, I want to play for you just a few of these clips where he makes these points, but encourage you to go and listen to the full speech.
And where no man is denied public office, merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him.
Or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source.
Where no religious body seeks to impose its will, directly or indirectly, upon the general populace.
Or the public acts of its officials.
And where religious liberty is so indivisible, that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic, against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian, or a Baptist.
It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson's Statute of Religious Freedom.
Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end, For all men and all churches are treated as equals, for every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice, for there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no block voting of any kind, and we're Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, at both the lay and the pastoral levels.
We'll refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
I would not look with favor upon a president working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious liberty.
Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so.
And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article 6 of the Constitution.
By requiring a religious test, even by indirection.
For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.
But let me stress again that these are my views.
For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president.
I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic.
I do not speak for my church on public matters.
And the church does not speak for me.
Powerful, powerful words spoken at a different time in our country, but just as relevant today, sadly, as they were then, because we are seeing the same kind of religious bigotry.
Now, unfortunately and sadly, these Democrat leaders, they have either forgotten or actively choosing to ignore the words of President Kennedy in their dogged pursuit of power.
They are launching religious bigoted attacks on political opponents or those who dare to disagree with their policies.
They are belittling people of faith with their condescending and arrogant proclamations.
And dangerously, they're doing so from a position of great impact and power within the federal government.
Today's Democratic Party seems to have forgotten that freedom of religion does not mean freedom from religion.
This is unfortunate because our founders actually made this very clear in the First Amendment.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
We have to have faith and trust in our government that it will respect every one of our innate rights to develop our own personal loving relationship with God as well as the right of those who choose not to.
Each and every one of us must be free to express and practice our faith as we choose without fear of state-sponsored censorship discrimination or bigotry.
Our founders were very clear about where our rights come from.
The Declaration of Independence says,"...we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Our freedom comes from God, no one else.
And to recognize and respect each other as children of God is to appreciate that we belong to God and no one else.
No government, no person has the right to take away the intrinsic freedom that God has given us.
George Washington recognized this and he beautifully shared his own expression of faith during his inaugural presidential address.
He said, That his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes and may enable
every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge.
In tendering this homage to the great author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow citizens at large less than either.
When those in power try to take our God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution away, they're trying to take our power away.
The weaker we are, the more powerful they become.
And the more powerful we are, the more free we are, the weaker they become.
And that's what they want.
They want us to be weak.
They want us to be dependent on them.
They want us to be afraid.
And sadly, they have proven that they'll stop at nothing in their pursuit of power.
More and more people are waking up to this reality all across the country, actually understanding the threats to our freedom of speech and religious liberty that are occurring as we speak.
People of faith are being targeted in America right now, discriminated against, having the administrative state, our government, weaponized against them.
And now whether you have personal experience this or not, or you know someone who has, every one of us as Americans should be alarmed.
Because as President Kennedy stated today, it may be an assault on someone else's religious liberty.
Tomorrow, it could be you.
Attacks on our religious liberty cannot be allowed to stand.
Period.
The Biden administration is dangerously weaponizing and politicizing its Justice Department and they're threatening our God-given rights and freedoms and we have to stand up, every one of us as Americans, to defend against those attacks.
We have to come together.
We have to speak out and stop these abuses now or we will find ourselves in a place where our religious freedom A cornerstone of our democracy will soon become a relic of the past.
My guest today is one of the foremost legal minds on the issue of religious liberty, not only here in the United States, but actually around the world.
He's a chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, and he's personally argued 13 cases in front of the Supreme Court, winning a number of landmark cases that have protected our constitutional rights to religious freedom and free speech.
Now, there's too many to talk about here before I bring him in, but I did want to share just a few of them so you get an idea of the impact that he's had.
He presented his very first case before the Supreme Court in 1987 on behalf of Jews for Jesus.
When its members were arrested at the LA airport for handing out pamphlets, arguing religious speech deserves no less protection than any other form of speech.
The Supreme Court unanimously agreed with his argument.
Later, he represented a group of students who were denied the right to form a Christian Bible club at a public school before the Supreme Court in 1990. He won that case in an 8-to-1 decision.
He represented Jane Bright and other pro-life advocates in 1993 after they were arrested for demonstrating in front of abortion clinics in Washington, D.C., and charged with violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The majority held that opposition to abortion is not discrimination against women in a landmark 6-3 decision in the Supreme Court.
Also in 1993, Sekula represented a church group called Lamb's Chapel that was denied the use of a local school building after hours to show a religious film, arguing an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights.
The Supreme Court agreed with Seculo in a unanimous decision, and today thousands of churches are permitted to conduct meetings and hold services in schools and other public facilities as a direct result of that precedent-setting victory in the Lamb's Chapel case.
Sekulow represented Joshua Davey in 2004, who was denied a scholarship because of his intent to major in pastoral ministries, arguing a violation of free speech and free exercise rights, winning a 7-2 decision.
Jay Sekulow has used this influence and expertise to defend religious liberty around the globe, launching affiliate organizations in France, Russia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Israel, and South Korea.
Today, the ACLJ has over 1 million members, which Businessweek magazine recognizes as the leading advocacy group for religious freedom.
And when he's not defending liberty in the courtroom, you can hear him on his daily radio show that's currently syndicated on over 850 stations across the country.
Now, he's a drummer in a classic rock band, a New York Times number one bestselling author, and a true modern-day freedom fighter.
First and foremost, though, I just want to say thank you for being you and doing what you do and having done it for I just want to say thank you for being you and doing
I think that a lot of people, I hope, more and more people are waking up to the attacks on our First Amendment, the attacks on our fundamental liberties, more now than they were in the past.
But you've been fighting these battles for liberty and freedom for 35 years.
Yeah, so that's right.
Before a lot of people were paying attention.
Yeah, I'm trying to think.
So my first major case at the Supreme Court was 1987. And that's when it went to the Supreme Court.
So there was obviously years before that.
A lot of work before that.
I've been practicing law for 42 years, so I guess about 35 or 37 of those have been in this arena.
And I didn't know this until recently, but you started out as a tax trial attorney for the IRS. Is that true?
Yeah.
Yes, I wasn't going to do...
I mean, First Amendment...
I went to law school to be a criminal defense lawyer, and then really got just totally enamored with tax, and had a great tax professor.
Her name was Ms. Bell, or Professor Bell.
They called her Ma Bell.
She was incredible.
And I just love tax.
And it's kind of like putting puzzles together.
What do you love about it?
Because that sounds like a weird statement for a layperson.
Yeah, it's a little bit of everything.
It's business.
It's trial work.
It's government negotiation.
So it's kind of everything.
So my first job out of law school in 1979, 1980 was with Chief Counsel's Office of the IRS. It doesn't make you a lot of friends when you do that in an intro.
I usually leave that part out or I'll make a joke about it.
But it was actually a great experience.
And it was not the IRS... That it is today.
It's very different.
Gosh, I'd love to get into that a little bit, especially with everything that we're hearing about, you know, this huge $79 billion bill that's been passed.
It's a disaster.
The growing arming of IRS law enforcement agents, accumulation of ammunition, and, you know, exactly.
In their job description.
This is what they're talking about for a special agent.
Do you recognize this?
No.
I never had a political conversation, Tulsi, with any of my colleagues the entire time.
I couldn't tell you if they were a Republican or Democrat.
No idea.
We tried cases.
I mean, you know, it was, you represented the United States.
It was a tax dispute.
You tried your case.
Nobody said, hey, did you vote for, in those days, it would have been, you know, Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan, whoever it was.
And that's how old this is.
And no, but you know, it was interesting when those IRS cases came.
That we filed against, which was First Amendment violation, knowing, having worked for the IRS, was a tremendous advantage for me and for my clients.
Yeah, because you saw, you have literally seen what was going on behind the curtains.
Gosh, that's so interesting.
I think that's That, along with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, you look at all of these public institutions that literally exist to serve the public good, in theory, have now become so weaponized for political purposes and to go after political opponents, not only under this administration, but under previous administrations as well.
It's such a dangerous trend.
The problem is it's so easy for it to happen, and that's where the checks and balances inside the institutions themselves are not in place.
Yeah.
Speaking of checks and balances, I want to talk a little bit about that, about just generally the rule of law, right?
I mean, this is the foundation of our democracy.
If we don't have the rule of law, if we the people can't have, if we don't trust that our institutions are, you know, we are treated fair and equally under the law and so on and so forth, then what do we have faith in as a people?
Right.
You've argued before the Supreme Court more than a dozen times.
Yep.
I think the number now is...
Oh, I don't know.
I think it's like 16, 15, 16. That's an incredible statistic.
For a non-government solicitor general, it is.
Exactly.
I've read enough books.
I'm not an attorney, obviously, but I've read enough books and have enough lawyer friends to know how absolutely rare it is for an attorney to argue before the Supreme Court once.
Right.
Just once in their lives and in their careers.
And I think the significance of that opportunity and that privilege is by making those arguments, you know you are having an impact on generations.
It's an honor to do it.
Every time I go up there, you know, it doesn't change.
We had to do it remotely during the COVID years.
And even there, we had a podium built for our office.
I had the exact same microphones used at the court.
The podium was identical.
Oh, no kidding.
And I put on a suit.
I mean, colleagues of mine, friends of mine that had done arguments during that period were wearing, like, sweat clothes because they were doing it over the phone.
I put on a suit.
Jordan and I stood up when the court, you know, cried the entry of the court, and you had to get in the mode.
I don't know if it helped or hurt, but it all worked out pretty well, so I guess it was okay.
I think it's a show of respect, frankly, for the institution, right?
Whether it makes a difference or not.
And I think that's one of the things that's so concerning along with what we're talking about.
We hear a lot of rhetoric coming from so-called progressive Democrats essentially attacking this judicial branch of government, attacking and undermining the Supreme Court because they don't agree with the decisions that are being made.
I think it was We're good to go.
With the ruling, then trash the institution itself, and it further deepens that distrust that people have in it.
I want to ask you to talk a little bit about why this is so dangerous, and also given you've had a history over the last three decades, really, of arguing before the Supreme Court, how have you seen the character Of the Supreme Court change, has it changed?
And where do we go from here?
How do we kind of write the course for this ship?
So, you know, it's interesting because my first case, like I said, was in 1987. And then my last case was just, you know, last term.
Or term before last, because the new one's starting.
And so when you look at it over the years, I mean, almost four decades now, it changes.
The court definitely takes on the personality of the justices.
So there's this, you know, I was there when William Rehnquist was on the court, Thurgood Marshall, Justice Brennan, John Paul Stevens.
So it was before Justice Ginsburg, before Justice Breyer.
So I've been doing it, you know, in the 80s.
That was the court.
It was a very different experience than arguing cases under John Roberts.
And I think part of that was because John was a Supreme Court advocate himself.
He had a little bit more empathy for the lawyers.
because it's a very aggressive time.
The show part of it is, you know, is the 30-minute oral argument that each side does an hour.
Although under the last batch of cases, there was no real clock because of the way they were doing it for COVID.
And I think I read an article yesterday, and I didn't even realize this, Tulsi, that in a series of cases we had for the former president, we had like three in a row, and we were up collectively, me and one other lawyer for our side and then the other two for their side, We were up for three and a half hours.
So, you know, it takes on a different personality.
The problem is this.
If the court rules against you, it's not my job to say the court is an illegitimate institution.
My job is to say, you know, I think the court got it wrong.
I've never had a case go against me unanimously.
You know, I've lost some.
It's rare that you win them all.
I've won a vast majority.
I think we're batting like 74%, which for baseball would be pretty good.
Kind of incredible.
But when we've lost, we've had dissents.
And I think that the dissent was right.
But if you start attacking the institution, which is precisely what is happening now, and it's precisely what we saw happen in the summer with the leaking of that Supreme Court opinion.
I'll tell you this.
When that first broke in the news that there was this possible leak, I said publicly, there is no way that can be a leaked opinion.
Someone's doing something nefarious.
Both would have been nefarious because the Supreme Court doesn't leak opinions.
There's no way that could happen.
And sure enough, two days later, the chief justice had issued a statement saying it was.
So that has changed.
So that, I think, has caused internally inside the court tremendous stress between the justices and their chambers.
And that's going to reflect what we see in the weeks ahead as the court's back in session and the term starts and cases come.
And I think, you know, I think we're going to see it in ways maybe we didn't think so before.
But it's very different now.
But the attacking of the court is unbelievably dangerous to a constitutional republic.
During that time, Chuck Schumer was making threats himself towards the Supreme Court justices if they dared to rule the wrong way.
And his view, as you said, protesters protesting illegally outside of the Supreme Court justices' homes and no action from the administration at all in protecting that independence of our justices and actually enforcing the law.
I worked as a legislative aide for Senator Akaka.
He's a World War II veteran.
He came from that greatest generation of veterans from both parties who served in the U.S. Senate at a different time when there was a lot more civility between members of Congress.
And I remember during that time also, as Supreme Court justices were being nominated or nominees for the court were coming before the Senate, it was not uncommon that you had a vast majority of a bipartisan vote for that Supreme Court justice.
I think...
Yeah, voice votes sometimes.
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
And yet now, I think at least over the last 10 years, certainly while I was in Congress, it is almost a predetermined outcome, right?
If you've got a Democrat president putting forward a Democrat nominee, it's an assumption that Republicans will have to vote against the nominee, and vice versa.
If you've got a Republican president, they put forward a nominee, Democrats automatically take that position against.
Even if they're saying, oh, I'm open-minded, we'll see, I'll meet with them.
It's a given.
Right.
How does that change?
Because that's been my argument.
You see, okay, we'll expand the court.
People are saying, oh, we should just expand the court.
That makes no difference if fundamentally our U.S. senators have so politicized this process that they're drawing a line in the sand based on whether or not a nominee is from their party or not, rather than actually looking at, to me, the most fundamental qualification, rather than actually looking at, to me, the most fundamental qualification, which is will you uphold the constitutional rights of every Am I wrong?
No, you're right.
I mean, if you look at two clearly...
For the ages, justices.
Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who also, by the way, were completely opposites in their judicial philosophy, but the closest of friends for decades.
Which is so cool.
It was great.
So you look at their confirmations, I think they were both like 96. I think some senators didn't show up because it was, you know...
Done.
You couldn't argue that Scalia wasn't qualified.
You couldn't argue that Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn't qualified.
She was a Supreme Court advocate herself.
Scalia was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel for the Department of Justice.
They were both judges on the D.C. circuit.
I mean, these were qualified nominees to be at the Supreme Court.
But now it doesn't matter.
Not only is there a litmus test on how will you rule in a particular case, which is unbelievably dangerous.
I don't care if you're if you're pro-life, pro-choice.
Asking that question that way is really bad because you're asking for a predetermined outcome before a case is briefed, which, you know, there are restrictions.
But I think the if you look at the last several nominations generally, it.
It's tragic that we've reached this level of discourse, which I think is guttural at this point.
I mean, it's in the gutter.
And when Senator Schumer went to the front of the steps of the Supreme Court of the United States and screamed at the top of his lungs to Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh, you will rule the day.
You're going to reap a whirlwind.
And then, of course, you had basically an assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh.
How did we get here?
And I look back in the 1980s when I argued cases, started arguing cases, and although there was a big ideological divide, you never had that kind of relationship.
The justices were closer, the public, I think, had a better understanding of what the rule of law was and is supposed to be.
And I think I think the confirmation process, Tulsi, is actually symptomatic of of where we are in our culture.
And it's a dangerous place.
The idea that you cannot have a common meaning of the minds or agree to disagree.
And that's now like, you know, totally politically incorrect to have a differing view.
I love my friends at the ACLU and I'm sure I represented the ACLU.
No kidding.
I was their lawyer when they were denied the right to have on a bus ad, you know, whatever their ACLU message was.
And I represented them.
This was a long time ago.
And now I look at the cases where they're filing and I'm thinking, wait a minute.
You're the ones who defended the guy's right to march in Skokie, the Nazis right to march in Skokie, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
And your lawyer did that.
And that was there.
And the court agreed that was constitutionally protected.
And now, you're only taking cases where you think it meets the politically correct standard of the day, which changes, as we all know, a decade from now.
So it's very...
As you can tell, I'm animated and very concerned about where it goes.
I really miss the days of the collegiality.
Same thing's true in the bar, by the way, with the lawyers.
I mean, you know, it used to be I'd move the omission.
If a lawyer was coming from out of state representing Planned Parenthood, I would move their admission.
What does that mean?
What does that mean to us?
So if you're not licensed in, let's say, the District of Columbia, but you're coming from New York, and you're a member of the Bar in New York, you could be admitted ProHack Vite.
I would, and they would do it then, too.
I would say, we don't oppose the motion, or we'd make the motion for their admission, believing they have good character and are licensed to practice law in the state of New York, thus they should be recognized for the purpose of this case.
I can't imagine that happening today.
I mean, I can't even imagine it happening.
Go back a little bit, because you mentioned the Skokie case, which was extremely significant at that time, and the significance still stands today.
For those who don't know much about it, can you talk about that?
Because the ACLU's choosing to carry the banner and fight for free speech in that case is monumental.
And how you've seen the ACLU's character and ethos change to today.
So I was a law student when that case was going on.
So we paid a lot of attention to that case.
And I had lived in Skokie as a kid.
Yeah.
So Skokie is a predominantly Jewish community.
Not predominantly Jewish community, but there's a lot of Jewish people live in Skokie.
There were also a lot of Holocaust survivors in Skokie.
And the Nazi, a group of Nazis, decided they wanted to march in Skokie.
And they were initially denied, and the ACLU took up the case and ultimately won at the Supreme Court the right for a speech you totally disagree with.
Right.
As long as they're not advocating illegal conduct imminently, imminent harm, to march.
It was the right decision.
Controversial, but the right decision.
So that's in the 1970s.
The ACLU, if I'm remembering correctly, they lost a lot of Jewish donors, and there was kind of a mass exodus of Jewish attorneys on their staff who didn't agree with their position, but they stuck to it because it was the right thing to do.
They did.
And you saw over the years, like when I did a lot of free speech cases...
For groups that are handing out religious literature in public places, Jews for Jesus, other groups, and some political groups, too, that would be handing out of all different political backgrounds.
And I would have the labor unions and the ACLU filing briefs on our side, because if free speech was good for Jews for Jesus, it certainly was going to be good for the AFL-CIO or the Hare Krishnas or whoever it might be, or the National Democratic Policy Committee, whoever it might be.
In those days, it was the same kind of group of lawyers that were handling the free speech cases, and we didn't get into what is your ideology that we're supporting.
We were First Amendment purists.
Those days of the ACLU, I just don't see it anymore.
For instance, if you got a pro-life protest case...
I mean, what are the chances of the ACLU joining?
I think zero.
And I think that does not bode well for our government.
It doesn't bode well for the Supreme Court.
It's, I think, an unfortunate development.
But it's one I saw, I call it the creeping approach of losing freedom or losing focus.
And I think you kind of become untethered at that point.
And now everybody's got, you know, it's, I mean, what's going on on the college campus is, I don't even want to go speak at a college campus anymore.
Why would you subject yourself to this?
The last time I did it was at my alma mater.
And they asked me to be their, this was their big donor event.
And I did an event for that.
And then they asked me to speak to the students.
They said, I'll be about 200 students show up.
And there was like a thousand.
And this was in the middle of the impeachment stuff.
But I did it.
I called the president of the university.
I said, you know, I'm handling a fairly controversial matter right now.
You may want to rethink me coming.
Oh, no, no, this will be good.
It was, they were so rude, these students.
No kidding.
That I got up.
And as you know, we've known each other a long time.
I'm not a shy person.
No.
I said, I am your guest.
And is this the way you treat a guest?
And then a student quoted something that he said or she said that I had said, which was from a law review article I wrote, citing something Abraham Lincoln said.
And they were trying to turn it into something else.
But that's what's happened.
And you see that in the law schools, too.
I mean, the law schools right now, if you're a Jewish student on a law school campus, UC Berkeley, they basically have Jewish free zones right now.
I just saw that.
Yeah, and the City Universities in New York?
I mean, we just filed a Title VI case on behalf of six professors.
You cannot believe what's going on.
But where is the ACLU in these cases?
That's what I'd like to know.
Exactly.
And the double standard there, right?
I mean, I saw that headline yesterday or the day before about UC Berkeley and that it was the student groups who led kind of the passage of bylaws that created these Jewish free zones and would ban any speaker from coming to that school to Yeah.
Who supports Israel or Zionism.
And the thing that I immediately thought was, first of all, where's the uproar about this?
And secondly, I know that there would be an uproar from Democrat leaders, from the ACLU, from CARE, and from many others if you replace the word Jewish with Muslim.
Exactly correct.
And that double standard.
It's a double standard.
The dean of the law school, very well-known guy, Irwin Trieminski, dean of the law school, UCLA Berkeley, said, I, or UC Berkeley, I would not be, him, the dean, would not be able to speak at his own college law school based on what their speech standards are.
But why are we thinking speech-free zones are a good thing?
Exactly.
How has the world changed so much that I grew up in the 60s and 70s.
I mean, we had lockouts and protests and left our classes during the Vietnam War.
I was born in 1956. My year was the last year of the lottery for the Vietnam War, or the next to last.
No, we had it.
We were pulled.
And nobody was sent because the war was pretty much over.
But there were walkouts.
There were protests.
It was the famous Tinker case with the armbands.
I mean, you had all of this going on.
And liberals were supporting this free and open discourse.
Now they're creating speech-free zones and think that's okay.
And how we got there is very, very...
Dangerous.
And we see where this is going.
I saw the Prime Minister of New Zealand gave a speech before the United Nations just recently, literally characterizing free speech online as a weapon of war.
and that leaders of nations around the world and the United Nations have a responsibility to curtail that free speech for the sake of the greater good.
As I've read these, you know, the words that she spoke, it really does paint that picture of exactly where this erosion, for us here in the United States, we have a constitution that guarantees free speech.
Not all countries have this, but ours does.
And when you look at these different examples of what's happening here, we can see where it's going on a global level of these attempts to try to suppress freedoms.
And I think it comes from this fundamental and dangerous lack of respect and appreciation specifically for the constitution.
I remember the, you know, we were talking about the US Senate and how, frankly, there is a disrespect and frankly, and it's getting to be more public, a dismissal of the constitution of, A questioning way.
Maybe we don't need the First Amendment or maybe it's out of date.
You know, certainly the Second Amendment, there's, I think, blatant hatred for the Second Amendment.
But specifically, when we were talking about the Supreme Court justices, I remember when there were a few examples of how U.S. Senators somehow forgot that there is a clause in the Constitution that says there shall be no religious test.
And even going at a deeper level, it kind of speaks to their hatred of God and their animosity and their desire to rid any mention or presence of God from every facet of our public life.
Dianne Feinstein, I think this is when Amy Coney Barrett was nominated first, not for the Supreme Court, but I think it was as a circuit court judge, when she said that she was disqualified because, quote, the dogma lives loudly within you.
It sounded like something from Star Wars when she said that.
Exactly!
When Senator Feinstein said that, when I heard that, I said, who put that in front of her?
How did she think of that as an appropriate thing to say about a judge, a nominee, who happened to be taking her Catholic faith seriously, and you're now trivializing it?
Or saying you're disqualified from serving as a judge because the dogma lives deep within you.
So what does that mean?
I mean, it means nothing good.
Who is she to judge someone's personal relationship with God?
Yeah.
Well, it's pretty dangerous.
Very dangerous.
I think it was Maisie Hirono, our senator from Hawaii, who set against Brian Boucher, disqualifying him because he's a member of the Knights of Columbus.
Right.
And immediately I thought, hmm, we've had some pretty prominent leaders in our country, Democrats, including President Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy, and others who were also Knights of Columbus.
Right.
I think we're good to go.
In the most prominent positions of power in our country don't seem to understand what religious liberty means and how are they getting it so wrong, this idea of separation of church and state, which is the excuse that is often used as they seek to eliminate God from our country, our lives.
Well, the Supreme Court hasn't helped them much, to be honest.
I mean, the establishment clause, which is where the whole church-state relationship is based, the opinions have been all over the place.
There's some more clarity recently.
But, I mean, I had a case involving a church that wanted to use a school facility.
It was open to any group you can imagine, but they said, no, no, you're a church.
It was Lamb's Chapel Church.
You can't do this.
We're not going to allow a church.
We'll allow literally every other group you could imagine.
And we won the case 9-0, so that was the good part.
What year was that?
Here's what happened, though.
The establishment clause issue, which was the heart of this thing, Justice Scalia was then called the Lemon Test, which was this three-part test that you could never quite figure out exactly what the court meant.
But he called it a ghoul in a late-night horror show that rises from the grave, Lemon, the Lemon Test, when we want to strike something down.
But it'll go docile when we want to say something's okay.
Finally...
Several months back, they finally, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch said, the lemon test, it doesn't work.
There's no place for that.
And the court returns what I call the historical understanding of the Establishment Clause, which is this.
You shouldn't coerce somebody to have to do a religious exercise to get a government benefit, to...
Obtain office.
But on the other hand, you should not penalize somebody because of their religious views.
And that's the proper balance of this.
And I think you'll see a series of cases coming up in the next decade that'll continue to clarify.
I've got one of them.
And it's to clarify this idea that just because you see something you don't like doesn't mean you can get it stopped.
It's the heckler's veto.
I want you to talk a little bit more about that because we're living now in a time where we often hear words are violence.
If you say something offensive to me, you should be silenced.
And this is really the premise, and we're hearing it from this administration too, this is the premise behind like, hey, big tech is going to censor certain people's voices because of things that they deem hate speech or they find offensive.
Whether it be offensive to one group but not another group, and walking down this path again of justifying censorship and silencing and taking away our First Amendment rights.
You filed a case recently with the Supreme Court that speaks to the heart of this.
Yes, and before I get right to that, you brought up a really important point.
The court has been an area where they've been unanimous.
The branches you served in didn't quite get it, but the Supreme Court did.
And that was viewpoint discrimination.
This idea that I could say I'm pro-life and somebody could say they're pro-choice, but my voice gets censored or their voice gets censored and you only allow one viewpoint in the marketplace.
The court has been unanimous, 9-0.
Viewpoint discrimination is unconstitutional.
So I had a series of those cases in the 90s and we won them all either 8-1 or 9-0.
So it was not even a close call.
However, what has crept in?
So you had that great precedent.
But now you have this view that if your speech is, we used to say, robust, aggressive, Aggressive and even obnoxious would be constitutionally protected.
Now, what was not constitutionally protected, you couldn't yell fire in a movie theater, you couldn't do imminent lawless conduct, but short of that, it was protected speech.
Now what do you have is, well, your speech may be protected if the populace agrees with it, which is also very dangerous.
You know, the court has so far ruled the right way on those, but when it comes to prayer...
Seems to be the one issue where the flags go up immediately on all sides.
Wait a minute.
So here's what happened in the city of Ocala.
They had a crime spree.
And the leaders of the community and city council officials, mayor, said, we need to call our community together here.
And I think it was the NAACP head said, why don't we have a prayer vigil community-wide?
Any faith, no faith, you're welcome to come.
And everybody said, this is a good idea.
So the city puts it up on like a posting.
And that was it.
They have this prayer vigil.
A lot of people show up.
A couple of people showed up for the purpose of being offended.
That's what they actually put in their complaint.
I know I'm going to be there.
I'm coming, knowing this is going to be offensive to me, and yes, I'm offended, thus I file a lawsuit.
Because I'm offended.
So we've got two issues there.
You've got the, is that a violation of the Constitution, having a city involved in a prayer meeting that's open to the general public and multi-faith?
But also, can you bring a lawsuit just because you heard something you don't like?
And the answer to that question needs to be no.
That is not standing what we call legal doctrine of ability to get into court.
Because I don't like the message.
It's like, you know, I walk by and there's the Ten Commandment Monuments.
I had these cases.
And, you know, the person in the town says, I hate that monument.
Knowing it's there, I get ill.
That is one of their arguments.
The court said, okay, give me a break.
And they're claiming harm, right?
They're claiming physical or psychological harm.
Metaphysical harm is what they're saying.
And I'm not trying to knock metaphysical.
I'm just trying to say, how is that a cognizable legal issue?
But it is.
And so this case gives the court a chance to say, here's the rule.
You can challenge a practice of a city or a county or a state.
The standard will be, is it coercive?
For instance, if the city of Ocala said, you know, the hurricane just came through, we're going to give everybody a $500 rebate on their property taxes if you come to this meeting and participate in a prayer group.
Well, that's coercive.
Right.
That's markedly different than we think the community needs to be called together.
We're going to offer a prayer vigil as one of the things to do.
So that case has now been filed and docketed with the court.
The other side will respond November-ish.
Probably we'll know if they'll hear it in December, which would mean argument.
These things move...
Remarkably slow for years, and then it just is over within months.
We filed.
They file in 30 days.
We'll respond in 14 days after that.
The court will decide December.
We'll have to file then the merits brief.
It takes about 60, 90 days.
Sometimes they shorten it up.
Probably February, March.
Are you in an April decision by June?
So that phase, if they take it, will go quickly.
And hope it clarifies the law.
And that's the purpose, right?
Is setting that precedent and clarifying the law for any future questions or challenges.
Yeah, because this idea that if I'm offended, I can stop it.
Exactly.
I mean, think about that in a country like ours.
I mean, we started with the patriots throwing tea into a harbor.
I mean, in a revolutionary war.
And there was speech that you disagreed with.
And that's one of the reasons we left Great Britain.
And then the idea now that if I'm offended by what you say, thus I can sue you.
Yeah.
That's not the way it should be.
Not at all.
So hopefully this court will be taken.
If they grant review, I feel optimistic that we'll carry that.
I never count.
Listen, I'm always not a great math student.
I can count to five.
I'm hopeful that we can get to five.
That's the magic number these days.
But I think even more on a case like that.
I hope so.
For the sake of our country.
Right.
I really hope that's the case.
What do you see, I read recently, you know, the Center for American Progress has been putting out the basic message that this rising tide, in their view of Christian nationalism, is the greatest threat that To religious liberty in our country.
How do you characterize what they are saying and this rhetoric that they are pushing?
And what do you see as the greatest threat to religious liberty in America right now?
So, you know, this whole Christian nationalist movement, and however that is defined, look, if they break the law, they should be held accountable for breaking the law.
If they hold a position we think is extreme, well, they get to hold an extreme position.
You could have extreme thoughts.
You can't act out extreme conduct in a way that's harmful to others.
I just get, you know, you're a veteran, so I defer to you on this, but you know, I know the kind of work that my friends that have served in the military have been doing over the last 20 years, and I'm thinking, what's the greatest threat to America?
Probably not a group of people that are carrying an American flag that has a cross on it, and then you may think it's kind of, why are they doing that?
That, to me, is not the greatest threat.
Now...
That doesn't justify going into the United States Capitol on January 6th.
Every one of those people that were involved in that should be held accountable for that.
Because that was outrageous.
But it was a violation of the law.
So use the law and hold them accountable.
But a group of people that have a particular thought and saying that thought is now off limits or illegal, very dangerous.
No matter what side you're on.
Yeah.
I think it's interesting, too, to see how, again, the so-called progressive left is pushing this narrative and how dangerous that is, again, especially when we have, you know, the Department of Homeland Security's domestic terror unit going after parents who are, you know, protesting at their kids' board of education meeting.
Okay, right.
And then also the president characterizing people who voted for Donald Trump as extremists and the greatest threat to our democracy.
And yet when you look at, for example, the continued threat of this radical Islamist ideology that fuels jihadist terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS... And number one, the reality that that poses the greatest long-term threat, not only to our society, but to the world.
And also, people in this administration, obviously, I was vocal about this during the Obama administration, refused to even say those words.
fuels these terrorist groups and what that actually means.
That when you have people who are fueled by this convert or we will kill you mentality, then you recognize kind of where that path leads.
And we've seen it and experienced it, unfortunately, as a country.
Yeah.
So here's the reality.
9-11 seems like a lifetime ago, but it was 22 years ago.
And we're still dealing with Islamic radicalism today.
We are one terror attack away from remembering what the greatest threat is to a constitutional republic.
It's one terrorist attack away.
And look, you've been on the front lines literally in this.
And so I think, and I worked on a lot of the legal issues surrounding the war on terror, and they were complicated issues.
I'm not going to say they weren't.
They were complicated legal issues.
One thing that was impressive was our Constitution worked through all that.
I mean, including the ability, if we, God forbid it was necessary, succession of government.
And you had all those laws passed afterward on how we take it down even to different levels so that the country would survive.
but we were one attack away from remembering what is the greatest threat.
For instance, the administration right now is clamoring for a nuclear deal with Iran.
What that situation has done, which is the only positive thing I could see out of that attempt to get into this deal, I thought what President Obama did was outrageous.
They're the largest exporter of terrorism in the world.
But it sure united the Middle East.
I will say that.
And you have things like the Abraham Accords.
And you've got the Jordanians and the Egyptians and the Israelis and the Saudis and the Gulf State.
All working together because there's a really giant foe in the region.
And that was the former empire of Persia.
And the Persians were great people.
And they are great people.
They're under a totalitarian regime.
I mean, you think about what the Persian influence in art, literature, science.
And now they're in this, you know...
Religious autocracy.
Really, it's a religious dictatorship.
And yet the people are on the streets.
They're saying upwards of a million young people, mostly women, are on the streets.
And it was a great statement by a human rights activist from Iran who's in the United States right now, and she said this.
We're not asking the United States to come in and protect the women.
And it's women that are leading this protest.
Right.
But we are asking the United States to not fund the dictators that are trying to kill us.
Mm-hmm.
And that's where we've got to remember what the real threats are.
So you can have these skirmishes with, you know, what is Christian nationalism or fundamentalism or religious progressive, whatever labels you want to put on things.
But at the end of the day, are they trying to destroy the republic?
The answer is no.
Okay?
You may not agree with their positions.
You may think it's outrageous.
But again, the threat, that's a very different threat than a real threat, which was attempting to take down our government 22 years ago.
Yeah.
Well said.
As you said that, I was just remembering when I was in Congress, I introduced legislation called the Stop Arming Terrorists Act.
Right.
I remember that.
That spoke directly to that.
But that is the key.
I mean, that is the key.
It is the key.
There was one senator out of a hundred that sponsored that legislation, Rand Paul.
One single senator who had the courage, why it is an active courage to say, hey, we should not be funding and arming these terrorists, those who attacked us on 9-11, is truly a state of the fact that we don't have leaders in Washington.
Right.
We have a bunch of people who are very scared and followers and care more about keeping their job and their ambition or whatever it may be than they do actually about serving and protecting our country.
I mean, I don't understand, and I've never understood this, I mean, you know the politics better than me, but how your legislation, which to me was, it was like the whole point.
Simple.
Stop funding the guys and gals that are trying to destroy not just the United States, but are destroying the region.
Right.
And that's like, oh, that could be too controversial.
I mean, that's where we've gone as a culture, that that's too controversial?
So when you say, what's the religious liberty problem?
All of this.
Because it's a liberty problem.
At the end of the day, religious liberty is only as good as the Constitution is to protect it.
And as good as the Constitution is to protect freedom of speech and freedom of thought and freedom to protest and freedom to petition your government for redress or grievances.
The founders were right on all of that.
The problem is we lose that really quickly if the country is so undermined, not only by a radical movement of the left, but by laws that are put in place that squelch a dissenting voice.
And I think that's what we always got to be careful of.
I think a lot of people found their eyes open to this very directly and personally throughout the COVID pandemic and how those who sought religious exemptions to vaccine mandates were denied.
Friends of mine in the military fall in that category.
how those who sought to gather to worship, whether it was in a church or a temple or a synagogue or even outdoors, were told, no, you are not allowed to do that.
I think some pastors were even arrested because they continued to try to gather and in fellowship, while big box retailers and corporate entities were allowed to remain open, and people were allowed open access to go in and frequent those establishments. and people were allowed open access to go in and I think that this question of, okay, well, they say, oh, well, we, and I know the Supreme Court argued this, right?
They're like, okay, well, in the name of public health, we can curtail your right to religious freedom.
Where do you draw the line?
Well, I mean, there was one that they were using a one-size-fits-all.
I mean, I think the best line that came out of those cases, I don't know if it was Justice Thomas or Justice Alito, maybe both of them together, said, you know, it was out of Las Vegas.
You know, Caesar's palace is fine, right?
So render unto Caesar, that was fine.
But, you know, Calvary Chapel couldn't meet in Las Vegas.
Here was the problem.
They would take a congregation that had a building of, that could seat, you know, 3,000 people, And say, we're going to reduce the number of people that can come to 25% or 25 people, whichever is lower.
And that was whether your facility housed 5,000 or 50. So none of that made sense.
Now, look, a lot of it was, and I'm trying to be, I lost a brother to COVID. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry.
So it's very personal to me.
But the ACLJ represented the Heritage Foundation at the Supreme Court when the employer mandate came in because it was impossible to administer.
It turned...
Organizations, businesses, heritage foundations, ACLJs, ACLUs.
It turned you into a medical facility.
And, you know, like everybody else, we had outbreaks of COVID in our office.
We did not have to have the government tell us to put in, because we have studios.
I'm coming to you from one of them.
So ventilation, obviously, is a huge deal.
Because you've got people in areas that are tighter.
So we put in a filtering system.
I didn't have to have the government tell me to protect my employees by putting in a filtering system.
If somebody was not feeling well, I didn't have the government have to tell me, don't have that person come in.
Exactly.
So this is the...
It's a difficult aspect of a...
We haven't had something like this ever happen to us in our lifetime.
I mean, there's been epidemics and pandemics before, but in our lifetime, this was the great disruptor.
And, you know, I'd like to know who, ultimately, I'd like to see help the people held accountable or the country held accountable that launched this on the entire world.
Because, you know, we're thinking about the United States, and it was, you know, like I said, it's a very personal loss to me.
I lost my brother.
Everybody knows somebody that, I mean, because a lot of people died over this.
But it was all over the world.
And it stopped commerce.
It was warfare.
It was another version of warfare.
And the dangerous part of it is it didn't take much to get it spread.
I mean, it just started, you know, wet market, in a lab.
Doesn't matter.
Because the end result was...
And then the government trying to respond to it...
Was the difficult part of this.
And it was like one size fits all.
And the abuse of power.
This will just work.
And like Becca said, the synagogue that could seat 500, the government would have said 25%, that would have been 100, or 25 people.
But if your congregation also sat 5,000, it was the same 25 people.
None of that made sense.
Ultimately, you saw the court was very hesitant.
And I get it.
You're asking the Supreme Court at that point When nothing was known.
I think it would come out much differently today.
But at the point where these emergency cases were being thrown up.
And finally, at the end, they started getting it...
They balanced it correctly.
But it took a year.
But, you know, putting the Supreme Court as the decision-maker there is the exact reason why you have to have an independent judiciary.
And you can't allow these...
You know, this saying the credibility of the institution in the Supreme Court is zero and the public trust is zero, that's dangerous.
That is the guardrail, is the courts, ultimately.
So the question as we go forward, you've been a champion for liberty for decades.
We need more champions for liberty.
Is there some hope that you and others are mentoring and kind of helping guide a new generation of attorneys?
Yes.
Who are willing to take up these fights?
Because the challenges, I feel like the challenges that we are seeing, unfortunately, it's getting worse, not better.
And we need more courageous people who know the law and can argue for us and for freedom.
I appreciate you saying that.
You know, it's interesting because I think the cases now are much more, they're different than they were, you know, could Mary Sue have her Bible, could this person have their Bible study?
Can you protest in front of an abortion clinic?
Can you hand out religious literature?
Can the religious dissenter have a voice?
You look back on those now and say, of course we won 9-0.
I mean, you know, of course.
But now there's a lot of competing balances.
So when I turn...
I'm 66. When I turn 60, I said, okay, unlike, I think, the previous generation, and I'm not knocking...
Everybody's got to deal with their own thing.
I'm going to start transferring, mentoring leaders, both in law, media, whatever it might be.
So there are...
I've done...
I've taught...
We train.
We have a whole group of lawyers.
It's an interesting situation.
Of the original people with the ACLJ, I'm probably the youngest that started this a long time ago, and I'm 66. So you've got this, it's like 66 to 80, and then 35 to 45. But that's actually perfect, because now that generation, in fact, everybody's coming into this office, I think in a month or so, To have meetings and kind of...
So we have transferred operational decision-making to younger lawyers that are...
They're not kids.
They've been doing it for 10 or 12, 14 years.
I mean, I was arguing cases at the Supreme Court.
I was 34 years old, 33 years old.
So it's not like they haven't been doing it.
I mean, so there's a whole generation of lawyers...
I'm actually...
Tulsi, very encouraged about that.
There's a lot of different groups out there now that are doing this.
Everybody kind of has their own areas of expertise.
There's a lot of training that goes on.
There are still law schools that teach constitutional law, actually, and First Amendment jurisprudence.
It's getting harder, but there are some...
And it's not just conservative.
I mean, conservatives, libertarian, tend to understand the First Amendment better than the current liberal politics or liberal political thought.
That wasn't always the case.
When I started this, my allies were, like I said, the AFL-CIO, the ACLU, the Hare Krishnas, I mean, you know, all these different groups.
It's not the way it is anymore.
But I'm actually encouraged that The current Supreme Court understands their role and their jurisdiction.
A perfect example is the decision in overturning Roe v.
Wade.
Some people say wrong decision.
Some people say right decision.
I remind people what Justice Ginsburg said.
She was a big supporter of abortion rights.
But she said, I mean, really?
In a penumbra of the Constitution?
No.
That was not a good basis to have that.
So it returned it to the states.
Which is where it belonged.
And I think, you know, understanding that that is...
The Supreme Court didn't come down with an edict saying, state, you can't do this.
They said federal constitutional rights don't exist on that issue.
So I think, look, at the end of the day, you've got to have hope.
Look, you served our country in the military.
You served our country in the Congress.
You're serving our country now.
We just have to continue to keep open the avenues of communication.
That is the key.
A free society is always the best society.
Those countries that support religious liberty around the globe tend to be the countries that support freedom around the globe.
You can look at those countries and say, those are the ones that have freedom.
And you have over a million members, people all over the world.
You have institutions set up all over the world.
You are fighting these battles and fighting for religious liberty, not only here in the U.S., but in other countries where religious freedom is virtually non-existent.
We have an office in Pakistan.
There you go.
Case in point.
And had a, I mean, you look into this case in the United States, you'd say, this wouldn't even be.
But it was, it's a horrible situation.
Nine-year-old Christian, and you know, in that culture, Christianity is really low on the, it's very, it's almost like caste systems, unfortunately.
So the Christians are way down the list.
And this little nine-year-old girl was raped.
And they couldn't get the courts to do anything.
Well, our lawyers went in from our office in Pakistan and had 33 court appearances in 11 months.
Oh my gosh.
And finally, the perpetrator of this was convicted to life imprisonment.
Wow.
And we got justice.
But the scriptures say, justice, justice shall you pursue.
And it says it twice.
Justice, justice.
It means you just can't take it for granted.
So, as much as we've got a challenge here in the United States, yes, when I look at it globally, there are some real challenges.
But I'm still going to be optimistic.
So the last thing I want to ask you before we go is the question that I get asked most often from people who share our concerns about the attacks on our freedom and liberty and wondering, hey, what can I do?
And so your message both to everyday Americans who are just trying to live life But also really care about our future, their children's future, your message to young attorneys like yourselves, maybe starting out as a criminal defense attorney or starting out down a different path.
You changed course.
Something triggered that desire to act and to be this champion for liberty.
What was that and what's your message for us as a country right now and how we can make our own difference in that fight for freedom?
I look back at my own career, and I say a series of these like God moments.
And I think in my life, my faith has been very important.
And I think about that case.
Here I was a tax lawyer, and I was a government lawyer, and I was a defense lawyer.
And I did criminal tax cases and litigator.
And I'm on the board of a mission organization called Jews for Jesus.
And look, this was a message.
Now it's kind of like...
Normal.
But back in the 70s, 80s, that was a really radical thought.
I mean, Jews for Jesus was like, you know, vegetarians for meat.
I mean, it was like it made no sense.
Now, 50 years later, 40 years later, it's an accepted, there are Jewish people that believe in Jesus.
It's not a legal issue.
Not a cultural issue anymore.
You may disagree.
Again, so what?
You can disagree.
I was asked to take the case they had at the Supreme Court.
And that was the moment.
And I had no interest in doing Supreme Court.
And I went up and heard a case argued, and I went, how am I going to do this?
I am a tax guy.
And how am I going to do this?
And the executive director of the organization said, it's going to change your life.
And I had no idea.
And you know what happened was, I went in there, and because it's my own naivete, I saw how they always argue these cases as the free exercise of religion, but they never won.
Our side never won.
The person exercising their religion, and sometimes it was minority religions, just never won.
So I said, well, you know, why can't these be free speech cases?
So people think this was something like, I sought my study for hours and days figuring this out.
No, I went in, heard an argument saying, well, that doesn't work.
Huh.
But this might, and we won the case 9-0.
And American Lawyer or Legal Times, I can't remember which one, said I was rude, aggressive, and obnoxious.
And then when the decision came out, they said I remained undeterred during intense questioning.
And effective.
Yeah, and effective.
And from that case, they just started coming in, and I had like this series of cases at the Supreme Court.
I had one term, I think I argued one case in December and another one in February.
Which, like you said, most lawyers don't argue a case.
Yeah.
So, you know, these were these moments.
But I was never afraid to represent and put my name on a brief representing a group that I didn't share that same philosophy.
Like, I was one of the counsel for the Hare Krishna's when they were trying to engage in their religious practice in a public area.
And people say, well, you know, you're this, you know, you're Jewish, you're a Christian, and now you're supporting the Hare Krishna's.
Right!
Because if they lose, guess what?
We all lose.
Same thing.
I would write a brief for the AFL-CIO or represent the ACLU. So, there you have it.
And that right there is the message, Jay.
And that's it.
Is if one of us loses on this kind of battleground of freedom...
We all lose.
We might think, oh no, you know, hey, they're attacking those guys.
At least I'm okay.
At least my people or my group or the people I attach myself to are okay.
But that's not the case.
And we're seeing how it is progressing in such a dangerous direction How our institutions are being weaponized and why it is so important.
You answered that call to serve in your own way and I think that's really the reflection point for every one of us as Americans is in our own way, as I am trying to do with my life, is answering that call to serve in whatever way that we can.
You know, I think in our spheres, I think we get, you know, I'm a jurisdictional person because I'm a lawyer, so I think in jurisdictions.
My job was not to be a member of Congress.
My job was to be a lawyer.
So in that sphere, do everything you can with the tools you have.
So at the end of the day, you could say, I did the best I could with what I had to advance freedom and liberty.
That doesn't mean I win every time.
It doesn't.
I mean, I tell young lawyers, I'm not guaranteeing you're going to win, because you will lose.
There are going to cases, you're going to think, how could we lose this case?
And you're going to lose it.
And it happens.
But you can't be discouraged.
You have to go on.
When I leave the Supreme Court, I say the same thing I've said for almost 40 years now of arguing cases, for 35 years.
When I walk down the steps, I used to do this when my kids were little, and now their kids are my grandkids.
And hopefully, with this case granted review, my grandkids will see their grandfather argue a case before the Supreme Court.
But I would walk out and say the same thing to my colleagues.
Next case.
And that's what you've got to remember.
There's always the next case.
Well said.
Thank you for what you do every day.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks to you and your team.
You are much appreciated and your impact is generational and so necessary.
I'm grateful for your time, Jay.
I'm looking forward to talking to you again soon.
Congratulations on the podcast.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon and see you soon.
All right.
So the main takeaway here is a message of freedom and why it's so important for every one of us to take a stand for religious freedom even when we're not the ones who are being attacked.
So whether you're a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, or agnostic, We all need to put aside our own differences and understand this greater threat that faces us all with these continued attacks on our liberty.
And the attacks are, in fact, continuing.
You heard many examples in my conversation with Jay, a few others.
A coach recently fired because of his post-game prayers.
A student actually suspended from school for saying, bless you, when a classmate sneezed.
A second grader was prohibited from reading her Bible during her free time.
But hey, Harry Potter, that's just fine.
A fourth grader, forbidden from choosing God as her idol for a school assignment.
Michael Jackson, not a problem.
There's a teacher who made a Catholic student wash off his Ash Wednesday ashes, while another forced a Muslim student to take off her hijab.
People not allowed to say Merry Christmas at work or school during Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ.
Now, our First Amendment states clearly, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
But unfortunately, those in power today are undermining this very clear right that's enshrined in our Constitution.
And that's why it's so important that we have Supreme Court justices who are committed to upholding the Constitution and Bill of Rights and ruling according to those documents, not according to their own personal beliefs, religious or otherwise.
And we need leaders in Washington who will do the same.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
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