Argument for our Newest Supreme Court Case
is Set for December 7th
This week, First Liberty filed our opening brief in our newest U.S. Supreme Court case.
Alongside Gene Schaerr, managing partner at Schaerr Jaffe, we are fighting for every American’s parental rights. We’re representing parents who want—and have a constitutional right—to raise their children in accordance with their religious beliefs.
Oral argument at the Supreme Court is set for December 7.
We are challenging a Washington state law that says the government can hide runaway children—from any state—from their parents and facilitate “gender-affirming” treatment without parental notice or consent.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said parents can’t challenge the law until after the damage is done. Now, we’re asking the Supreme Court to reverse that decision—and protect parents and their children before it’s too late.
“Parents should not have to wait until their children are irreparably harmed to seek protection from courts,” said Ryan Gardner, Senior Counsel at First Liberty Institute. “No family should face the terror of having their children run away to the state and then have those children hidden from them.”
We need your generosity now to help fight this monumental Supreme Court case, which could turn into victory number 12 at the Court.
Plus, this case is only one opportunity before us. First Liberty currently has seven additional petitions asking the Supreme Court to hear critical religious freedom cases.
Taking a case all the way to the Supreme Court requires tremendous resources—and we never send our clients a bill.
Your gift today will help fuel First Liberty’s Supreme Court defense efforts, giving our legal team the resources to fight these cases all the way—and pursue victories that can protect religious freedom and constitutional rights for millions of Americans.
Please donate today.
First Liberty Argues for Pennsylvania Church in Federal Appeals Court
First Liberty was in a federal appeals court Wednesday arguing for Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church.
“It is unlawful for Collier Township to make rules for the church that do not apply to any other organization,” said First Liberty Senior Counsel Ryan Gardner. “The double standard set here violates federal law and exposes the Township’s gross hostility towards religion.”
Joshua D. Davey of Troutman Pepper Locke LLP, who argued the case, said, “Collier Township governs by a double standard when it imposes restrictions on the church while giving free reign to secular groups. We hope the Third Circuit will correct this blatant violation of federal law.”
Chief Counsel at Independence Law Center Randall L. Wenger, Esq. said, “When officials restrict religious exercise without a compelling government interest, they endanger the constitutional rights that protect all Americans. The district court’s decision must be overturned.”
Holy Trinity worships according to traditions that arose millennia ago in Eastern Europe. Ukrainian Catholic refugees fled from communism in the 20th century, seeking to worship in peace according to their own customs and traditions. They found respite in Collier Township, and eventually the refugees acquired a 41-acre parcel of land which they transformed into a cemetery.
When the church was ready to construct a shrine on that property with related facilities for prayer and worship, the Township refused most of the plans the church proposed. It added unlawful restrictions, such as limiting how long and when church bells could ring, for whom memorial services could be held, and sharply limiting the size of the building.
Despite the restrictions imposed on the church, the local carpenter’s union maintains a 19-acre campus less than a mile up the road that includes classrooms, conference rooms, offices, a cafeteria, an event space, and a meeting room with seating for 400.
What’s more, the township zoning code allows secular establishments such as amusement parks, ice rinks, fitness centers, and country clubs to operate in the same zoning district, while not allowing the same for houses of worship.
First Liberty Institute asked the appellate court to overturn a district court decision favoring Collier Township’s religious discrimination directed at Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Leading The Conversation | First Liberty in the News
Opinion | The Dangers Of Judges Imposing Their Theology On Litigants –Senior Counsel Stephanie Taub | Deseret News
Podcast | Minnesota Cracks Down on Amish Farmers – Senior Counsel Ryan Gardner | The Todd Starnes Show
AI, Automation, and the Meaning of Work – Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy Executive Director Jordan J. Ballor and Erik Matson | Public Discourse
Fusionism: Liberty & Virtue Reunited – Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy Fellow Kevin Vallier | Religion & Liberty
Podcast | Washington Wednesday: Changing the Guard – Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy Senior Fellow |The World and Everything In It
One Teacher in Nashville
Changed Thousands of Lives
One is all it takes. One bold and courageous person can truly make a widespread difference. Just ask our client, Eric Rivera.
Eric taught first grade in Nashville. Earlier this year, his school threatened to fire him. Why? Because he asked for a religious accommodation not to read books to his class that violate his religious beliefs.
Eric could have backed down and read the books. Instead, he stood firm in his faith and convictions. First Liberty took action on his behalf—and the school district quickly changed course.
Eric was granted a religious accommodation. His victory also had a big ripple effect. The school district put in place a policy to accommodate all teachers of faith.
What’s more, the district, on its own, went even further and removed controversial books on sexual orientation or gender identity, eliminating materials that could violate Tennessee law regarding parental consent.
That’s not all. Because of Eric’s win, 300 charter schools across the country changed their religious accommodation policies.
That’s the life-changing impact of your support. One teacher’s courage was multiplied into a victory that protected religious freedom for countless parents, teachers and children.
It’s Never Too Early to Start Supporting First Liberty Clients
A young barista who lost her job after respectfully answering her coworkers’ questions about her faith.
A pastor who was criminally charged after opening his church to people who needed a safe place to go.
A public-school teacher who was removed from her classroom for displaying a small cross in her personal space near her desk.
Different people.
Different places.
Different circumstances.
But they have something important in common.
They don’t have to fight alone.
Because you give, First Liberty is standing beside them, providing the best possible legal representation—completely free of charge.
Because of faithful supporters like you and with God’s favor, First Liberty has achieved an 11–0 record at the U.S. Supreme Court and a 90% win rate across all legal matters.
North Texas Giving Day is only one week away!
But you don’t have to wait to give.
Through September 17, the impact of your gift will be doubled through our $100,000 Matching Grant.
Reflecting on Religious Freedom
by J. Daryl Charles, Ph.D., Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy Senior Fellow
In the almost boundless literature devoted to America’s founding, two general deficiencies can be detected. One is the obvious, and understandable, attention given to the “prominent” founders – usually a cast of five characters (Washington, Franklin, Madison, Adams, and Jefferson), with the flip-side being a neglect of other important yet less well-known – and thus “forgotten” – founders who were guided by a deep commitment to Christian faith (for example, John Witherspoon, John Dickinson, James Wilson, George Mason, John Jay, Benjamin Rush, Edmund Randolph, and Roger Sherman).
A second tendency, at least in more scholarly discussions, is to discount or downplay the role of religion and religious freedom in the founders’ and framers’ thought-world. Related to this approach is the relative failure to grasp the unique manner, compared to other worldviews, in which both Judaism and Christianity presuppose the importance of freedom of conscience, and hence religious liberty.
During the present season we do well to reflect anew on the reasons for America’s unique “experiment in ordered liberty,” at the center of which is lodged the “sacred rights of conscience.” Out of this pre-political foundation, “natural rights” and religious freedom flow. And make no mistake: both in the American context and around the globe, religious freedom is in trouble – serious trouble.
The standard account of America’s founding that is widely disseminated in our time is that religious freedom was the creation of Enlightenment thinking, with its commitment to secular rationalism in the wake of religious wars and violence that ravaged Europe.
This view, it is thought, finds substantiation in several elements – for example, certain assumptions about a “wall” of separation between church and state, the absence of creedal affirmations or biblical citations in the framers’ charter documents, and purported “deistic” references to the divinity in these documents
A retelling of the narrative of America’s “origins,” by contrast, proceeds under different assumptions. (In recent decades we have the writings of people such as Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall, and Jeffry H. Morrison to thank for recognizing the role and influence that Christian faith had on the founders’ generation. Their argument is not that America is – or was – a Christian nation, only that Christian convictions were enormously influential in 17th- and 18th-century colonial thought, and hence informed the founders’ vision of a free society and religious freedom.)
It is more accurate to acknowledge that our nation’s charter documents, which declare all to be “created equal” with “inalienable rights” that have been “endowed by the Creator” and which assert that these “self-evident truths” are anchored in the “law of Nature and Nature’s God,” are in fact a mirror of Christian conviction. In theological terms, this understanding of “religious freedom” proceeds from an awareness of human beings being created in the image of God. Without this foundation, as the founders knew, “inalienable rights” become “alienable” and in time shift in dangerous ways and in dangerous directions.
It is the religious impulse, and specifically the Judeo-Christian impulse, that acknowledges the source of our most basic rights to be pre-political, and thus neither to be “established” nor eliminated by government. Religious freedom and any “establishment” of religion is voluntary and does not need the state’s coercive power for support, as Christianity teaches. “Free exercise” is a gift of “nature and nature’s God” and hence a sacred right. Because human conscience is ordered to the truth, it is “sacred” and therefore to be respected. A moral realism characterized the founders’ thinking regarding human nature, which they understood to be a mixture of dignity and depravity. Therefore, to concentrate too much power in the hands of a few is dangerous.
However, upon visiting America fifty years after its founding, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville warned against an opposite error – a “tyranny of the majority” – by which Americans’ obsession with freedom and equality could render that democracy unjust. Tocqueville at the same time praised America for the freedom and influence that religion possessed in this young nation.
A generation ago Pope John Paul II extended this “Tocquevillian” warning in multiple forms and with different words. Notably, in his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor and his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae John Paul cautioned those living in Western democracies only a few years after the extraordinary events in Eastern Europe to which he himself had contributed. Today, he warned,
when many countries have seen the fall of ideologies which bound politics to a totalitarian conception of the world . . . there is no less grave a danger that the fundamental rights of the human person will be denied and that the religious yearnings which arise in the heart of every human being will be absorbed once again into politics. This is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure moral reference point from the political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowledgement of truth impossible. (Veritatis Splendor no. 101)
John Paul’s words should give us pause. The self-centered perversion of our freedoms, coupled with the disappearance of moral law, can serve to veil either a softer or harder form of “totalitarianism.” Democracy cannot survive without virtuous and self-governed people. And with that erosion of the social-cultural fabric, religious freedom becomes impossible.
Irrespective of political winds that are blowing, may we as American citizens substitute gratitude for grievances, replace resentment with reconciliation, and prayerfully use our freedoms for the common good and service to those in need around the globe. And may we be bold, with many of the founding fathers, in asserting our religious freedom – for the good of others and the glory of Almighty God.
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J. Daryl Charles, PhD, is a senior fellow of the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy and author of Natural Law and Religious Freedom: The Role of Moral First Things in Grounding and Protecting the First Freedom (Routledge, 2018).
Editors’ Picks | Stories Around the Nation
Why Religion and Education Will Be in the Spotlight Next Term – SCOTUSblog
Video | Bipartisan Religious Liberty Bill Gains Momentum in Congress – FOX News
Hegseth Promises to Protect Military Members Who Deliver Religious Greetings At Air Force Base – The Independent
Judicial Confirmations in the Final Stretch – National Review
Supreme Court Asked to Consider Dispute Over Religious Use of Public Park – National Constitution Center
