Speaker 1: It's great to have. Back on the program today, Andrew Seidel, who's a civil
rights and constitutional attorney with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. His
new book is American Crusade How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom. Andrew,
really great to have you back on today. Speaker 4: Oh, it's a pleasure to be
back. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1: So, you know, we knew we predicted
it was sort of written on the wall that after the 2015 Supreme Court decision that said you can no
longer ban gay marriage at the state level. It wasn't that the idea of weaponizing homophobia in
the law was going to go away. It was simply going to move to sort of other venues. One of them was
going to be attempts at employer discrimination on the basis of religious freedom and and sort
of using religious freedom. The Baker case, as many have talked about, the cake, baker,
etc.. Can you talk a little bit about how the Supreme Court, which is now one of the
most conservative Supreme Courts we've had in a while, has assisted in doing exactly this.
Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely. I mean, religious freedom has long been a shield, right? It's
defended the minority against the tyranny of the majority. It's defended us all against government
overreach. And never in our history has it been a license to violate the rights of other people
or to infringe their rights in any way. But this packed Supreme Court, collaborating with a network
of well-funded, powerful Christian nationalist organizations, is changing that. And these
crusaders, I mean, they are weaponizing religious freedom. And we've seen it for the last decade. In
case after case, they are literally reshaping the legal meaning of the First Amendment,
and they're turning that protection into a weapon that conservative Christians can use to injure
other people, to violate their rights and to impose their religion on us all. And so, American
Crusade, the new book tells the true stories behind those blockbuster cases that are actually
rewriting our Constitution. And it does so without the the legalese and jargon that we lawyers like
to hide behind, because I really wanted everybody to be able to understand the threat and see just
how radical and dangerous these crusaders and this Supreme Court opinions truly are.
Speaker 1: And explaining these without legalese is often so important just for getting the
average person to understand what's kind of fundamentally at issue. So let's talk about
the so-called gay wedding cake case, which is Masterpiece Cakeshop V, the Colorado Civil Rights
Commission. Ultimately, in in layperson's terms, why did the court rule in favor of
the baker who did not want to bake the cake? Speaker 4: Essentially, the court manufactured
hostility against the bakeries religion. What if what the court said was that the Colorado Civil
Rights Commission, which is in charge of enforcing the state's civil rights law. Yes. Basically was
mean and said mean things about the bakers religion and that tainted the whole process.
And effectively what it did was it gave the bakery get out of jail free card. Now, it didn't decide
the central issue. Does religious freedom equal a license to discriminate? And a big part of that
is because Charlie and David, the couple involved in this case, really did a great job of speaking
out about putting a face on this discrimination. And it made it difficult, I think, for the court
to make that decision. I also I will say that the court is considering a case right now. 303.
Creative versus illness out of Colorado that is going to decide that issue, at least on the First
Amendment free speech grounds probably this term. And there is no couple that's been discriminated
against. I think the court's going to finally do what it was not able to do back in 2018.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the cases that have to do with crosses and, you know,
ten commandments of blacks and sorts of things on public lands and or at government buildings like
is is there ever a time when that is acceptable, even though it appears to be an establishment of
one particular religion over others and over non religion by the government? And what does
the Supreme Court said about that? Speaker 4: I mean, historically,
the Supreme Court's actually been pretty good about, for the most part, striking down
these overt religious expressions, except that we've seen that changed in the last few years,
especially with the Bladensburg Cross case that we saw now. I mean, one of the things that was really
striking to me in writing this is, first of all, I've been in the trenches fighting these cases for
a decade. I mean, this is this is my career. I've litigated these cases. I've briefed them. I've
been in front of courts arguing these cases. And the the thing that I think a lot of people don't
understand, it's partly because this is part of the crusade, is that these questions are actually
really simple to answer for the most part, like when religion and the law collide, the answers to
the questions raised are not that different. For us to figure out. And I draw three simple lines
in the book, synthesizing basically 200 plus years of precedent. And the third line is the separation
of church and state. And it's pretty simple. Our government has no religion to exercise.
So putting up a cross on government property is inappropriate. Ah, and I think a lot of times we
felt we talk about the separation of church and state in a vague terms and not in terms that
actually impact people in their everyday lives. Right. And it really is at its most basic level,
an abuse of power when that line is violated. You have a public official abusing state power.
To impose their personal religion on other people. And that's a big problem. That's what, for
instance, what we saw in the case of the praying football coach this past term at the court. Is
a state actor abusing his power to impose his personal religion on other people's kids? And
you have the Supreme Court rubber stamping it and saying, yep, that we're cool. But yeah, we've.
Speaker 1: Been covering that since the beginning. So if I recall, the most recent news on that is
that the prayer was okay at at the center, at the 50 yard line. It was not sort of coercive,
despite the fact that this was the coach in a position of power and authority,
and that it's totally obvious that football players, high school kids, might reasonably
feel that if they don't participate, maybe playing time is jeopardized, that they are they
are in a position of subservience, for lack of a better term there. And apparently the decision
is that it was actually okay and the coach is going to be reinstated, if I recall correctly.
Speaker 4: You do. And there are a couple of things to to hit on. So first of all,
this is one of the cases that I cover in the book, and I actually have an update on my website
going over all of the newest material that's been coming out. And in that case, we know for a fact
that students felt pressured. Right. There's no question students felt pressured by their coach.
They felt that they had to pray to play. And you actually had the Crusader involved in this case,
First Liberty Institute, which is the Christian nationalist organization that brought the case
all the way to the Supreme Court. Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 4: You have them spinning what one of the lower judges called a, quote, deceitful narrative.
Right. And they're making up this this idea of, oh, he's just saying a private personal prayer
on the 50 yard line, surrounded by students, surrounded by staff. I mean, it's ridiculous
to the point where in her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor is including photographs to
show that this is a deceitful narrative in the lower courts. One of the judges actually puts
the claims that First Liberty Institute makes in this chart beside what actually happened in
reality. But the crazy thing about it, which to me highlights the fact that our court is
packed and gone and is it complicit in this crusade? Is that First Liberty Institute,
instead of running in, hiding and burying their head in the sand after a judge said they were
spinning a deceitful narrative, they appealed to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court adopted
the ultraconservative block on the Supreme Court, rather adopted that deceitful narrative wholesale.
They just lied to us all. Speaker 1: When you look at
the current Supreme Court, I know that it can be hard to say this overall, but maybe specifically,
as it applies to the areas that you're talking about here, is this the most right wing Supreme
Court that there has been in? I mean, how long? Speaker 4: I mean, certainly our generation for
sure. I mean, this is one of the things, though, that I think we really need to do,
and this is what I tried to do in American Crusade, is we have to unshackle our minds from
the belief that the Supreme Court is an impartial arbiter of truth and justice, that the crusade
depends upon people believing this. But look, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump and Leonard Leo,
they cheated, install and packed the courts to put their collaborators in place, not because
those collaborators would administer justice even handedly, but because they wouldn't specifically.
Speaker 1: Because they wouldn't. Yeah. Speaker 4: Exactly. I mean, if they if they just
wanted justice administered even handedly, Merrick Garland would have gotten a hearing. Instead,
they spent $540 million packing the court with people they knew would decide cases in in their
way. But to answer your question, I think what we're actually seeing is a very conservative,
regressive institution returning to its mean. I mean, this is one of the things that came across
when I was researching the book. The Supreme Court historically is a very conservative body.
We think of it as the Warren. We think of it as the court that gave us Brown versus Board of
Education in Miranda versus Arizona and Gideon versus Wainwright, which says that you have a
right to counsel when you are accused of a crime. But but that's that's kind of the outlier in our
court's history. This is the court of Plessy versus Ferguson and separate is equal of of
Dred Scott and fugitive slave laws of trying to suffocate the New Deal in the cradle after it was
won with the blood of so many Americans during the Civil War, of Japanese internment camps,
of Muslim bands, of billionaires and corporations and political gerrymandering and vote suppression,
and now of abolishing abortion and reproductive freedom in the name
of their narrow religious beliefs. So this is the most conservative court in our lifetimes,
but certainly not in the lifetime of this country. Speaker 1: Last thing I wanted to ask you about.
There were so many cases, particularly early during the COVID pandemic related to
restrictions on public gatherings and also in some cases related to masks and other things.
And individuals would start to assert religious arguments, for example, that the gathering was
really a religious gathering due to opposition based on religion, to some of the guidelines
that were put in place or religious claims related to masks or vaccines or whatever the
case may be. Can you talk a little bit about that in the context of these other things that
we're talking about? And is it similar? Is it bogus? How does a court how does the current
court think about such claims in that context? Speaker 4: So this is actually one of the chapters
that I spent a lot of time on because it really does crystallize and highlight
exactly the problem with this crusade and how fallacious it is at its most basic level. Yeah.
So I go through all the COVID cases, the big COVID cases that hit the Supreme Court both
before and after. Amy Coney Barrett which is kind of a tipping point. And one of the
things that became really clear is that it's all kind of nonsense. If you look at the other First
Amendment claims that are made free speech claims, free assembly claims, all of those cases failed.
All of those cases failed. The only cases that won were religious freedom claims, and they only
won before Trump judges and Republican appointed judges. Like 80% of the time they won before Trump
judges, 50% of the time before Republican judges and never before a Democrat appointed judge,
which is the right call, by the way. And this is what our precedent sets. I mean, there's very
clear precedent going back 100 years, saying that your religious freedom does not include
a right to risk the health and safety of every other citizen in this country, especially during
a pandemic. I mean, this is very clear left, right. This is what I'm talking about with the
weaponizing of religious freedom. They are turning that protection into a weapon to harm and impose
on others and violate their rights. And nothing could be more clear than that than saying during
a pandemic, you can risk everybody else's lives. Speaker 1: The book is excellent. It's called
American Crusade How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom. There are
signed copies available using the link that will put in the video description
on YouTube. We have been speaking with the book's author, Andrew Seidel, who is a civil
rights and constitutional attorney. Andrew, always great having you on. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Always a pleasure, my friend.