S7, Ep. 01: The Supreme Court in a new era

As the Supreme Court begins a new term, we can’t ignore what else is going on in our country – attacks on the rule of law, weaponization of the Department of Justice, the militarization of American cities, disruptive and chaotic immigration enforcement, and a government shutdown. Amanda Tyler and Holly Hollman are back for a new season of Respecting Religion to bring thoughtful conversations to these issues and more at the intersection of religion and the law. In the season 7 premiere, they focus on the current Supreme Court term, including a case with an egregious violation of a person’s religious freedom rights that brought together unlikely allies.

SHOW NOTES

Segment 1 (starting at 00:38): Welcome back to season 7

BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty) is also the home of Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

Amanda’s book is titled How to End Christian Nationalism, and it is available wherever you get your books.: 

Video of our episodes are now on YouTube! Click here for the season 7 playlist. You can also click here to watch this full episode.

Do you want to receive special emails about the show? Click here to sign up for our email list! 

 

Segment 2 (starting at 07:26): A disturbing case on religious freedom coming to the Court

Read about the three cases from last term in this article from BJC’s magazine, Report from the Capital: Supreme Court issues decisions on religious charter school, exemptions and opt-out rights

Amanda and Holly mentioned Steve Vladeck’s One First newsletter.

BJC joined a friend-of-the-court brief in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections. Click here to read the brief and see the groups that came together across other ideological lines. Read more about the case in this article on our website. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Landor on November 10.

Here’s another preview piece, by Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog: Court to decide whether government officials can be held personally liable for violating inmate’s religious liberty

 

 

Segment 3 (starting at 26:42): What else can we expect from the Court?

Read more about Chiles v. Salazar in this article by Amy Howe for SCOTUSblog: Majority of court appears skeptical of Colorado’s “conversion therapy” ban

 

You’re invited! Join us in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, Oct. 21-23 for a special event focussed on the Sanctuary movement. We’re honored to welcome Dr. Sergio González, historian, author, and co-creator of the podcast Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State, to explore the history, challenges, and future of the movement. Visit BJConline.org/ShurdenLectures for more details and links to sign up.

Respecting Religion is made possible by BJC’s generous donors. Your gift to BJC is tax-deductible, and you can support these conversations with a gift to BJC.

 

Transcript: Season 7, Ep. 01: The Supreme Court in a new era (some portions of this transcript have been edited for clarity)

 

AMANDA: This is likely a term like none other that we’ve ever seen before.
We go about our work, but this is not business as usual, for our country or for the Court, and —
HOLLY: It’s a testing time.
AMANDA: It is.

 

Segment 1: Welcome back to season 7 (starting at 00:38)

AMANDA: Welcome to Respecting Religion, a BJC podcast series where we look at religion, the law, and what’s at stake for faith freedom today. I’m Amanda Tyler.

HOLLY: And I’m Holly Hollman. We’re back for season 7 of Respecting Religion, and there’s a lot to catch up on.

AMANDA: There is, Holly. And before we get into all of that, I’d love to catch up our listeners, both those who are returning to us for season 7 but also maybe those who are joining us for the first time. So as we start this new season, let’s reintroduce ourselves to our podcast listeners and viewers.

So my name’s Amanda Tyler. I lead an organization called BJC, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Rooted in a Baptist commitment to soul liberty, we are building a movement toward a just society that cultivates and expands religious freedom for all.

BJC is in its 89th year. We have a headquarters on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and we have staff coast to coast and supporters coast to coast — and even some international ones, including international listeners to this podcast.

I do most of my work out of Dallas, Texas, now, though I lived and worked in Washington, D.C., for many years. And I came to BJC in 2017 as executive director, and before that, I worked for a member of Congress. I worked in a private legal practice. So it is both a joy and a calling that I get to serve this organization and our work for religious freedom for all, and that includes for the separation of church and state.

And part of our work for the past several years has been leading an initiative called Christians Against Christian Nationalism, and growing out of all that we’ve learned from that work, last year I wrote a book called How to End Christian Nationalism, and that also keeps me really busy on the road, talking about the book, talking to audiences, and encouraging people in communities all across the country to get more engaged and involved in standing up for religious freedom in their own communities.

Personally, I’m married and the mother of a ten-year-old son who is very into baseball this season, so some of that might come into our conversations a little bit. But that’s okay with me, because I’m a big sports fan, so you might also hear me cheering or bemoaning the fate of my Texas Longhorns at different points in the season.

HOLLY: Well, I’m always up for hearing about that, Amanda. As our listeners know, I lead BJC’s legal efforts, which includes filing select briefs in certain courts — often the U.S. Supreme Court but in other courts as a friend of the court, where our voice is needed really to defend and extend religious freedom.

I have been at this work now for 25 years —

AMANDA: Wow.

HOLLY: — almost. And my legal background before that was in private practice in a big firm life, doing a little bit of corporate litigation work and employment law. But I found my calling here, fighting for religious freedom for all.

I live in the Northern Virginia suburbs and work here in the D.C. headquarters, so day to day I feel the impact of what’s going on in D.C. You know, people who live and work in the nation’s capital cannot escape the political environment we live in and, you know, today cannot escape all of the changes going on, particularly with this administration and day-to-day effects on my friends and neighbors.

I’m also a mother of two sons and will enjoy hearing your reflections on Little League time. I spent some time there myself, but then, as you know, Amanda, most of my time was on the hard courts. I moved into that more climate- and clock-controlled environment of basketball, which suited me perfectly. And I’ve had such a great time watching those boys grow into young men and playing all the way through the college level.

And I’m really excited to be here for this season. A lot has happened since season 6. We wrapped up back in July. Right?

AMANDA: We did. So as listeners know who are returning to the podcast, we often take a season break when the Supreme Court typically takes a term break or at least from their active hearing and deciding of cases during the summer, and we did that.

But the news didn’t take a break, of course, Holly, and a lot of very concerning things are happening in our country and around the world. We will not have time or space to catch up on everything that happened while we were on our break, but we will be, of course, returning to conversations, so that we can offer timely commentary and analysis as things come up now.

HOLLY: Exactly. We already have an upcoming episode planned, for example, to discuss recent developments with the Johnson Amendment. That is the tax law that defines nonprofits as nonpartisan and prohibits those kinds of 501(c)(3) organizations from intervening in campaigns for candidates for public office.

We know that we’ll also have a lot of shorter shows sprinkled throughout the fall so we can offer timely reflections on what’s going on in current events.

AMANDA: And in today’s episode, we’re going to catch up, take stock of where we are, and look at what’s next at the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond.

HOLLY: And as we record today, we’re doing something different. Many of our listeners get this show on YouTube through audio, but now they can watch the full video of the podcast on YouTube.

AMANDA: Plus all of our listeners — and, I guess, viewers, too, — you can also expect a few more live shows this season. We did one live show last season, and we found that’s really sometimes the best way to give you the most current episode, because as we all know, the news is changing very quickly.

HOLLY: In fact, we’re planning to be back with you live next week, Thursday, October 23, at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. Then we’ll be in different locations. I’ll be here, but Amanda will be traveling for a very important event that we’ll talk about more later in the show.

AMANDA: Yes. With so much happening, we are creating new ways to communicate with you. We’re starting a new email newsletter especially for Respecting Religion listeners. We will keep you updated on live shows, communicate between episodes, and continue to share the content you want regarding religion, the law, and what’s at stake for faith freedom today.

We have a link in the show notes for you to subscribe as a Respecting Religion listener, and if you already get email updates from BJC, please use that link, too, and it will update your preferences so you can get the special Respecting Religion content, too.

 

Segment 2: A disturbing case on religious freedom coming to the Court (starting at 07:26)

AMANDA: So, Holly, let’s talk about the U.S. Supreme Court.

HOLLY: They’re back. As you mentioned, Amanda, their work continued even after our season 6 series ended, and that’s because they were really busy. They continue to do work throughout the term after they issue their decisions, typically at the end of June.

And just as a reminder, we were pretty busy. Last year they heard three decisions that dealt with issues of religious freedom and what we call church-state law. We’ll put in the show notes a link to an article in Report from the Capital, BJC’s signature magazine, to talk about those — that discusses those three cases.

There was a case about curriculum in public schools and when parents get an opt-out and notice about the curriculum that we’re going to have a lot to see kind of how that’s interpreted in lower courts and how it affects communities.

There was a case about the scope of exemptions for tax laws that affect religious organizations. And I wrote a column in that same Report from the Capital about what I think was the most important case, although it was the one that was the shortest — the one about which they said the least — and that was that four-four split on the religious charter school case out of Oklahoma.

But all of these cases kind of — they were issued, and we reacted to them. But some of them required a lot more thinking about over the summer and will continue to really inspire and aggravate both activists, advocates, and scholars, as they think about what they mean and what they mean for the future.

AMANDA: That’s right. And as we’ve seen and, I think, as we’ll talk about — maybe even in this episode — sometimes when the Supreme Court issues a decision, the full impact of that decision and what it means for policies on the ground and for people and their religious freedom protections, that might take a year or two to really come to full fruition.

But grateful for your analysis of really what was at stake in that religious charter school case and even more grateful that the Court decided or was evenly divided in that case and therefore that there was not a major breach of church-state separation, at least in this case and at least for right now.

You know, we keep saying the Court took a break, but they really didn’t take a break, Holly, because there was significant Supreme Court activity over the summer. There has long been — and, I think, increasingly so — attention on what is sometimes called the emergency docket or sometimes called the shadow docket at the Court.

These are the cases that the Court issues orders in but in ways that are unusual from their usual activity. Usually they do things called, you know, granting certiorari or cert for short, and these are cases where they have full briefing in the cases.

Friends of the Court, like BJC, are given an opportunity to file additional briefing to help the Court decide and give the Court more information as they issue opinions. There’s oral argument. There’s chances for us, Holly, to have discussions about those oral arguments —

HOLLY: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

AMANDA: — and for Court watchers to get more information on the case, and importantly for the justices to get full information on the case.

But on the emergency docket, those are handled very differently. They come up usually in early parts of the case development. There is not the opportunity for full briefing or oral argument. And often the Court rules without explaining the basis for their rulings. And we’ve seen that happen in many cases already since January, including over the summer.

HOLLY: Yeah. You made this distinction between what we think about as the merits docket, and that’s — as we said — these cases when they’re decided, different from the Oklahoma case that was just decided in that four-four split.

They’re often long opinions. You know, in one of the church-state cases we have from last term, I think there was a 40-page opinion and then a 40-page dissent. There’s a lot of meat in there that shows the merits of the case, what the two sides argued, and what’s the basis of the Court’s decision — with concurrences and the dissents.

But the emergency or “shadow” docket, as it’s called, is very different. And there’s been a lot more attention to it lately, and I know you and I both follow Professor Steve Vladeck who is someone who’s written extensively on the emergency docket and who writes about the U.S. Supreme Court in a newsletter called One First.

And I was reviewing that as he was kind of summing up the — not the impact — well, the impact, but really the scope of the use of the emergency docket. And he noted that there were — and we’re not surprised — an especially large number of rulings in this past term on emergency applications. There were 140 and likewise a record number of grants of emergency relief, and that was 31. These are very high numbers from what the Court usually does.

In general — and without going into the difference in why there are so many applications or what kind of applications are more normal, but let’s say, death penalty are ones that we’re most used to hearing about that come in off the regular docket. In general what these numbers mean is that there’s much more involvement in lower courts by this U.S. Supreme Court.

They are either putting decisions on hold, these kind of administrative stays, or sometimes they are preventing certain enforcement actions, saying this injunction can’t go forward or not at the same scope. And, of course, much of this increase in activity comes out of the extraordinary times that we’re in because of the many novel actions by the Trump administration.

AMANDA: Novel actions, extra-legal actions, actions that the lower courts have been putting on hold in many cases, not in all cases. Right? Sometimes the Trump administration is prevailing, but many more times, they are not prevailing in these cases, and the lower courts are exercising their Article III duties as a coequal branch of government to put a check on things that they are finding to be unconstitutional about the Trump administration’s actions.

And so the Trump administration in many cases is then seeking relief straight from the U.S. Supreme Court, and as you noted, the Supreme Court is often granting that relief.

But for listeners who want to go much more deeply into this topic, we do really recommend the One First newsletter and the analysis there. And reading recently from Professor Vladeck, it also was encouraging to me to see that sometimes the headlines show just what’s happening at the U.S. Supreme Court, but if you dig more deeply — for instance, into the birthright citizenship cases — you’ll see that there has been a lot of activity in the lower courts that is again continuing to put many of these actions on hold. They just don’t get as many headlines.

So for Court watchers who really want to get a good sense of the emergency docket, that’s a great — Professor Vladeck One First is a great source for that.

HOLLY: So now this new term has started, the October term 2025, as it’s known. And this term promises to be another very important one, with cases on the docket about, as we mentioned, you know — get to the merits later after you have these emergency grants. But there’ll be cases about executive power in many areas, including early on, I think, in the power to enact tariffs, which obviously has had a huge effect on our economy and individual lives; other cases dealing with very important issues: voting rights, employment, transgender students in sports, and just a lot of things.

AMANDA: And for this podcast and for BJC’s legal advocacy, we often focus on cases where our voice may be needed as a friend-of-the-Court, usually in cases that address the standards and application of the First Amendment’s religion clauses, and cases that address statutes designed to protect religious freedom.

This Court has granted cert in one case so far that is firmly in that category, and BJC has joined an effort arguing for a strong interpretation of such a statute.

HOLLY: Yes. And so as this term begins and we are following and they continue to add to the docket, we’ll be paying attention. We may have opportunities to be involved in other cases, certainly to discuss them and be back with our listeners on the podcast.

But one case that we have already come into that will be heard in November is a case called Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety. The case has been briefed, and the Court will hear oral arguments on November 10. We’ll look forward to being back with you all to talk about it on a show right after oral arguments.

And at issue is the interpretation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, Amanda, one of those statutes like you described that is designed to protect religious freedom, this one particularly in the context — as the name says — of land use and institutionalized persons. Typically that is prisoners.

And in short, this is a case about the scope of relief available for violations of religious freedom in the context of prisons. The case comes to — it feels like it comes to us. The comes to the U.S. Supreme Court from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, and it involves facts that the lower court called “stark and egregious.”

Amanda, you remember what this case is about, don’t you?

AMANDA: I do generally. I know it involves the infringement of religious freedom rights for a prisoner whose last name is Landor but would love for you to tell us more, because I know you’ve been working very closely on this case.

HOLLY: Yes. I’ll talk about what BJC’s role is in this case in a minute, but I think to set the stage for how a case like this makes its way to the High Court, I want to talk about it from the opinion of the 5th Circuit — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit — who noted that these facts were stark and egregious.

The case comes out of an experience of Damon Landor who was a devout Rastafarian who vowed to, quote, “let the locks of the hair of his head grow,” close quote, a promise known as the Nazarite Vow. And this is based on a scriptural interpretation. And he kept that promise for almost two decades. He didn’t cut his hair, so you can imagine that’s a big part of his identity.

But that changed when he arrived at the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center. So stepping back: He had been incarcerated in 2020 and had a brief stint in prison. He was primarily housed at two facilities. This is in Louisiana, the St. Tammany Parish Detention Center and the LaSalle Correctional Center.

Both stays were pretty uneventful, and each facility respected Landor’s vow and allowed him to either wear his hair long or to keep it under a rastacap. This is — I’m reading directly from the 5th Circuit opinion: LaSalle even went so far — I’m sorry, LaSalle is the correction center he was in — they even went so far as to voluntarily amend their grooming policy to allow Landor to keep his dreads.

Then after five peaceful months and with only three weeks left in his sentence, he was transferred to another facility, RLCC. And upon arrival — this is the stark and egregious part — Landor was met by an intake guard. Acting preemptively, Landor explained that he was a practicing Rastafarian and provided proof of past religious accommodations, and amazingly, Landor also handed the guard a copy of this Court’s decision in Ware v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, which held that Louisiana’s policy of cutting the hair of Rastafarians violated RLUIPA, this Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

Unmoved by our case law, the guard threw Landor’s papers in the trash and summoned the warden, Marcus Myers. When Myers arrived, he demanded Landor hand over documentation from his sentencing judge that corroborated his religious beliefs. When Landor couldn’t instantly meet that demand, two guards carried him into another room, handcuffed him to a chair, held him down, and shaved his head.

And after time served, he sued the department. And now we’re all the way to the Supreme Court to find out what the proper damages are.

AMANDA: Holly, I am — I mean, just really, I cannot believe this story, and just when we think about the incredible disrespect shown to this man and his religious beliefs. And he showed up — think about — and this is why the statute exists — right? — that there is such an imbalance of power for important reasons, important security reasons in prisons.

But the U.S. Congress, on behalf of the American people, passed a law in the year 2000 that said, we have such respect for religious freedom in this country, we want to be sure that even in these places, and especially in these places, that religious freedom rights are secured.

And Mr. Landor knew that this could be a problem. The fact that he brought these papers and this case with him, to be sure — he knew that this could be an issue, and he wanted to be sure that his rights were protected, and that they threw it in the trash and then violated his dignity in such a disgusting way — I think it’s important that these facts come to the light of day, not just on this podcast, obviously, but at the U.S. Supreme Court.

HOLLY: Yeah. And I think that is significant, that the 5th Circuit, in denying his claim under the statute about kind of what damages are available, you know, made a point to say this, made a point to put the facts there, and to be very clear that this is not a case about whether his religious rights were violated. They were.

And it’s a horrible thing to see how that happens and how that happens — and how that could happen in prisons — when we have a statute that’s now almost 25 years old — or it is 25 years old — and they should know better. They should know better —

AMANDA: Yeah.

HOLLY: — in the treating of prisoners and their religious claims.

So the case comes to the High Court, not about whether he had a claim. Clearly he did. I mean, that is a clear violation of the sincerely held religious beliefs of an inmate, a big burden on religion that is in no way justified by the — it is in no way justified by a state interest.

Obviously prisons have a lot of state interest in taking care of prisoners without harming security and maybe a higher interest in this kind of uniformity than in other parts of our society. But there’s seriously no question that there could be some kind of interest that would justify this behavior.

So I’m glad that he had representation to take this case forward and to see if he could get money damages against these officers who did these acts. And the question before the Court is whether such money damages against individuals is included in the term, quote, “appropriate relief against government.” That’s the language provided in the statute.

And very important to this case is that the Supreme Court decided back in 2020 that such damages were available under the sister statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act [RFRA], which was the precursor of this statute. And so really that’s what we’re going to hear a lot about in oral argument is how this case and this statute should be interpreted consistent with not only the intent of Congress to give broad and powerful relief in the area of religious freedom, but how that’s consistent with what they provided in RFRA.

So our interest, not surprisingly, is in faith freedom for all. We have a long history of supporting statutes that provide the conditions for religious freedom. We’re deeply invested in the statute and how it’s interpreted, and we were glad to be part of a coalition to sign a friend of the Court, an amicus brief on behalf of the petitioner.

AMANDA: Yeah. It’s quite common for not just one organization to file in one brief but for several organizations to join together. And you, Holly, have led a number of such efforts in past terms, and on this we joined a brief that has a pretty remarkably broad and diverse coalition of groups, groups that are not always filing on the same side in these important cases involving religious freedom, but who could join together and say, we may disagree on some other issues but for this one, we have a common argument and a common interest before the Court.

HOLLY: Yes. The brief that we joined was led by the Christian Legal Society, with whom we’ve partnered from time to time through many decades. And they led a brief that was worked on largely by Professor Tom Berg in his clinic at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, as well as Professor Doug Laycock, who has been a good friend of BJC and someone we’ve worked with on many, many briefs in the past.

And the Christian Legal Society got together quite a broad group of interests here, and it felt good to do that, Amanda. Here I think the argument is very clear, and there’s a lot of common interest across organizations that might disagree pretty strongly about other religious freedom claims, but this coalition signing a brief with the Christian Legal Society includes not only the ACLU but the ADF, the Alliance Defending Freedom — and those names, I know, are very familiar to many of our listeners and probably not something that you’re going to see very often.

What we’re most excited about and what we’re the most hopeful about is that that gets the Court’s attention. And BJC was proud to be part of this effort.

AMANDA: Yes. So we will provide links in the show notes to a copy of our brief, so people can see the full coalition and also read the arguments that are made there. We will also link to a piece from SCOTUSblog that provides a good summary of what’s at stake in the case. And as you mentioned earlier, Holly, we’ll be back with an episode later this season to analyze the oral arguments and make sense of what we heard before the Court in November.

 

 

 

Segment 3: What else can we expect from the Court? (starting at 26:42)

AMANDA: Holly, let’s go over quickly some of the other big cases that listeners might hear a lot about in the news. Just a note, though, of course: The Supreme Court is still filling out its full docket for this term, so we don’t know all the cases yet.

We do know the Supreme Court will hear a case about precedent regarding who the president can fire, and that is, of course, an important issue facing our country right now. A couple of other cases have some religious elements or aspects, in part sometimes because of the identification of the party or some of the underlying concerns that often divide folks that are based on religion, such as human sexuality and reproductive rights and how their views on those things are influenced by their religious views.

HOLLY: Yeah. There’s a case later in the term that’s going to deal with reproductive rights, a clinic and really jurisdictional issues between the state and federal rights that kind of show the importance of that to people.

In fact, in the very first week of oral arguments, the Court heard a case called Chiles v. Salazar. In that case, the Court was hearing a challenge to a Colorado law that bans certain treatments. I think it’s aimed at what’s often called “conversion therapy.” And there’s a challenge to its constitutionality.

Basically, the issue in that case is whether a ban on counseling minors to change their sexual orientation or gender expression violates the free speech rights of a licensed therapist. So in other words, it’s, is talk therapy a form of protected speech, or is it part of the medical treatment, the conduct, that can be regulated under this Colorado statute?

So the Court is looking at that — whether a law that censors certain conversations between counselors and their clients based upon viewpoints expressed regulate the conduct or violate the free speech clause of the First Amendment, so that’s kind of how the Court accepted this case to issue a decision.

And, Amanda, as you and I talked about this, I’m feeling a certain theme about this Court in accepting this case and as I listened to oral arguments.

AMANDA: Yeah. The case comes at a very early point, a perhaps too-early point in really having enough information for the Court to make a ruling, because none of this conduct has actually happened in this case. It’s all hypothetical at this point.

And so in listening and reviewing their oral arguments, the main issue seems to be, first, what standard for constitutional review should be applied in this case. Is it rational basis review, or is —

HOLLY: Which is typical for states regulating medical treatments. Right?

AMANDA: That’s right. Or is it the higher strict scrutiny standard which is used for free speech rights?

HOLLY: That’s right.

AMANDA: And then once that question is answered, then which is the best court to actually rule on this at the first? Should it be sent back down to the intermediate level courts, who are closer to the action and could help develop some of the facts more clearly in the case? Or is it this U.S. Supreme Court?

So that seemed to be the nature of a lot of the questioning from the justices, trying to get information. So we’ll see how they rule in that case.

HOLLY: Yeah. I think the Amy Howe article on SCOTUSblog does a really good job kind of summing up not only the precise issues in a case that can be kind of confusing for the reasons you say, Amanda — the fact that you have a licensed therapist saying that she’s prevented from doing things but there’s been no threat to her, so we’re not sure what she’s saying and how it could be interpreted in violation of the statute.

But I think this article that we can put in our show notes not only shows precisely the issues that the Court took on — what the state argued and what the plaintiff and petitioner here argued — but also the interaction between the justices. So you can see sort of the themes that they seem to continue to bring to these highly contentious issues.

AMANDA: That’s right. Well, and there is at least one very significant petition pending, petition for certiorari pending with the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s in the case Trump v. CASA or the birthright citizenship case. This is a case where the justices again decided a procedural issue last term. Well, now the Trump administration has filed a request for the Court to determine the constitutional question, just very recently filed that on September 26. And now we’ll see if the Court does, indeed, take that case up for consideration.

I do think as we kind of close out this preview for the Court’s term, Holly, it’s important to note that this is likely a term like none other that we’ve ever seen before. And that’s because we can’t ignore what’s going on in our country, how the rule of law has broken down, how the Justice Department is being weaponized openly for the president to go after his political opponents, how due process rights are being violated with regard to ICE enforcement actions and the way that the Department of Homeland Security is carrying out their immigration policy, with the militarization of American cities and potentially turning, you know, American troops against our own citizenry.

Any one of these things would be completely alarming, not to mention by the fact that we’re recording during a government shutdown.

HOLLY: That’s right.

AMANDA: And that isn’t even front-page news when it normally would be. You know, we go about our work, but this is not business as usual, for our country or for the Court.

HOLLY: It’s a testing time.

AMANDA: It is.

HOLLY: And all of those challenges that you mentioned, Amanda, we are looking to the courts and other institutions to hold. Some institutions that we may have lost some faith in or have worried about, we’re hoping step up and find their grounding and assert and take care of their responsibilities, and the Court’s primary among them.

So with that, we will be back later to talk about more things and court cases and religion and law in general. But before we leave, I want to mention that we have upcoming a very special event in Minnesota on October 21 through 23. We have our annual lecture series and a very timely topic. And, Amanda, you’ll be there, representing BJC in Minnesota. Do you want to tell our listeners about this event?

AMANDA: Absolutely. So our topic this year is on what is often known as the Sanctuary Movement. It’s a movement of hospitality that propelled faith communities’ practices of loving their neighbors. While it’s taken different forms throughout the years, the movement’s roots of interfaith solidarity and mutual transformation still provide lessons for those who are committed to migrant justice today.

So all of you listeners are invited to join us if you are or could be in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area from October 21 to 23, as we explore the history, challenges and future of the Sanctuary Movement in the struggle for migrant justice.

Our main speaker will be Dr. Sergio Gonzalez, a professor at Marquette University, and he will deliver the keynote lecture titled, Criminalizing Mercy: Sanctuary and Government Repression of Migrant Justice, as part of the event.

And as the co-creator of the podcast Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State, Dr. González will offer insights about the state of faith community involvement in migrant justice.

HOLLY: Yeah. I think this is a timely issue and one that will be helpful to have in a lecture series, so that you can go deeper about these concepts and what they mean and where they come from and how they’re sometimes used in current political environments.

And this, of course, is an annual event that is called the Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State. And we are proud to sponsor that and to invite you all. We’ll put a link in the show notes for more information and how you can sign up.

And that brings us to the close of this episode of Respecting Religion. Thanks for joining us as we kick off season 7. There’s surely a lot more to come.

AMANDA: Remember, next week, October 23, we are planning to go live at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time or 10:00 a.m. Central. Sign up for email updates and follow us on social media so you know how to find us.

HOLLY: For more information on what we discussed and a transcript of this program, visit our website at RespectingReligion.org

AMANDA: You can learn more about our work at BJC defending faith freedom for all by visiting our website at BJConline.org. And sign up for emails from us at BJC and Christians Against Christian Nationalism with the special link in our show notes. Using that link lets us know that you are interested in hearing from us about this podcast.

HOLLY: Plus you can send both of us an email by writing to [email protected].

AMANDA: You can find clips of this show on social media. We’re at BJContheHill, and you follow me on X, Bluesky, and Threads @AmandaTylerBJC.

HOLLY: And wherever you listen or watch, take a moment to leave us a review or a five-star rating to help more people find this program.

AMANDA: We also want to thank you for supporting this podcast. You can donate to these conversations by visiting the link in our show notes.

HOLLY: Join us on Thursdays for new conversations Respecting Religion all fall long. We’ll look forward to seeing you next week live on October 23 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, 10:00 a.m. Central.