First Liberty Institute

It's Washington Wednesday, time for our weekly conversation on politics and government.

Joining us is Hunter Baker, political scientist and senior fellow at the First Liberty Institute.

Hunter, good morning.

Good morning.

We're already concerned about all the different ways that sporting matches can be manipulated in order to make bets pay off.

It's completely unacceptable, the idea that anything like that could ever affect a criminal proceeding.

Hunter Baker is a political scientist and senior fellow at the First Liberty Institute.

Hunter, thanks as always.

It seems that churches are one of the only uses that are excluded.

So in a welcome response, welcome for us, not to the town, there was a, so the church got involved with First Liberty.

So the First Liberty Institute is representing the church.

They sent a response, a very strongly worded response to the initial demand letter requesting that the church be allowed to meet in the IAC like any other secular gathering.

So, there are a couple of legal arguments in this response letter that I'll get to.

Basically, First Liberty is contending that the Main Street Ordinance discriminates pretty obviously against religious organizations by specifically targeting religious gatherings for special negative treatment while allowing almost all other secular

uses.

So,

I'll be your host.

Our special guest joining us this week, he is the president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, Kelly Shackelford is with us.

He is a best-selling author, evangelist, and founder of Student Leadership University.

Dr. Jay Strack is going to be coming to us from Israel.

We love being a part of your life.

Joining us now is Kelly Shackelford.

He's the president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, the largest legal firm in the nation dedicated exclusively to protecting religious freedom for all Americans.

Kelly, welcome back.

That's according to the plaintiff's attorney.

Hiram Sasser, an attorney with First Liberty Institute representing a group of Amish parents in the case, said, "It's not like they're making a choice.

New York is making a choice." He said, "New York is making the choice that they no longer welcome the Amish." Now, one Amish man at the auction who asked to remain anonymous said he wonders what lies ahead.

He told us, "I don't know what's going to happen," adding, "I don't know if people are going to leave, but I doubt it." He said, "I know there's a lot of people that are not going to take the vaccines.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Back with us is political scientist and senior fellow at the First Liberty Institute, Hunter Baker.

Hunter, good morning.

Good morning.

If they govern badly and if their policies are too far left, people in the center and the right move out, and if people in the center and the right move out, you're guaranteed to win the next election.

And so it's kind of a self-fulfilling sort of a cycle that people on the left may find desirable.

All right, Hunter Baker, political scientist and senior fellow at the First Liberty Institute.

Hunter, thank you so much.

Yeah, just based on your discussion of it, Frank, it almost reminds me of in the employment discrimination context under Title VII, what the old definition of undue hardship was with like the Hardison test and the Abercrombie and Fitch case, where it used to be a very high bar, but I think after what was the Supreme Court case now? I'm totally blanking.

The Groff versus DeJoy case by First Liberty, right? It made it a much lower bar and it's much more reasonable now because, you know, if an employee needs a religious accommodation and the employer says no to that, there's any number of ways where the employer could change things.

So, you know, according to a high bar, it wasn't an undue burden.

But, you know, the Supreme Court changed that.

I'm hoping they change this as well.

And interesting, important to note that That was a First Liberty Institute case, and this is a First Liberty Institute case.

So they have great experience there.

Hoping we can eventually collaborate with them.

So I was invited to participate and contribute as a social scientist for this study called Religious Liberty in the States.

It's done by the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy, which is this think tank out of Texas affiliated with a religious liberty law firm called First Liberty, the First Liberty Institute.

And my co-author and the director of the project, Dr.

Mark Hall, is a friend of mine and invited me to come help him with the project when he took over leading it.

There's a couple of things.

One is in the legal circles that we run in, people rub shoulders with legislators.

And so like the lawyers for First Liberty or Alliance of Ending Freedom, like they being aware of this when they interact with legislators can tell them about it.

We do have a number of direct interactions with legislators.