Blaine Adamson, owner of promotional printing company Hands On Originals, has turned down several requests to create shirts based on the message that he was asked to print on them. But when he declined one particular design, he faced a public smear campaign and a lawsuit that threatened to destroy his business. Blaine could have folded then. But five years later, he hasn’t. And he has no intention of doing so now. First and foremost, Blaine is standing for his faith – it’s the most important part of who he is, and it guides everything he does. And he is also standing for his freedom of conscience and the principle that no American should be forced to speak a message or promote an event that conflicts with their faith. If we don’t have the freedom to decline to express messages that violate our convictions, that should concern us all. A Kentucky court recently ruled in Blaine’s favor, upholding his right to decline to print messages that conflict with his beliefs. Now, the Kentucky Supreme Court will decide whether to hear his case. This week on Freedom Matters, Blaine and ADF attorney Jim Campbell join the show to discuss the case.

Freedom Matters

To Print or Not to Print? This Promotional Printer Chose to Follow His Conscience

Members of Fresno State Students for Life were chalking positive, pro-life messages on the sidewalk leading up to the campus library when they saw other students erasing the messages. Because Fresno State Students for Life members had gotten permission from school administration to do so, this came as a shock. So, chapter president Bernadette Tasy started recording. Watch what happened: Yep, you heard right. Public health professor Gregory Thatcher told Bernadette that “college campuses are not free speech areas.” On top of that, he claimed that Fresno State Students for Life was only permitted to chalk messages in the speech zone on campus. Except that there are no speech zones on campus. The policies instead state that “freedom of expression is allowed in all outdoor spaces on campus.” Yet, he still took it upon himself to recruit his students to erase the messages, even erasing them himself. And he absurdly claimed that he was exercising his free speech rights by censoring the students’ speech. Yet even Fresno State’s policies state the obvious: “The right of self-expression does not extend to preventing self-expression by others.” Alliance Defending Freedom has filed suit against Professor Thatcher on behalf of Fresno State Students for Life. This professor is teaching his students that the proper response to someone you disagree with is to silence their speech, rather than countering it with your own. On Freedom Matters this week, we sat down with Bernadette and ADF attorney Casey Mattox to discuss the case.

This Professor Needs to be Reminded How the First Amendment Works

There are a lot of events that Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips will not use his artistic talents to promote. He won’t design Halloween cakes, or lewd cakes for bachelor parties. Cakes that disparage others are out of the question. He tends to think along the lines that if he would not design it and put it in the showcase in front of his granddaughter, then that’s a request he needs to turn down. As a Christian, Jack cannot use his artistic talents to promote all messages or events. And he shouldn’t have to. No creative professional should be forced to create custom work to celebrate an event with which they disagree. So, when a same-sex couple walked into Jack’s store and asked him to design their custom wedding cake, he had to politely decline. Because he believes what the Bible says about marriage, that it is the sacred union of one man and one woman, he did not feel he could design something that celebrates anything contrary to that. He did, however, offer to sell them anything else in his store. Despite that, they sued him. Alliance Defending Freedom has represented Jack all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and we will continue to defend him before the Court in the coming term. Jack will serve everyone, but he cannot promote every message. And he should have the freedom to do that. A government that can tell you what messages to promote, regardless of your beliefs, should concern us all. This week on Freedom Matters, we sat down with Jack and ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco to discuss the case.

Should We Be Forced to Promote Every Event the Government Demands of Us?

It’s just that, a Facebook post explaining their beliefs on marriage, that got the Tennes family farm kicked out of the local Farmer’s Market in East Lansing, Michigan. All they did was honestly answer a question about their views on same-sex marriage. As Catholics, they believe marriage is the union of one man and one woman as the Bible teaches, and they explained their beliefs accordingly in response to an inquiry. And that was the end of it. Or so they thought. East Lansing city officials apparently did not like the fact that the Tennes family dared to voice their beliefs – which, last time I checked, was a right protected by the First Amendment. Yet, East Lansing tried to keep them from coming back to the Farmer’s Market, telling them that hecklers might show up to protest their viewpoint on marriage. When Country Mill kept attending (with no protests to be seen), East Lansing resorted to other measures. Leading up to the 2017 Farmer’s Market, East Lansing sent out invitations to vendors as it had in the past. But for the first time in seven years, Country Mill Farms did not receive one. So, the Tennes family filled out an application to attend so that they could sell their apples, blueberries, and peaches at the market. They noticed that the city had added a new policy requiring all vendors to comply with East Lansing’s nondiscrimination law, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes, not just at the Farmer’s Market but in all of their general business practices. This policy even applies to the Tennes family farm despite the fact the farm is located in Charlotte, Michigan, 22 miles outside of East Lansing. The Tennes family submitted their application since they happily serve anyone and everyone who wants to buy their fresh and organic produce at the Farmer’s Market. But East Lansing denied their application, claiming that they violated the policy by their speech on Facebook. This is a major violation of free speech and religious freedom, so Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed suit on the Tennes family’s behalf. This week on Freedom Matters, we sat down with Steve and Bridget Tennes and their attorney Kate Anderson, legal counsel for ADF, to discuss the case.

Who knew a Facebook post politely explaining your beliefs could get you in so much trouble?

Just over a week has passed since the US Supreme Court issued its opinion in the playground case, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer. The case centered on a small-town church with a playground used by local families. When the State of Missouri offered a grant program to make playgrounds safer, Trinity Lutheran seemed a perfect fit. The officials reviewing applications gave the proposal high marks. But that didn’t matter—it was a church that had applied. A rejection letter soon followed. Five years later, and not without some last minute drama, the court ruled in favor of Trinity Lutheran Church. For some, the 7-2 decision represents a sea change in how states treat and award funds to religious organizations. Others say a footnote in the opinion limits the impact to discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. Erik Stanley, Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom and Director of the Center for Christian Ministries, filed the case on behalf of Trinity Lutheran Church in 2012 and took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. He joins Freedom Matters this week. We’ll talk about the church, the case, and get his thoughts on the opinion.

When a playground isn’t just a playground

Last July, a Colorado cake artist who declined to use his artistic talents to create a wedding cake celebrating a same-sex ceremony asked the US Supreme Court to take his case and rule that the government cannot force him to communicate a message with which he fundamentally disagrees. This week, almost a year later, the Court has agreed to hear his case. Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, and Kristen Waggoner, Senior Vice President of US Legal Advocacy, join Freedom Matters to discuss what this means to Jack and other creative professionals around the country who simply want to live and work consistent with their deeply held beliefs. In July 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins asked Jack to make a wedding cake to celebrate their same-sex ceremony. In an exchange lasting about 30 seconds, Jack politely declined, explaining that he would gladly make them any other type of baked item they wanted, but he could not make a cake promoting a same-sex ceremony because of his faith. Craig and Mullins, now represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, immediately left the shop and later filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which eventually ruled against Phillips. The same-sex couple was easily able to obtain their desired rainbow-themed cake for free from another nearby cake artist. In contrast to the ruling against Phillips, the commission found in 2015 that three other Denver cake artists were not guilty of creed discrimination when they declined a Christian customer’s request for a cake that reflected his religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

Supreme Court to weigh in on Conscience

The day after Christmas in 2015, five members of the Washington State Human Rights Commission passed a new rule opening sex-specific locker rooms, showers and changing areas to members of the opposite sex. Right now, a biological man may enter any girl’s public locker room in the entire state and declare his right to be there. Even worse, if a girl or her parents complain, they are told to leave the locker room and may be subject to penalties. Kaeley Triller Haver is Communications Director for Just Want Privacy, a grassroots group hoping to put an initiative on the ballot to require schools to maintain separate facilities for boys and girls and allow businesses to manage private areas in the way they feel is best for them. Kaeley joins the show to talk about the initiative and her work to protect the privacy of families in Washington.

An Initiative for common sense in Washington

Casey Mattox, Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom and Director of the Center for Academic Freedom, joins the show to explain how members of a Young Americans for Liberty club were arrested for passing out copies of the U.S. Constitution on a college campus. The arrests were captured on video that also show campus officials telling the YAL supporters that “engaging [students] in conversation on their way to educational places” is a violation of the Solicitation Policy because it is an “obstruction to their education” to ask them questions like, “Do you like freedom and liberty?,” adding that he was concerned that the students from “rural farm areas…might not feel like they have the choice to ignore the question.” Also, for the first time, a President submitted a budget to Congress that directs federal funding away from Planned Parenthood to local health care clinics that outnumber the abortion giant 20-1. This is just the latest example of the Trump Administration’s willingness to act in support of the sanctity of life. Just two weeks ago, the President expanded the Mexico City Policy to stop any U.S. government funding from going to international organizations that commit or advocate for abortion. Casey testified before Congress in support of redirecting funds from Planned Parenthood to thousands of health care clinics across America that actually provide health services for women.

Pass out the Constitution, Get Arrested

This week on Freedom Matters, Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler, R-MO, and Dr. Mike Adams join the show. Congresswoman Hartzler sits on the House Armed Services and Agriculture Committees. A staunch defender of the sanctity of life, she also played an important role on the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives which looked into the medical practices of abortionists and the business practices of the procurement organizations who sell baby body parts. We discuss President Trump’s new “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Initiative" which broadens the Mexico City Policy that previously covered only family planning funds to now cover all foreign health assistance provided by government agencies, including the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and the Department of Defense. The Mexico City Policy blocks U.S. federal funding for NGOs that provide abortion services, or advocate to expand abortion. Dr. Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington, frequently received accolades from his colleagues after the university hired him as an assistant professor in 1993 and promoted him to associate professor in 1998. At the time he was an atheist, but his conversion to Christianity in 2000 impacted his views on political and social issues. After this, he was subjected to intrusive investigations, baseless accusations, and the denial of promotion to full professor even though his scholarly output surpassed that of almost all of his colleagues. In a lawsuit filed against the university on Adams’ behalf, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys contended that the university denied Adams a promotion because his nationally syndicated opinion columns espoused religious and political views that ran contrary to the opinions held by university officials. Tyson Langhofer, Senior Counsel for ADF joins the discussion on the state of speech on college campuses. He just filed suit against California State University–San Marcos officials on behalf of a pro-life student organization and its campus president who are prevented from bringing pro-life speakers to campus under the university’s discriminatory funding policies. The university funds pro-abortion and other favored views with almost $300,000 in mandatory fees charged of all students, but denied Students for Life $500 in funding to host Dr. Adams to speak on “Abortion and Human Equality” to provide a contrasting view.

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler, R-MO, and Dr. Mike Adams

A Kentucky appeals court issued a ruling that a Lexington printer did not discriminate against anyone when he declined to create a message in conflict with his religious beliefs. In 2012, Blaine Adamson of Hands On Originals declined to print shirts with a message promoting the Lexington Pride Festival, an event that the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization hosted. Although he declined to print the shirts because of the message that would have been on them, he nevertheless offered to refer the GLSO to another printer who would have made the shirts. Unsatisfied, the GLSO filed a complaint with the commission—despite eventually receiving the shirts for free from another printer. In 2014, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission ruled that Adamson must print messages that conflict with his faith when customers ask him to do so. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys appealed the order to the Fayette Circuit Court, which reversed the commission’s ruling and affirmed Adamson’s freedom to live according to his faith. The commission then appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals in Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission v. Hands On Originals. Jim Campbell, Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom and attorney for Blaine Adamson joins Freedom Matters this week.

A win for religious liberty

President Trump signed the Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty last week to much fanfare in the media and mixed reviews from advocacy groups on both sides of the debate. The executive order specifically mentions two areas in which Alliance Defending Freedom has been actively engaged for years: the Johnson Amendment, which allows the IRS to determine what pastors can and can’t say from the pulpit, and the Obamacare abortion-pill mandate that forces faith-based non-profit organizations such as Geneva College to cover abortion-inducing drugs and devices in their employee health plans. Proponents say the executive order provides broad protections for religious freedom, while naysayers call the move little more than a photo opportunity meant to appease religious voters who helped elect the president. This week on Freedom Matters, we brought ADF Senior Counsel Jim Campbell on the show to talk specifics about the executive order and how it may affect people and organizations of faith.

What Does the Religious Liberty Executive Order Mean for People and Organizations of Faith?

It’s not without some last minute drama that Trinity Lutheran will finally get its day in court. Justice Gorsuch will begin hearing cases this week after a historic path through the confirmation process. Major media outlets are portraying this case as an indicator of how the court’s newest justice will handle religious liberty issues. Then, the Governor of Missouri threw a curve ball in the bottom of the ninth that no one expected. He directed government agencies to allow religious organizations to participate in publicly available grant programs like the one at issue in the Trinity Lutheran case. ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman had this to say about the announcement: “The safety of all children matters, whether they attend a religious school or a nonreligious school. The state of Missouri denied the Trinity Lutheran Child Learning Center’s access to a public program that would have made their playground safer—and did so on the basis of religious status, a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedent. Just as today’s announcement from the governor states, his new directive doesn’t resolve the discriminatory actions that were taken against Trinity Lutheran’s preschool and the attempt to deny Trinity Lutheran its constitutionally protected freedom to participate equally in society.” And it has been a long a winding road to reach this point in the case. The Court agreed to hear the case all the way back in January 2016. But the nation suffered the loss of Justice Scalia, and then the remaining eight justices took more than a year to decide when to hear oral arguments in the case. We will be live from the U.S. Supreme Court beginning Tuesday, April 18th and continuing throughout the day on Wednesday. You can catch all the action, including interviews with attorneys arguing the case before the court, on the ADF Facebook page.

The Trinity Lutheran Church playground case goes before the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

Politicians in North Carolina learned a hard lesson this week – appeasement doesn’t work. Legislators in the Tar Heel State repealed HB2, which had enacted statewide commonsense protections for personal privacy in public facilities and allowed private businesses to decide for themselves how to address the issue. ADF Legal Counsel Kellie Fiedorek joins the show to talk about a compromise lawmakers thought would please everyone, but no one seems to like. Just two days before President Obama left office, the Department of Health and Human Services released a regulation prohibiting defunding Planned Parenthood from the federal Title C family planning program by re-directing those funds to comprehensive, preventable services. Last week, for the second time in his role as President of the Senate, Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote, this time repealing President Obama's rule. With all of the challenges President Trump has faced recently trying to get meaningful legislation through Congress, is this—the life issue—the path to success for the administration? Adding to the list of reasons to defund Planned Parenthood, the Center for Medical Progress released another video in its undercover investigation of the abortion giant last week. In this video, the former Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Arizona describes how to deliver intact babies in late-term abortions to harvest high-quality body parts, a seeming violation of state and federal law, which requires that babies who are born alive during an abortion receive medical care in an effort to keep them alive. With just three weeks until the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, we ask this question: “Should a city stop the fire department from putting out a fire at a church?” Erik Stanley is Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, and he fills us in on one of the most important Free Exercise cases in years.

You can please none of the people some of the time.

The battle for common sense in school locker rooms continues. A high school student and his parents sued the Boyertown Area School District last week. The boy was getting dressed for P.E. one day only to find a girl in nothing but a bra and shorts in the locker room with him. When he raised the issue with school officials, whose duty it is to protect the privacy, dignity and safety of students, the boy was told to get over it, “act natural,” and if he couldn’t, then maybe home school is an option. The lawsuit made national headlines and even prompted a tweet from Texas Governor Greg Abbott stating that ”[l]ocker room policies like this will not be tolerated in Texas.” Texas Senator Lois Kolkhorst joins Freedom Matters to talk about the personal privacy legislation she sponsored, her experience as a student athlete, and why Title IX is so important for women. Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia will have its day before the United States Supreme Court on April 19th. The church’s preschool and daycare center is excluded from the Missouri Scrap Tire program, which provides grants to purchase rubberized surface material for children’s playgrounds to make them safer. Although the state highly ranked the center as qualified for the program, it denied its application solely because the playground is owned by a religious non-profit. While the church and its members pay a fee attached to tire sales that funds the grant program, some have argued that churches should not benefit from government programs. Still, a recent study shows that religious organizations provide nearly a trillion dollars in goods and services to communities in the United States every year. Allowing families to use its playground is just one of the many ways in which Trinity Lutheran provides benefits to the community.

When did it become OK to blame the victim?

With much of the nation focused on March Madness and their bracket is doing, the Center for Academic Freedom created its own bracket, the Bracket of Shame, which follows college performance in upholding the first amendment freedoms of students. Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel and Director of the Center for Academic Freedom Casey Mattox joins Freedom Matters to talk about a championship that no one wants to win. The ADF media team was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently and took some time to ask students on campus how they felt about rights of conscience and a local law regulating political speech. Video of their responses has now gone viral. Louie Christensen, the reporter who spoke with the students in the video, gives some insight into what happened on and off camera during the interviews. The confirmation process for Judge Gorsuch begins with the Senate Judiciary Hearing today. ADF senior counsel Jordan Lorence tells us what to expect from the hearing and what many across the political spectrum describe as an exceptionally qualified nominee to replace Justice Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.