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Inside Some Huge Supreme Court Rulings · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  Good morning, and welcome to the third and final hour of the Morning Show
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  with Preston Scott. At least for today, that is Grant Allen running the
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  show. I am here in studio one are Wait, No, he's in
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  one A. I'm in one B. Yeah, that's right. I'm always
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  relegated to be. It is Show forty nine sixty five as we count our
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  way to Show five thousand, which will happen the day after Labor Day.
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  If all things go well and God chooses to let me live. That's what
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  we're looking at. Please to have with us today on the program. Stephanie
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  tub She's an attorney with First Liberty Institute. Stephanie, welcome to the show.
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  How are you. I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having
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  me on. I appreciate you waking up a little early to join us.
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  As I have been reading the Supreme Court decisions over the last thirty days.
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  Big picture wise, you and your organization have to be and we'll get to
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  the specific cases, but you've got to be elated with the overall decision making
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  that's coming out of the originalist side of the Supreme Court. It is very
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  encouraging from a religious freedom perspective, from a First Amendment perspective, that's for
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  sure. Tell Us I have said to people that are familiar with the case
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  of the Masterpiece Bakeshop Jack Phillips, that predating that is the case of Aaron
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  and Melissa Klein. Tell us a little bit about them. That's right.
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  So at First Liberty Institute, we represent Aaron and Melissa Klein, who were
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  the owners of Sweat Cakes by Melissa, a small family owned bakery in Oregon
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  that was unfortunately had to close up shop after the State of Oregon essentially went
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  after them and signed them one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars because they declined
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  to create a custom wedding cake for a same sex wedding. And this case
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  has been going it might sound familiar to all. It's been going on for
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  over ten years now, up and down through the court system. It's been
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  to the Supreme Court twice. And so this time, just a couple of
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  weeks ago, the Supreme Court remanded a case back down to the lower courts
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  in light of three or three creative So another Supreme Court decision protecting the free
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  speech of creative professionals, and that case should have a very positive impact on
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  Aaron and Melissa Klient's case. So we are continuing to fight for them until
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  they get complete relief, until they get the justice that they deserve. All
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  Right, I want to take this apart a little bit. We're Aaron and
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  Melissa picked on intentionally, as we saw happen in Colorado where activists went into
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  Jack Phillips shop in essence to pick a fight so that the state of Colorado
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  could back it up. We're Melissa picked on? Or was this just one
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  of those encounters same sex couple wanted a wedding cake and they're like, look,
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  you can buy a cake that's already made, but we're not going to
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  custom make you something. This was absolutely a politically motivated, a politically motivated
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  case. They're up in Oregon, and many of many states actually have these
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  sorts of state agencies where they can act as both the judge and the prosecutor
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  and essentially the jury and so the expect against you if they come after you.
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  And so we have the elected head of that agency campaigning on this issue.
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  That was Commissioner Bradabakian of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. So
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  there's definitely a political aspect to this case. When you mentioned three or three
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  Creative versus Elenis, that was the case that was the decision was announced on
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  June thirtieth. Explain how that case shadows this one and perhaps relief Absolutely so
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  they're essentially the same issue. So that case involves a wedding website designer in
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  Colorado that wanted to or she has a website and she wants to expand her
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  business into the wedding industry, but she doesn't want to do so in a
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  way that violates her religious convictions about marriage. So she was asking she believed
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  that there was a credible threat of prosecution from the Colorado State Agency very similar
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  to the Oregon State Agency, that if she were to create custom wedding websites
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  for traditional couples, that she would have to also make those for same sex
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  couples. And so she didn't want to be sending a message about marriage that
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  goes against her sincerely held beliefs. And so the Supreme Court decided this case,
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  and in a six to three ruling, they held that creative professionals under
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  the free speech Clause do not have work. The government cannot compel them to
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  speak in ways that violates their beliefs. So this protects not only people like
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  the wedding website designer, not only like the little Christian bakers. It also
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  protects everyone, whether you're on the left or on the right, from being
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  forced to send a message that goes against your beliefs, not necessarily your religious
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  beliefs, even non religious beliefs. This is an important fundamental principle of America
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  of free speech, that you shouldn't be forced to send a message that violates
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  your beliefs. The Morning Show with Preston Scott or do not there is no
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  news radio one hundred point seven WFLA talking about a few very important Supreme Court
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  rulings. And you know, I will simply tell you that with a few
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  exceptions, and there are exceptions every now and then, Justice John Roberts,
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  Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wants to be an activist. And I'm
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  never surprised by that. He loves the spotlight. He loves to write opinions
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  on the on the big, big cases, and it's his right to do.
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  Um just real disappointed that he flip flops between being an activist and an
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  originalist. But that said, there were some very important rulings. We're talking
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  with Stephanie Tobb with the First Liberty Institute. Stephanie, catch us up now
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  on Aaron and Melissa. Obviously the case is not over, but what does
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  their future look like. Let's just say Oregon relents to the United States Supreme
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  Court and doesn't do what Colorado has done, and that is just try to
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  find another way to make their life miserable. What's their future look like?
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  Are they ever going to try to reopen their shop? Yeah, so we
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  have we have good news on that front because they have so they have escaped
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  from Oregon, oh not now located in another state and have finally been able
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  to reopen a new little bakery. And so they're they're so happy. I
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  know they've said that they have It's not what they anticipated their lives going ten
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  years from now, but that God had better things in store for them.
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  So they've been faithful and they are continuing and then First Liberty is here.
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  We're continuing to fight for them the whole way until we get that final justest
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  resolution is the resolution found in ending Theirs their persecution not just prosecution but persecution
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  or is victory also found in some form of punitive judgment against the state and
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  making them financially whole. Well, that remains to be seen. But the
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  first set is returning the money that Oregon wrongfully took them took from them.
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  So we're going to continue to press forward and fight this case, and we'll
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  keep you updated with any new developments. And if anyone wants to follow this
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  case or any of our other cases, you can go to First Liberty dot
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  org. And you beat me to it taking my jobs. Stephanie, Hey,
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  you know I've explained this to listeners for years now because we followed this
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  stuff. You know, I Heeart allows this show to be all over the
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  country because of the iHeart Radio app. But but you know, here in
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  Florida with Governor round to Santas, we've seen a lot of pushback against some
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  of this ridiculous, woke ideology that's finding its way into the court system.
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  But it's really not that complicated this specific issue. And if I were to
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  say to you, the definition of all of this is real simple. If
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  if I have a T shirt shop, anyone can walk into my store and
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  buy the shirts that are hanging on the rack, whether they're printed or not
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  printed. But the moment you ask me to make a custom design for you
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  that that goes against what I want. If I'm a Satanist and I don't
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  I don't want to produce a message that that portrays Jesus in a positive light.
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  You can't make me do that, right, Yeah, that's absolutely right.
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  And so it's very important for people to consider what if the shoe were
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  on the other foot, What if the governor had a government agency going after
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  you and forcing you to send a message that you didn't like. And so
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  that's the wonderful thing about this. It's a very strongly written opinion, definitely
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  worth a read. That it does protect everyone. It's not you don't have
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  to ground your beliefs in your religion. You could be an atheist and have
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  really strong beliefs and just or just simply not want to spend a certain message
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  that day, and you had your right to do so as an American.
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  And so this is a decision that I would hope people of good faith on
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  the left and the right can come together and really see that this is a
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  positive decision for our country. Stephanie Toub with us, we've got another case
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  to talk about. It's the case of a postal carrier, huge victory that
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  I think speaks on a lot of different levels. I circle back to how
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  in the world is it possible for people that are illiberals to be so dumb
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  to not understand the difference between selling and making. You know, we sell
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  ads on iHeart. Just about anybody that passes the FCC decency mark can get
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  an ad on on ihart, But you can't make me do one. It's
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  the same exact issue w FLA on your phone with the iHeart radio app and
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  on hundreds of devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox and Sonos and Heart
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  radio station. If you want to know more about First Liberty again, it's
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  real simple. Even though Stephanie tried to steal my thunder, it's uh First
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  Liberty dot org. Simple as that. Stephanie tab an attorney with the team
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  at First Liberty, and Stephanie introduced our listeners to Gerald Groff and why he
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  matters in the grand scheme of what the Supreme Court has been doing. Absolutely
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  so. Jerald Groff is the star of the most recent religious liberty Supreme Court
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  victory. It was a unanimous victory and it will have a far reaching impact
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  because it affects religious liberty rights at every workplace in America that has fifteen or
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  more employees. So, Jerald Groff is a mailman. He's a postal carrier
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  with the US with USPS, and he he was a strong Christian right off
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  the mission fields, looking for a job where he could observe the Sunday Sabbath,
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  and he thought the post office was a wonderful fit because you know,
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  they're traditionally closed on Sundays. But then there was a contract with Amazon to
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  deliver packages on Sundays, and then he had to try to find a way
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  to work around that. He asked them for an accommodation, and he came
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  up with the idea of transferring to another post where they hadn't started Sunday deliveries
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  yet. So that worked for a while, and when that one started up
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  again, then he asked for another religious accommodation. They accommodated him for a
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  while, and then they took that away, and he was basically forced to
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  choose between his sincere religious convictions and his job. And so we're arguing that
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  too many employees across the country are faced with similar circumstances where they're forced to
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  do something that violates their religious beliefs, and federal laws supposed to protect you
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  in this circumstance. Federal law prohibits religious discrimination, and a part of that
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  is employers are required to grant reasonable religious accommodations unless doing so would cause an
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  undue hardship. So we're arguing, or we argued that Gerald Gross was entitled
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  to an accommodation. The Post Office could have easily changed his schedule, but
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  they just didn't want to. And so so many employers are not taking federal
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  law seriously. And the Supreme Court clarified the standard to strength and protections for
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  religious employees. So you get a unanimous decision. I always think that when
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  you win everybody on that court over that is a massive rebuke. In this
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  case of the United States Postal Service, it's really encouraging. Nine OO is
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  wonderful. It really shows that all the previous standard. There was a terrible
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  case in the seventies called t Wa v. Hartisan, which basically allowed employers
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  to get away with denying religious accommodations by only pointing to some sort of minimal
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  burden, some sort of trivial reason, and so that pretty much everyone on
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  the left and the right agreed. I'll all be that this has a terrible
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  impact, especially on religious minorities, but really completely thwarts what Congress was trying
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  to do by protecting people of faith and encouraging employers to accommodate them so that
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  they wouldn't be barred from the workplace. And so there was a lot of
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  agreement that this was just a bad decision. And so now almost fifty years
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  later, the Supreme Court came together to overturn it. Yeah. Yeah,
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  a lot like Rove weighed, a lot like affirmative action. They finally got
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  out of their own way and did the right thing. I want to put
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  a bow on this in our final few seconds here together, Stephanie, if
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  I were to look at all of these cases that we're talking about in total,
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  we're still, though, at a place where it's now going to be
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  up to the lower courts or agencies inside of state governments and state governments themselves
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  to honor and follow the ruling of the United States Supreme Court. Is that
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  fair? That's absolutely true. So this is just the first step, and
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  it's up to it's up to everyday Americans to stand up for their rights and
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  to really really make sure that they Lower Court. It's these agencies follow through
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  and obey the Supreme Court's ruling is in favor of freedom. Well, I
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  appreciate your time this morning, Stephanie. Thank you so very much. I
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  know is a little bit earlier where you are in your time zone, but
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  thank you and best of success. Thank you. I appreciate it. Stephanie
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  tob with us this morning from First Liberty Institute. Some pretty big wins.
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  There you go, that's how we roll.