The Daily Signal - Religious Freedom Part 2: Lawyer Sounds Alarm About ‘Rise of Global Censorship’

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Today's show is the second in a three-part series on the movement for religious freedom in the U.S. legal system today. Check out the first part about how Christians who refuse to take a COVID-19 vaccine face “medical death row” here. Ryan Bangert, senior vice president at the religious freedom law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, breaks down a troubling phenomenon he calls the “rise of global censorship.” “All across the world, we’re seeing government become ever more bold in attempting to directly censor the speech and the messages being communicated by citizens,” Bangert told “The Daily Signal Podcast” in an interview at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in February. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, March 19th. I'm Tyler O'Neill. I sat down with Ryan Bangert. He is the senior vice president at the Religious Freedom Law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. And he is sounding the alarm about what he calls the rise of global censorship. This is what he told me. He said all across the world, we're seeing government become ever more bold in attempting to directly censor the speech and messages. being communicated by citizens.

He went over many different ways in which government is suppressing free speech. He talked about the case of Paivi Rassanen, Christian member of Finland's parliament, who faced hate speech charges, actually continues to, for tweeting out a Bible verse when she opposed her church's involvement

in an LGBTQ parade. She has won multiple cases defending herself, but the prosecutors keep appealing the case to hire court. courts. Bangert also talked about Isabel von Spruce, who was arrested in the United Kingdom for the crime, get this, of silently praying in her head outside an abortion clinic. Bangert also spoke with me about laws that they are challenging, that ADF is representing people, challenging these laws. The laws prevent mainstream patient-directed talk therapy,

where an individual who struggles with gender dysphoria wants to resolve underlying issues that might be behind that gender dysphoria rather than trying to change their biological sex to match a transgender identity. There is what's called a circuit split right now where two different U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal have ruled on different sides of the issue, which means this is a very strong issue for the Supreme Court to take up. And this essentially boils down to, he said it's a clear violation of the First Amendment prohibition on government viewpoint-based distinctions on speech. So it's a big step also involving suppression of speech. And we also got into the threat of debanking and the notorious influence of an organization I've focused a little bit of reporting on called the Southern Poverty Law Center. So listen to, and again, this is the second in a three-part series on the Movement for Religious. religious freedom in the U.S. legal system today. You can check out the first part about how Christians who refuse to take a COVID vaccine face medical death row. And we ran that on the show yesterday.

You can find it in the show notes and you can find it online as well. So without further ado, listen to my interview with Ryan Bangert right after this. Americans use firearms to defend themselves between 500,000 and 2 million times every year. but God forbid that my mother is ever faced with a scenario where she has to stop a threat to her life. But if she is, I hope politicians, protected by professional armed security, didn't strip her of the right to use the firearms she can handle most competently. To watch the rest of Heritage expert Amy Swearer's testimony on assault weapons before the House Judiciary Committee head to the Heritage Foundation YouTube channel.

There you'll find talks, events, and documentaries, backed with the reputation of the nation's most broad supported Public Policy Research Institute. Start watching now at heritage.org slash YouTube. And don't forget to subscribe and share. This is Tyler O'Neill. I'm managing editor at The Daily Signal, and I'm honored to be joined by Ryan Bangor, Senior Vice President at Alliance Defending Freedom. Great to have you. Oh, fantastic to be here, Tyler. Thanks for having us on the show. Yeah. So I want to jump right in. There are a lot of laws that I've been concerned about, because, well, we have, and actually the real shocking one was in Australia, where they're actually banning prayer, and they have this government website where they say, these are the prayers you're allowed to say in your own head, and these are the prayers you're not allowed to say in your own head. And just like sitting in awe at the audacity of this. But this is all premised on helping minors who struggle with same-sex attraction, gender dysphoria. There are laws across this country and around the world that ban what they call

sexual orientation change efforts or, you know, what's been termed conversion therapy, under the theory that these likely lead people to commit suicide later on down the road, of course, they haven't been able to fully prove this theory. And it's a weird double standard when it comes to because you're allowed to have talk therapy, you know, patient-driven talk therapy in support of same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, but not against it. So there are some cases that you guys are taking up or paying attention to that challenge these laws. Would you break some of that down? Absolutely.

No, that's a fantastic question. We're seeing laws propagate all across the world, trying to restrict what medical practitioners can say, trying to restrict what talk therapists can say. We have laws right here in the United States that do just that. A good example of that is in the state of Washington. We have a client there named Brian Tingley, ADF represented Brian. and his challenge to Washington's law that would have done exactly what you just said, prohibited him from engaging in talk therapy to assist minors experiencing gender dysphoria

to reconcile with their biological sex. Of course, Washington says it's no problem if you want to do talk therapy to encourage them into further gender dysphoria. So it's a classic viewpoint-based law, as we like to say, in the legal profession. We challenged that law, and our challenge was rejected by both the district court and the Ninth Circuit on grounds that the law didn't affect speech, it affected the practice of medicine. So talk about a linguistic trick. Now, that's directly in conflict with a decision that came out of the 11th Circuit in Florida, striking down an ordinance from the city of Boca Raton, which had the same requirement.

We're now representing a client in Colorado in the case called Charles v. Salazar, where Colorado has a very similar requirement, a one-sided viewpoint-based requirement that prohibits talk therapy that would reconcerns. exile minors with their biological sex, but would encourage them into genderdisporea. So we're hopeful, we believe that these laws eventually, this challenge of these laws will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court did reject certiorary in the Tingley case, even though there was a clear circuit split between the 9th and 11th Circuit.

So I think it's only a matter of time before the U.S. Supreme Court takes this up. And under the First Amendment, we think the answer is pretty clear. This is a clear violation of the First Amendment's prohibition on government viewpoint-based distinctions on speech. And would you say that the 303 creative precedent would likely impact, you know, if the court were to grant cert, that that's a similar sort of case? I think 303 creative provides a great roadmap because it said that the state of Colorado, again, Colorado, always trampling on religious liberty and freedom of speech. I was born and raised there. And I'm like, no, and we just keep, they're a bounty of riches when it comes to litigation. But the state of Colorado could

not force Lori Smith to speak messages through her artistic work in her case website design that conflicted with her faith. Here, the state of Colorado is prohibiting our client from engaging in talk therapy. So yes, I think 303 is a great example. Nifla versus Bacera, another case that ADF won a few years back. I think also speaks to this question whether or not the state can force crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life pregnancy centers, to put messages up in their center that conflicts with their belief. In that case, pro-abortion messages. So again, all of these precedents point in the same direction, which is the state cannot tell citizens what to say or what not to say based on viewpoint. Well, and there's another sort of speech limitation, from what I

understand, with the National Rifle Association. Could you speak to that case? That's been accepted as cert, and you guys filed a, or, yeah, cert's expected. So that's a remarkable case. Yeah, the National Rifle, so that's the Vullo case. involving National Rifle Association. The ACLU is representing the National Rifle Association. So talk about strange bedfellows. And ADF filed an amicus brief and supported the ACLU representing the National Rifle Association. It's almost like the ACLU is returning to its roof. Somehow you would think that it's like a lunar eclipse is about to happen. But this is a fantastic case. And here's why. Because Volo, who was the superintendent of the Department of Financial Services there

in New York, had pressured banking institutions. This is this, this, this, this, is the agency in New York that oversees banking institutions and insurance providers. She was pressuring these institutions to sever their relationship with the NRA on grounds that she just didn't like the politics of the NRA. So she was waging a personal vendetta against the NRA using the power of her office, her regulatory office, to force service providers to cancel the NRA. And she was experiencing some degree of success. The record showed that several service providers were severing their relationships. And she was using very heavy-handed tactics up to and including promising certain institutions that she would go easy on them in enforcement if they would simply take the right

course, quote-unquote, right course when it came to the NRA. So this is a great example of how the government can violate citizens' First Amendment rights by pressuring other private citizens to engage in activities that government otherwise wouldn't be allowed to do. It's a cat's paw theory, a proxy theory, whatever you want to call it. The government is just, using its regulatory powers to first force private actors to violate the first-minute rights of other private actors. That's not allowed. There's another case, Murthy out of Murthy versus Missouri out of Louisiana. Very similar theory there where the federal government leaned on and pressured social media companies to cancel those who were speaking messages on COVID-19,

vaccinations, election interference that the government didn't like. Again, very similar issue, except that involves the White House. Yeah. And Facebook even acknowledged that, Many of the posts they were suppressing were actually true. Exactly. That's the right. Truth doesn't matter. Here, what they're doing is they're having to bend to the pressure being placed, the coercion, in the words of the law, the coercion being placed on them by a government actor. And that's something that ADF right now is very concerned about, which is this rise of what we call global censorship. All across the world, we're seeing government become ever more bold in attempting to directly censor the speech and the messages being communicated by citizens. Take, for instance, Pivey Rassanen in Finland,

a member of parliament who in 2019 sent out a tweet objecting to her church's involvement in an LGBT parade. For that, she had almost five years of fighting off criminal prosecution under the Finnish hate speech laws. Now, ADF was able to represent her, won that case at the trial court level. They appealed it, won it again. Now we're on and on we go. Right, exactly.

So we're just going to win our way all the way up. potentially to the EU. Another case that we have in the UK right now, Isabel von Spruce, an activist, a volunteer. That case is remarkable because she was punished, not for what she said, but for what she thought. So she was standing silently on a sidewalk outside of an abortion clinic saying nothing,

just in a prayerful posture. And she was approached by law enforcement officers who said, what are you thinking? Literally, what are you thinking? Are you praying? in your mind. She said, well, what if I am? Well, if you are, that's the illegal and you're coming downtown with us. She was prosecuted, won the first case, went back, stood silently, prosecuted again, they dropped those charges and paid attorney's fees, went back a third time, then she was fine.

So she, again, the U.A.S. They can't get the message there. I mean, this is literally the thought police. We talk about the thought police. This is literal thought police in the U.K. We always find that the problems in the European Union oftentimes proceed what we're seeing in the U.S. by 10 to 15 years. We have to be vigilant. We have to push back vigilantly against government overreach and government censoring of private speech because we could very easily end up in the same boat that Isabel von Spruce and Piavi Arsena and found themselves in in the UK and Finland. When it always seems to fall on one side of the spectrum, right, you see conservative Christians being attacked. And I think broadly, you have this cultural idea that conservative Christians are the ones who have privilege that because our holidays are celebrated and are automatically considered as opposed to some other holidays that aren't always considered. And I think our society is actually getting better at considering other holidays.

So maybe that argument will also be thrown by the wayside. But this notion that because conservative Christians, are perceived to have power, it's fine to go after them and to censor them. And I'd almost say that applies also with the way that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been attacking groups like Alliance Defending Freedom that are standing up for people's rights, and yet SPLC says, oh, you're an anti-LGBIA plus, you know, whatever, hate group. Would you talk a little bit about this trend broadly?

Yeah. Now, the SPLC is a, especially, as you well, know, Tyler, a very special case. And we always have the privilege of rebutting their false and malicious attacks on a regular basis. But what we're seeing is those false and malicious, they're doing that for a reason. And they're not doing it because it's true. They're doing it because it advances their ideological and political agenda. And that is an agenda that's directly at odds with freedom, with freedom of speech, with freedom of conscience, with basic Judeo-Christian values. They have no interest in that, and they're contesting it at every turn. But they're finding

though, is as they put these ideas, propagate these false ideas into the marketplace, these ideas are picked up by service providers. There are a number of companies all across the country that rely on the SPLC's malicious and false hate group list to determine who they're going to provide service to. And increasingly what we're finding is private businesses are violating the basic civil rights of customers. We've called them civil rights. Obviously, the private businesses are not subject to the U.S. Constitution. But they should be mindful of the ability of their customers, especially when these businesses hold concentrated powers at the apex of the commanding heights of the economy. They need to be mindful of the rights of their customers to live out their faith in the marketplace.

A great example of that is a client that we have right here in Tennessee. We're here at the National Religious Broadcasters Conference. ADF has a client in Tennessee called Indigenous Advance Ministries. Indigenous Advance provides relief to orphans in Uganda. You couldn't have a more noble cause than that. And yet they were debanked. Their bank account was canceled by Bank of America. Why? Well, the first answer we got was,

well, we don't want to serve clients like them anymore. That's not a very satisfying answer. So what we got back the second time we went to them was, well, they present a slightly different risk profile than we're looking for. In other words, they didn't have a good reason for debanking indigenous advanced ministries. It was probably the same reason they debanked the NCRF, Ambassador Sam Brownback's group. And that is because they don't like their ideology. They don't like their faith.

So we're pushing back on groups like Bank of America right now through our corporate engagement work. We've actually had a lot of success in working with our friends in the state attorney's generals offices, engaging in letter writing campaigns. We're also working through shareholders to put shareholder proposals before the... We had a very successful effort just last year with J.P. Morgan Chase. J.P. Morgan Chase, of course, has a long history of engaging in activities that are inimical to free speech and free exercise of religion. We put a proposal before them that simply asked them

to honor and to study whether or not they're properly honoring their customers' religious beliefs. That was voted down by a shareholder vote. We put so much pressure on them, though, they actually changed the policy that was in question on their own. So we are having some success in this space. And ultimately, I think businesses do react to market demand. And if citizens are informed about what's happening. If they know what these businesses are doing, businesses, I think, will react to that in a way that's favorable to freedom and freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Yeah, well, when we talk about the debanking issue, it reminds me of, I think it was Pete Davidson on SNL, talked about it, and he was mocking Trump for saying debank, acting as though

the very idea of debanking, like he said, oh, this is just Trump stumbling. He meant to say, going to the bank. And I'm like, no, you have the privilege as somebody on the left right now to not realize that conservatives are really going through this. And it's, you know, at ADF, I know there are many people who have tried to give to your organization only to find that, you know, the charitable outfit that they're trying to give through wouldn't process the donation because you're considered a hate group. And this is the kind of thing like, I think a lot of our friends say it's a badge of honor to be put on the SPLC hate map because so many on the right know that it doesn't mean anything. But I just, I can't help but think there are so many companies out there and there's the

Biden administration that relies on this organization for debanking, for finding, you know, rooting out domestic terrorism. It's, yeah, it's shocking. But anyway, thanks so much for joining me, Ryan. Is there anything else you'd like to add? I think you covered so much that's really important. No, we just, I want to say how much we appreciate the good work that you do. You're sending fire down range all the time, and you are speaking truth into a culture that desperately needs to hear it. So we thank you. Thank you, our friends at the Heritage Foundation. We're really happy to be in the fight with you.

So thank you very much. Thanks again so much. Brian Bangert, where should our audience follow you? You can follow us at our website, adflegal.org. All of our cases are profiled there. You can go through our case pages, find out more about what we're doing. You can support ADF at that website. So ADFlegal.org.

Thank you. Thank you. And that was Ryan Banger, senior vice president at the Religious Freedom Law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. Again, this is Tyler O'Neill with the Daily Signal podcast. If you liked what you heard here, if you thought it was thought-provoking, please leave us a five-star rating and review. We read all of your feedback.

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