Unpacking Legal Battles Over Faith, Freedom, and Schools - on Good News Friday

Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builders Show and we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David and Tim Barton. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of Wall Builders. David Barton, of course, America's premier historian and our founder at Wall Builders. You can learn more about all three of us at our main website, wallbuilders.com.

Wallbuilders.com has a ton of great resources for you. Lots of things to equip and inspire your family, to prepare you to be a good biblical citizen. Check it out all of it there at wallbuilders.com and also check out some of the programs that are coming up Opportunities this summer to send teachers and pastors and young people to different programs. In September, our pastors conference in Washington DC. Just a lot of cool things to do and then actually coming up here in just a couple of weeks I guess about a month we've got a constitutional defense course at the Patriot Academy campus where all three of us will be.

So myself, Rick Green, along with David Barton and Tim Barton we're going to be doing a special constitutional defense course, which is handgun training during the day and constitution training at night and fireworks on July 4th. It's going to be very, very cool and it'll start on July 4th. So check that out today at patriotacademy.com. Click on the constitutional defense button and look at that date. That starts July 4th. We've still got some slots left. It is going to fill up fast and we're only a month out, so we've got to start making plans now. But it's an amazing weekend. You will love it. Best instructors on the planet, best ranges, maybe in the country and at the new, phenomenal Patriot Academy campus in Fredericksburg, Texas. Check it out at patriotacademy.com. All right, David and Tim, looking forward to hearing some good news from you today. Let's start with our first piece of good news coming from David Barton.

David Barton

I'm going to start with a news story that began developing back in 2018. In 2018, there was one of the government officials in New York head of New York Department of Financial Services and they're the ones who kind of regulate banks and credit card companies and stuff there in New York and the head of that agency this government agency contacted the banks, contacted insurance companies, and said, hey, you guys really need to back off of the National Rifle Association, this pro-gun group, any other pro-gun groups. You don't need to be offering them financial services. Make them find a different bank, Get them to a different insurance company, Raise their insurance, whatever. And so this government official is encouraging all these government-regulated agencies to start picking winners and losers in this thing. And she didn't like the NRA, so went specifically after them.

Of course, the NRA sued and said wait a minute. Government can't use this position to pick winners and losers. That's not what it's about. This is a free market. We are doing things that are completely legal. We're not doing illegal things. So you're not like trying to stop criminals. You just don't like what we're doing and you want it stopped.

And so they went into court. It went through up to the second federal court of appeals. And the court of appeals said no, government, um, government has a right of free speech and she's got the right to encourage that. That's what she wants to do and that's what she's doing. And so they ruled against the NRA. Well, NRA actually went to the supreme court, they appealed it to the supreme court and, at the supreme court, just came down. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of the NRA. And so, no, the government can't be picking winners and losers. Send this back down to the lower courts and give it another try. Now I love the fact that this is a 9-0 ruling. You have what we would consider to be the liberals and progressives joining with the conservatives to say government doesn't get to limit your speech and because they don't like what you're doing, whether selling guns or anything else, they don't get to target you. And I cannot tell you, guys, this is.

I'm going to go back to something that was written in 2022 by Justice Stephen Breyer, before he left the court. He said we're no longer in the freewheeling days of the 60s. He said this court has really developed, and the fact that you get the liberal justices the three liberal justices aside, with the six moderate and conservative justices. It's just absolutely unbelievable in this day and time where you can't, what does it take to get a unanimous vote in Congress now? Or can you? Can you get Congress to find anything in which they all agree?

And yet you're finding the Supreme Court we've had a number of these in the last two to three years where it's been nine zero rulings or eight one rulings, where liberals are actually siding with conservatives and moderates and and they're all seeing the Constitution the same way, even though they've got different values, they're not reinterpreting the Constitution to match their values, at least not all the time. So I think this is a really great piece of good news for several reasons. One is the fact that all the justices are seeing this constitutionally the same, and the second is the fact that at this point, by what the court has done by sending this back, they've sent the message look, we don't support the government picking winners and losers and punishing people that they disagree with simply because they have a different philosophy. I think that's a piece of great news.

Rick Green

More and more victories from the courts. I think last week we spent time on several victories in the courts. Tim, were you in the courts, still with you or somewhere else?

Tim Barton

Well, we are in the courts and it's coming from California. This headline says California district to pay $360,000 after firing Christian teacher who opposed trans pronoun policy. Reading this article there's several interesting things that I kind of want to follow up and find out more details, but the short of it is there was a physical education high school teacher who was required. According to the school and I don't even guys, I don't know how to pronounce the name of this school district it's J-U-R-U-P-A. Jurupa. I have no idea, Jurupa Unified School District. Again, I'm probably incorrect in that pronunciation. But they agreed to settle with Jessica Tapia, who filed a complaint with the school because the policy came down that for all of their educators, they were required to not disclose any kind of transition from students to parents. They're required to refer to students by their preferred pronouns, refrain from expressing any religious beliefs with students or on social media, and they were not allowed or they had to allow rather, students to use a bathroom or locker room that matched their preferred sex. So, whatever they wanted to identify as they did it. And this PE teacher filed a complaint saying hey, this is crazy, I have a problem with this, it violates my beliefs, my conviction, and so she filed a complaint and the school district determined that she could no longer be employed there because this would not be a tenable relationship. They fired her.

So, advocates for faith and freedom, AFF, they took up this case and it went to court. Interestingly enough, it did not actually finish in court. They settled out of court, which is, I think, kind of telling on some level. But the school settled. They agreed to give Ms Tapia $285,000 and then $75,000 for the attorney's fees. Again, she was fired last year. So she's been through this process. It's been going on for a long time. But part of the settlement agreement was she agreed to not seek employment in their school district anymore. Now the fact that this is settled before it goes to court again, I mean to me that says something. Rick, you've been an attorney and I just not have been. I've not been disbarred.

Rick Green

Well, I was going to say don't hold it against me, but you just put it in the past, so that means I've been forgiven. I get it. I'm a recovering attorney. Well, I don't want people to think you did just barred. Now, right, they're like oh Rick, what happened?

Tim Barton

No no no, still an attorney. But as an attorney, right, if somebody is settling before it goes to trial and they're paying you a lot of money before it goes to trial, in my mind, I mean, that seems to indicate they knew it was not going to go well for them. For them to pay out and then for this teacher to be like you know what and I out, and then for this teacher to be like you know what and I, I'm totally fine not working for you guys in the future speaks to the brokenness of that relationship. But uh, and now it's the question, Rick, I mean wouldn't. Am I seeing that the right way? That for them to agree to a settlement before it goes to trial? The settlement is for 360 000? Did they kind of see the handwriting on the wall, you think?

Rick Green

I mean, I could definitely see you know the scenarios where you're just okay, it's just not worth it anymore. It's easier to pay to make this thing go away and not have to deal with it anymore, but the PR disaster, right, the negative press you're going to get, is even more costly than the money. So it does say to me okay, they knew it would be even worse if they go to jail. It would be even worse if they go to jail. If it would be even worse if they go to trial, somebody might go to jail, right.

Tim Barton

Well, and certainly the precedent we have up to this point. We had so many good news stories, what we are seeing from the courts and even the Supreme Court, right, I mean, we had the case man, was it last year with a postal worker who was fired.

Rick Green

Another one of Kelly Shackelford's cases. Right Exactly.

Tim Barton

For not working on Sunday, and the Supreme Court said no, there is a requirement for a religious accommodation for the rights of conscience. We have seen this more and more, even cases dealing with vaccines and vaccination status, et cetera. So religious liberty is being once again prioritized. Anyway, all that to say, in this scenario, it's very good news to me that you have a teacher winning in this situation. When a school fired her and again, think about what she was saying is, if a student transitions, she said you're telling me, I can't tell a parent, right? You're telling me that I have to refer to students by whatever pronouns they want, which is dramatically incorrect on lots of levels. Or you're telling me that I can't express any of my religious beliefs, even on her own. Social media was a school's policy. You couldn't express that if it went against the standards of the school and she had to allow boys into the girl' bathroom and all this was a requirement. So this is so encouraging that there was at least one teacher, and it does make me wonder where are all the other teachers, right? Right, when we talk about the brokenness of schools, and I actually just man, a week or two ago, we had our Texas State Convention and I had a teacher come up to me and said hey, you know, I love the program, love the show, listen to you guys all the time, but you know you talk about how bad public school teachers are. I just want you to know, I'm a teacher and I love Jesus and I love the Constitution and I love America and we're trying to do the right thing. And I said, okay, I try to be very careful to not say that all teachers are terrible. Right, that we know there's some really good teachers there, but we know it's a very broken system. But what we also know is that in most places, the good teachers are far outnumbered by the bad teachers as far as the bad philosophy, the bad ideology, the bad worldview.

And to me, this is another one of those examples. And, right, I mean this is not a rural school in Texas or Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, right? I mean this isn't a country school where everybody's going to church over the weekend. I don't even know where this is in California. I'm not even pronouncing the location, right?

However, this is the reality of what most of the indoctrination, the philosophical position, the leadership position, the administrative position of schools. It is so in the wrong direction that for her to be the only teacher that had been fired. That was on this lawsuit, because presumably right if a whole slew of teachers got fired. They're probably doing this thing together, but she's the only one doing this, which makes me wonder where all the other teachers. Nonetheless, not to take away from the good news, the good news is there was a teacher who stood up, there was a teacher who said no, and there was a process that led people to say you know what? We recognize we probably were wrong. Let's go ahead and take care of her. Even though it hasn't changed the policies yet in California, it's still going on in the school. It's great news when we see people that are courageous and willing to stand up for what is right.

David Barton

Hey, I want to pile on that and add more to it, because that's what I was thinking as you were talking about the story, Tim. But here you have a school that told her she could not even express her opinion on her own social media post. Part of what they required was you can't talk about this, you can't talk about it to the parents, you cannot talk about it yourself to any of your friends, you cannot publicly express your views, you can't have any. So we're not going to give you the right of association constitutionally guaranteed to you. We're not going to give you the right of free speech constantly guaranteed to you. We're not going to give you the right of religious expression constitutionally guaranteed to you. We're going to do all this and if you don't agree, you're gone. She didn't agree, she was gone, but notice that the settlement also required that she can't be. She can't come back in. So the takeaway I would have out of this story is not just that she won, but if you live at Jerupo or wherever that school is that's named, whatever, if you're in that district and you're a parent, you need to get your kids out of there right now If they will not allow a second alternative opinion, if you cannot have a discussion, if you are required only to have conformity seeing. This is the problem with where many secular thinking public schools are going is we're going to make little disciples of us. Parents aren't important. We don't want you talking to your parents. You'll do what we tell you.

This is another great reason to bust up the system the way it exists right now. We need educational competition so we can get this stuff out. But, man, if you're in that school system in that part of California, you ought to get your kids out. Just based on what you've heard on this, we're glad that she won the case and she should have won it constitutionally. It should be hands down, which it apparently was, and that's why they gave in. But get your kids out of this kind of system because you're losing these kids, you're losing your family, you're losing  your country.

Rick Green

All right guys, we'll take a quick break. When we come back, we've got more good news for you folks. Stay with us. You're listening to the WallBuilder Show.

Break.

Rick Green

Welcome back to WallBuilders. It's Good News Friday, Diving right back in and David's next.

David Barton

I'm going to the University of North Carolina. Now I will point out the political situation in North Carolina has not been on the conservative side for a number of years. They don't seem to be able to elect a conservative governor and keep a conservative governor. They can't get their legislature in line with the governor, and so they keep electing progressive thinking type of folks. The legislature will do some good things, and then they throw that governor out. Um, the legislature will do some good things, and then they throw that governor out. And so when you look at North Carolina I'm just saying this to say it's not like looking at Arkansas or Texas or Oklahoma somewhere else this is considered one of the legitimate battleground states because it could be red, it could be blue. They haven't decided what they want to be when they grow up, and so it could go either way on this. Now, when you go to the university of North Carolina, we're now at a university level and even if you've got a fairly conservative state, like in Florida, maybe your universities aren't going there, but this story is absolutely phenomenal to me.

This goes back just a couple of weeks ago, when all these Hamas demonstrations were taking place all over campuses across the country and Hamas was going in and shutting down schools etc. And they had a Hamas protest, pro-hamas I say Hamas, it's a pro-Hamas protest, anti-israel protest there at the University of North Carolina. And what happened was, after that protest, the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees got together and unanimously voted to defund all DEI in the school. They said that's what this is producing. We don't want any part of it. They said we've got 30,000 students that we need to serve, not just the hundred that were in the protest, and if this is what DEI is producing, we want it out of the school.

I think that is absolutely phenomenal in a place that does not have a governor, like Texas or like in Florida, that they're pushing the board of trustees to take more reasonable positions. This isn't a state where you don't have that gubernatorial influence. It's in a university that's a very noted university and nobody would think of them as being particularly conservative. But yet here's the board doing a unanimous vote that we're getting rid of DEI.

I think it was 2.3 million and they're putting that into public safety and the things that they needed on campus because the Hamas people came in and took all the police and all the security, to protect the campus, protect the kids, protect the buildings, and so they're giving that 2.3 million from DEI over to public safety and public stuff. So I think it's just a great, great decision by the board of the University of North Carolina. Way to go, guys. That is really, really good. Makes me think very highly of that school. I love them as a basketball school, but I even love them more now because they appear to have some common sense in some areas, which is great.

Rick Green

Wait, wait, david, are you saying North Carolina is into basketball, 

Rick Green

Is it no, no, I meant lacrosse, I meant women's lacrosse.

I got it wrong. Okay, I was thinking it was a couple schools like something like Duke, maybe UNC.

Rick Green

Why are they all light blue? That's the only thing I can remember, Like they all have light blue and white. 

David Barton

Duke about like they all have light blue and white duke is royal blue.

Rick Green

Oh sorry, a little darker right shows you how much I watch.

Tim Barton

Yeah, yeah, no, you and unc is more like sissy blue, so it's 

Rick Green

no bias coming out on this program at all all right tim.

With that, you get the next piece of good news I think, or was that you?

Tim Barton

no, no, that was David yeah, no, but uh, speaking of communists, um, this one is as Kansas legislature passes bill banning Chinese land purchases near military sites after the daily caller news foundation investigation. This is huge and this came out at this point more than a month ago. We just haven't reported on it yet or or highlighted this on good news, but we're seeing states begin to move this direction and, for those that don't know, China has been buying up all kinds of land in the US, as have so many of these big investment companies, whether it be at BlackRock or I mean kind of go down the list. They've been buying up a lot of land, a lot of homes and single family dwellings, et cetera, and China has been a major player in this. And some people might could argue this is not a big deal, except that in many areas where China's been buying land, they've been buying land next to military bases, which does make you kind of scratch your head and think, hmm, could there be something else going on? When you have the Communist Party of China, who are opposed to America, who don't want to see America succeed, because the stronger America is right, then the less ability China has to be the number one in the world, because America is the number one in the world.

And so in Kansas this was a split vote and it actually doesn't tell me, uh, how many Republicans or Democrats were on this side, uh, but it's. It's the state house, bill sb 172 by 86 to 39 votes, uh, before the state senate passed the bill by, or in the senate was 24 to 14, um, but it does make me wonder. The 86 to 39 in the house. I'm kind of curious where republicans, democrats, were, because I tend to think this right, if the 39 were opposed to it, I would be very curious who was on that list. I know the way I tend to lean and think who it would be. Nonetheless, this pass is overwhelming, but it does head to a Democrat governor, and at this point, actually, guys, I probably shouldn't look up. It might have. Now was being a month later. We might already know if Governor Laura Kelly signed this or not.

I would think that there should be enough positive pressure and maybe even some agreement from both sides, from Democrats that are not woken crazy that they would say, hey, this probably isn't a good idea to allow nations that are hostile to America to buy land and set up facilities close to military bases in America. The two military bases in Kansas that this was next to were Fort Leavenworth and Whiteman Air Force Base. So those are the two military facilities, and the facility that was being built was a plant that was doing electric vehicle batteries and other products, other kind of technology. But one of the things on this company, their American or their English language website, it says that they've undertaken a number of national 863 initiatives. Well, that's a reference to a Chinese government-backed program that America has identified has been guilty of trying to steal American technology.

Actually, in the company there's a lot of individuals working for the company that are members of the CCP, the Communist China Party, and so they've already been identified in many different organizations that some of these Chinese individuals were coming in and they were taking trade secrets and they were getting those to China and then they were using kind of this strategic advantage in China to hurt the American economy. Anyway, all that to say the good news is is that in Kansas now, being one of several states going that direction, they have now, from the House and Senate, they have passed this out. Going to the governor Again, I need to look up and see if the governor actually signed that, but at least it's good news that you have the vast majority of the House and Senate in Kansas recognizing this is not a good strategic decision to allow China to buy land in their state, specifically within very close or striking distance easy striking distance to military facilities and locations. So overall I would say really good news coming out of Kansas.

Rick Green

Very good news coming out of Kansas. David, our final piece of good news. Where are we going? Good news coming out of Kansas. Wait a minute. More good news coming out of Kansas. Wait a minute. More good news that coming out? No, no, no, that's over the quota actually 

David Barton

this has to deal.

And, tim, you were asking about the governor, Laura Kelly, and she probably did sign that bill. Uh, the bills that she won't sign is she just vetoed to the pro-life bills passed by the legislature. So legislature has passed a number of pro-life bills. She continues to veto all them and it's the same kind of thing that we see elsewhere. You've got a very good governor in Virginia with Governor Yonkin, and Democrats recently just took the legislature there and they passed 35 anti-gun bills 35. How do you do 35 in one session? It's hard to get 35 bills passed on anything in one session. They did 35 anti-gun bills and he vetoed all of them.

Well, on the other side you have these pro-life, largely Republican legislators in Kansas and, by the way, the House and the Senate in Kansas overwhelmingly Republican and you've got a pro-abortion governor and it's just a weird thing in some of these states. It's like people, you send a really good governor, you send a really good legislature and then you kind of like contradict yourself and you send somebody who's going to veto everything. And it's like man, if we can get North Carolina, if we can get Kansas, if we get Virginia to do throughout their branches what they do with leadership and others, because by and large, Kansas is an extremely Republican state and yet they put these Democrat governors in that stop everything. The legislature is trying to move forward, so it's really good news that they stopped Laura Kelly. They overrode her veto of pro-life legislation, so it looks like that's going to become law. But that's a lot of wasted time and effort and hopefully again, as we vote coming up in November, vote all the way down the ballot. It's not just Trump and Biden on the ballot this November, it goes all the way down. It goes all the way through the governors, it goes all the way down in the state house, state Senate, and get some good people in there so you can move good policies forward and hopefully move them forward without having to override vetoes, which is part of the civic process everybody needs to know about. But nonetheless, get some good folks in there so that we can continue having good news out of all these various different states.

Rick Green

Alright folks!  More good news is available at our website right now. Go to wallbuilders.show Now. I know at the beginning I said wallbuilders.com. That's our main website where you can get all kinds of great material and information. But wallbuilders.show is the easy website for just listening to the archives of the program. You can scroll through there and go to some of those past Friday programs. If you'd like some more good news or find some Thursday programs where we do Foundations of Freedom Thursday, taking your questions, and if you'd like to get some answered in the next few weeks, send those to us at radio at wallbuilders.com. But all of our programs, all the interviews, everything available there at wallbuilders.show.

Speaker 1: 26:03

And then, as I mentioned at the beginning of the program, don't forget that July 4th we got this special constitutional defense course happening at the Patriot Academy campus. Learn to defend yourself and your family. Don't just buy a gun and start carrying it. Make sure that you're trained. It's a trained good guy or a good gal with a gun that stops a bad guy or bad gal with a gun. And we need to make sure that we're being that wise person in Proverbs 27, 12 that foresees danger and takes precaution, not the simpleton or the fool that walks blindly on and suffers the consequences. So come train with us. David and Tim Barton and myself will all be there July 4th at the Patriot Academy campus. Go check out patriotacademy.com and click on Constitutional Defense. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilder Show.