Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Looking forward to a great week, the final week of the year, actually final few days of the year. And then, of course, we'll have New Year's Day. This Wednesday start in 2025 with a roar. I mean, we are we are run into the battle, as David Barton likes to say, and glad that you are running into the battle with us. We're not taking our foot off the gas going to go in at 2025. Absolutely taking ground back. We're going to take advantage of this opportunity that we've been given. We're going to take advantage of this, this respite, this, this, this, this, this, this wonderful, wonderful grace that God has given us. It's unbelievable what is happening in the country. It's it's so encouraging. You know, we prayed for it. We've asked for we planted seeds for water, those seeds. And sometimes it's just hard to believe when it's happening. So many good things happening in the country. By the way, I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution coach and founder of Patriot Academy. You can learn more there at my website. Patriot academy.com. Our organization is is growing rapidly across the nation. 30,000 coaches now across the country teach in the constitution class where you are from David Barton, Tim Barton, Kirk Cameron all these folks who check that out at Patriot academy.com. And then, of course, David and Tim Barton, David's America's premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders, Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. All three of us appreciate you listening throughout the year. And as we're closing out 2024, if you missed last Friday's program, I talked about the fact that Twitter closed out with Kelly Shackelford, our good friend over at First Liberty. By the way visit firstliberty.org today in these last couple of days of the year great place to be giving your final contributions of the year recommended three organizations to give to hear at the end of the year first liberty do that first liberty.org you'll hear from Kelly in the balance of his presentation today here on WallBuilders and then of course wallbuilders.com make that contribution maybe it's one time maybe it's an end of year special contribution. Maybe it's time to sign up for that monthly contribution that really helps us at WallBuilders to be able to plan and and, and you know, do know what projects we can afford to do that year based on those regular contributions that are coming in. And then the same for Patriotacademy.com you can make a one time or monthly contribution so virtually every WallBuilders Patriot Academy encourages check all of those out in these final few days of the year and make those last minute donations. Okay. So last Friday we heard the first part of Kelly Shackelford presentation, and I mentioned Friday. If you if you missed that, Kelly, of course, maybe. You know, I got to say, I mean, I'm an attorney and I work with a lot of these folks and these organizations, many of them good friends. They do incredible work. I think Kelly said more victories at the Supreme Court had more landmark cases, not only more than anybody I know personally, but maybe more than anybody in the last, I don't know, 20, 30 years. It's truly remarkable what God has done through first liberty. And and I think I think that is a for such a time as this thing, you know, Kelly has been devoted to the cause. He's he's been devoted to being used by the Lord. He's a humble guy. I mean, usually, let's be honest. Okay. How many attorneys do you know that are humble? All right. Come on. Let's let's just be brutally honest here. How many people do you know with a law degree that are actually humble? Not many, unfortunately. They just. I don't know. Maybe they give you a shot of arrogance when you go to law school, but very few is actually part of what turned me off at law school. I just anyway, especially those who get to the top tier, you know, they end up literally arguing before the Supreme Court actually winning cases before the Supreme Court, winning multiple cases before the Supreme Court. Well, this guy, Kelly Shackelford, has done all of that. I think maybe the greatest legal mind in the greatest victories of any attorney in our lifetime and yet incredibly humble and loves the Lord and is just always willing to help. And I mean, every time I call him, I need advice or send people to I just incredible. I'm telling you, if you. Anyway, I just and I know Kelly's probably not going to hear the program today, but Kelly, thank you for what you do and and to Hirum and the rest of your team over there. And first Liberty. God bless you. We here at WallBuilders love you and appreciate you for all that you're doing. And so enough of that. Let's jump right back in where we left off with Kelly on Friday, speaking to the legislators that came into town and Dallas-Fort Worth of the Pro-family legislators conference that we do once a year. Incredible, incredible group. And man, they are they are headed in when I say roaring in at 2025, these legislators are going to take back ground in these states all across the country. This will be Kelly Shackelford at the pro-family legislative conference. When we come back on the break, you're listening to the WallBuilders show. 

Rick Green [00:05:52] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Let's jump in. Here's Kelly Shackelford speaking at the Pro-family Legislators conference. This is the conclusion of his presentation that we started last Friday. If you need that program, it's at our website, Wobblers dot Show. 

Kelly Shackleford [00:06:05] There's a transgender employee who is suing them because they will not include a sex change in the main health care plan. They want to force this Christian company to put this in their plan. And so this is the kind of fight we're having over the right of people of faith to run their business according to their faith. And I think we're going to win these. We're having the same thing with employees, which I'll tell you about in a mental about a Supreme Court case. We have cases all across the country with people at these woke corporations where they're trying to force them to violate their faith, which they cannot do. It's against the law. So I say all this sounds a little depressive, right? So here's the good news as well. When in these cases, right, over 90% of the cases, the Navy SEALs case, 35, Navy SEALs, that during the vaccine mandate said, look, I can't do this. It violates my faith and I'm going to go through the process to get an accommodation. Well, instead of following the law, the government decided they just start we don't have to follow it to start punishing these guys. I mean, these are most of these guys have traumatic brain injury because of the service they give to our country. I don't know if you know this, but most more seals die in training than even in these dangerous missions. And they did things like one of our guys, he had traumatic brain injury. He was on his way to see the doctor. They called the doctor and they said, don't seem. They took away. They took away their health insurance through their children. All these guys at one point were and they didn't know each other. They just found out through, you know, that they were all having these problems. And so they eventually connected and they literally were about to sell all of their homes so that they could afford a legal defense. And that's when they found about us. And we came in and said, now we're representing you free of charge. And. And when we won the case, we were the only ones to win the case. All the others went away. We not only protected them, we converted into a class action, protected everybody in the Navy. And we ended up at the end. It was requiring everybody's records and all services to be cleaned, and nothing can be used against any of these people in the future with regard to their promotions and their rank up. But if they too had their way, we would have lost about 30 to 50,000 military families that are some of our best warriors, our best people. So it's crazy what we're having to fight. But the good news is God started to do some really about eight years ago right now. We were preparing for advancing religious freedom under Hillary Clinton presidency. And then Donald Trump won. And we're like, well, we've got to reevaluate. How can we advance religious freedom best under him? We saw a 132 judicial seats open, and this is a very unusual lifetime appointments to the bench federal bench. And we're like, you know. Winning one case important, affecting 132 judges for life. That's a lot of cases. And so we thought God telling us to get involved. So we started vetting. We thought everybody was vetting. What we found out was nobody was vetting. Everybody was pushing their friends, talking about how conservative they were, and they believed it. But nobody was spending the hours and hours and hours of reading everything and looking at everything and doing the kind of work we would expect. And so we got heavily involved. We now everybody knows we have more data on federal judges than anybody in the country. It's not even close. And when you do that and you provide information and you've got somebody who wants to put people on the court who actually want to follow the Constitution, who actually care about, you know, our founding principles like religious freedom, you're going to see decisions change. And so, for instance, there's 8000 requests a year for the Supreme Court to take your case. Last year, they took 58. About 8000 a year before they took 59. So if our goal the last few years was for them to take like one of our cases, that would be a pretty happy go, right. They're going to take you know, we're going to get one of the 58 out of 8000. They didn't take one of our cases that didn't to that intake. Three, we won for religious liberty cases at the Supreme Court. And these were last three of these were landmark religious liberty cases. This is what happens when you have judges who actually think their job is to to find out what the original text says and means. It starts taking you back to the founding. And so the first one was Carson versus Makan. Now, there's by the way, you say, who are these judges? Well, the guy raised his hand. 38 years old. Brilliant. Put on the court for the rest of his life. Think about how many cases that's going to mean, right? Who is that guy raising his hand? He was one of our one of our attorneys at First Liberty. One of our other attorneys at first Liberty is a guy by the name of Mike Johnson. Might have heard him, too. Speaker Mike Johnson, who's the guy raising his hand or, you know, swearing him in. Jim Ho. I think he'll probably be the next great justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Brilliant, strong Christian conservative. Fearless will always do the right thing. So huge. This makes a huge difference. And the first case on this was Carson, Carson versus Macon in Maine. They said, look, you can you can pick anything you want. You know, take your money. You can go to any school you want. Public or private, as long as it's not religious. We said that's unconstitutional. Supreme Court ruled six three. You're exactly right. From this day forward, any state, any local area, any anybody who has a school choice program from now in the future, you can never tell the parents they can't pick the Christian school. That's unconstitutional. Then we had the Gerald Broth case. Gerald was a missionary, got the mission field, and went to work somewhere where he wouldn't have to work on the Sabbath. Real strong beliefs about not working on Sunday. So we went to the Postal Service and that worked great for two years until they started working with Amazon to deliver on Sunday. And they and they knew there's a law that protects religious freedom in the workplace. But 46 years ago, in a case called TVA versus Hardison, the Supreme Court, in a very dishonest opinion, reinterpreted all the words to basically take away all the religious freedom protection. And so we represented Gerald went to the Supreme Court and we did something a little unusual. We told the Supreme Court this decision from 46 years ago was a lie 46 years ago. And it's a lie now. And, you know, this is not what these words mean. The US Supreme Court ruled nine zero in our favor. And they restored that protection of religious liberty way back up here. So think of what this means for hundreds of millions of people who work. 

Rick Green [00:13:03] Alright folks quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:14:13] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. If you're just tuning in with us on today's program, we are listening to Kelly Shackelford present at the Pro-family Legislators Conference. Let's jump right back in with Kelly. 

Kelly Shackleford [00:14:22] Our kids, our grandkids who will work, they now have protection in the workplace on their faith. With all these woke attacks that are coming, this is going to be crucial. People being fired for using the wrong pronouns. They are protection now, right? I mean, this is endless what this means for religious freedom in our country. And then the third one is a case I think most of you heard, and we're going to see coach in a little bit Coach Kennedy case. And of course, Coach made a pledge to go to a knee and say a prayer after the game. And that's what he did and did it for seven years until they came to him. And they said, if you go to a knee again, we're going to fire you. Well, coach was a marine for 20 years, so he went to a knee. And they fired him. And unfortunately for us, he lived outside of Seattle. So not exactly the most friendly courts. And then the Ninth Circuit, as Rush Limbaugh used to call it, the Ninth Circus. So very hostile all the way up. And most people know we won six three at the US Supreme Court. That coach has a right to go to a knee to say a prayer after the game, and you know that that's a great win for everybody who teaches everybody. Coaches, they don't give up their religious freedom at school. That's what people know. What they don't know is what Dave referenced a little earlier is what happened within the opinion. And that is that there's a case called Lemon. It's aptly named. It's a lemon of a case. But back in 1971, the Supreme Court said, you know, we've got this establishment clause, which really was meant because our founders didn't want us to establish a national church that everybody had to support. But they said we think it means a lot more than that. Normally, you can't bring a lawsuit if you're offended by religion. But we're going to now allow you to bring lawsuits if you're offended by religion. And number two, we're going to say that everywhere the government is, Religion can't be. It's an extreme separation of church and state or governments everywhere. So for 50 years, we've seen attacks against religious freedom, over 7000 citations to Lemon to strike down religious freedom. Well, you know, about four and a half years ago, we had that Bladensburg Cross case. It was a veterans memorial let's put up 100 years ago by mothers who lost their sons in World War One, and the American humans came along, said, You can't have a cross on government property that violates the lemon test. And so we looked and we went to the federal Court of Appeals and we had a three judge panel. And one of them said, why don't we cut the arms off the cross? That way nobody will be offended and we won't have to tear it down. They ruled 2 to 1 after 100 years, this cross was unconstitutional. So when we went to the Supreme Court, we said, you know, Lemon's been on the books for, you know, 50 years. It's been cited. So, I mean, the odds of us getting rid of lemon are probably not in my lifetime, but I just don't think the court is going to overturn a veterans memorial. So this is the time to go after. Lemon So in our brief, we spent 90% of our brief saying Lemon is bad. And then we the last 10%, we said, by the way, even if you don't overturn Lemon, we still meet all the tests. And the court ruled in our favor seven two, but importantly, five four, they refused to follow. Lemon It was a crack in the arm, okay? They didn't reverse it, but they didn't follow it. So then we have the Coach Kennedy case and we're like thinking, you know, there's never been a case in Supreme Court on the rights of teachers or coaches with regard to their faith at school. So if we go for the get rid of Lemon approach, it's like going for a grand slam when we can win with a single and we need to win this case. So we had the argument in our brief, but it was not a heavy part of our argument. Midway through the oral argument, the Supreme Court out of nowhere, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch start saying, you know, I think it's time we get rid of Lemon. Our eyes is our biggest silver dollars. And we're like, Well, I don't know if they have the votes for this. So I'm seen with Coach Kennedy as the decision is being handed down and he's like, Hey, did we win? And I'm like, Yes, we're reading. And about three pages in it says, Lemon is reversed. And then I look at the dissent and they're going crazy because they know what just happened. 7000 citations gone. Okay. Everywhere a cross is down, the cross can come back up. Everywhere a Ten Commandments was pushed into the closet. It comes back out. You know, you can't have nativity scenes at Christmas or menorahs at Hanukkah on your city lawn, on your county lawn. Yes, you can. Everything just changed. Everything. I mean, it's a huge deal. And so we've got a whole project that we've the biggest problem is people have been trained for 50 years. You can't do these things right? How many of us have a nativity scene at Christmas right now? Or a menorah at Hanukkah in our communities? By the way, this is what's great about America. Religious diversity, celebrating our faith. I mean, this is how we were founded. The idea that, you know, it's the naked public square where, you know what, when you move religion out of the public square, something else comes in. And I think we've seen it right. And so this is going to make a huge difference in our culture and our country. But we've got to start occupying the land that Lord the Lord just won for us. There are so many things now that you can do that you couldn't do. And so this is a great time to be a legislator. Right. You saw the Ten Commandments put on the school walls in Louisiana, Bill. You might have seen it was struck down yesterday, the day before by an Obama judge. Okay. It's going up to the Fifth Circuit, the most conservative court in the country. And I don't think their prospects for the ACLU look too good because there was a case back, you know, many decades ago where Kentucky said, hey, let's put a Ten Commandments part of our history or culture background. Let's put a Ten Commandments poster on the wall of every public school so they understand some of our religious background. And Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4. No, So close. 5 to 4. You couldn't do that because of they only gave one reason. Lemon. Lemon's not around anymore. It's not good law that what they said is look at the history and tradition of your country and what kind of things you did. And David Barton just took you through all kinds of stuff. So I think Louisiana is going to win. But there are there are a hundred ideas like that you can do. 

Rick Green [00:20:43] Quick break. Everybody will be right back. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:22:52] Alright folks just jump right back in to the conclusion of Kelly Shackelford presentation at the Pro-family Legislators conference. 

Kelly Shackleford [00:22:58] You can do a Ten Commandments, a law. You can you can get release time. You can make it. Ciao. That's even the best if you can, where the parents now have control to do this in their school districts. You can do chaplains. You can have chaplains in all the public school there. There are there are endless things you can do now. And I just want you to understand how God is just totally open the landscape for something completely different than what we experience. And so I've got let me see. I think I've got the. Yeah. I also want you know, we do a, a academic study. It's it's totally objective that just looks at every state and does a list of every protection law that protects religious freedom. And then we compare to states. And it's kind of weird because right now, number one for the last few years has been Illinois of all places, because they had a bunch of Catholics back before the liberals took over that put a bunch of great laws protecting religious freedom in. But I tell you about this because you can look at your own state and all that, but you can see the exact laws that the other states have that protect religious freedom. There's little things, big things, health care, lots of things. So this is just a whole bunch of other places. If you want to just swim around and kind of look through some things to see what other people are doing. But there are just great opportunities right now. You know, there's I love Lord of the Rings. It's one of my favorite movies and series. And there's a scene in there where if you remember watching it, where it's like you look at Earth and it's just everything is death and hopeless and the trees and the vegetation are crumbling and it's like a a drone goes up over the earth and starts moving. And everywhere you see it forever, it looks hopeless and dying. But eventually. You see in the future a little light. And as you get closer, what you see it is, is as thousands of horses galloping at full speed towards the darkness. Gandalf is on the front. The Christ figure with a white beard, a white robe, a white rod and a white horse. And everybody is coming behind him. And everywhere they hit the darkness, it decimates the darkness and and greenery and life comes back. I really think I mean, we've seen some real darkness, right? But something is happening now. And the great thing is we don't have to be on the lead horse. Crisis on the lead horse, right? He's just asking us to do one thing. Mount up. You mount up, I'll mount up. We're going to have some fun. God bless. 

Rick Green [00:25:56] Alright folks that was Kelly Shackleford speaking at the Pro-family Legislators conference. If you missed any of today's program or last Friday's program where Kelly's first half of his presentation was aired here on WallBuilders, you can get both of those at our Web site, WallBuilders Dot show that's available to you right now. And you can send those links out to your friends and family. Great way to finish out the year. Encourage them to donate to WallBuilders to First Liberty and the Patriot Academy. That's three donations they need to make right here at the end of the year. Help us raw into 2025 and take back ground. Let's take advantage of this incredible opportunity. I've been saying it since the election, folks. We have a window of opportunity. It's only cracked open, but it's cracked open. So let's shove it open. Dive through in 2025, take back ground and restore this constitutional republic. Thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilders Show.