The Trump administration has issued subpoenas for four New York Times journalists, requiring them to testify before a grand jury in a criminal investigation. 
The subpoenas come after the Times reported on security concerns involving Trump’s new presidential aircraft — a gift from Qatar. The purpose is to compel the journalists to reveal their confidential government sources in the investigation.
The media is, of course, outraged by Mr. Trump’s actions. Most leading outlets, including ABC, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, have labeled the subpoenas “unprecedented” executive overreach. They are not.
Let’s examine the darling of the press: the Obama administration. President Obama prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act than any administration in history.
Mr. Trump’s actions are problematic. They raise genuine questions about press independence and government overreach. But let’s add some historical context.
As with so many things Mr. Trump does, the subpoenas are not actually a departure from the norm. They only look that way because everyone else did it in the shadows while he does it in broad daylight — and this largely has to do with a hostile media (toward Trump) versus a sympathetic one (toward any and all Democrats).
Much of the Obama surveillance was conducted in secret; the affected organizations learned about it later, after records had already been collected. In 2012, the Justice Department obtained two months of telephone records from the Associated Press without providing notice of any kind.
If anything, this secrecy is all the more troubling from a free-press standpoint. Trump obviously believes (in error) that he is fully legally justified in his actions — hence his pride and publicity in them. It’s harder to make that case about Obama, whose subterfuge implies at least a certain degree of doubt that he had the right to do what he did.
Even more notably, in 2009, Fox News reporter James Rosen published a story on North Korean nuclear weapons. The story was based on an intelligence report that had been leaked by an administration official.
In order to obtain a warrant for Rosen’s personal emails, phone contacts, and communications information, the affidavit baselessly characterized him as a possible “aider, abettor, or co-conspirator.” While Rosen was not charged, the criminal language allowed prosecutors to obtain his material with no advance notice.
Would someone like to explain to me how exactly that’s different, let alone milder, than Trump’s subpoenas?
When pressed with these facts, many Democrats will be quick to respond, “Sure, it was a problem when Obama did it, and it’s a problem now. Let’s bring it to a swift end.” I don’t disagree.
This response, however, is hugely disingenuous.
Only now that Obama is out of public office can it become an unforgivable action. You can tell me all you want that it&#8217;s a red line, but it never kept you from endorsing Obama. It doesn’t keep you from pining for the days when the president was an upstanding, humble citizen. What’s different this time?
While Obama did eventually draw the criticism of the mainstream media, it was far from a comparable reception. Obama’s abuse of the Espionage Act was treated as a mere footnote in his presidency. Meanwhile, Trump’s actions are an “unprecedented” threat to the democratic process.
This is selective memory at its finest. How many people, especially younger people, even know about the Obama scandals? It seems the media did such a good job running cover that they even forgot about them themselves.
To be clear: The Trump subpoenas are wrong. The Obama scandals were wrong. But the press is also wrong for its incessant fearmongering and selective crucifixion. If it wasn’t the end times then, it’s not the end times now.
You don’t get to pick and choose. This is another case where the press — and its blatant bias — has become the story rather than a pursuit of the truth.

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Trump’s Subpoenas Are Not Unprecedented Despite The Media Hysteria

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DW Opinion

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Freedom of the Press

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Media Bias

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Every Supreme Court term produces headlines. This one produced structural change — the kind that will shape how power works in Washington, D.C., in statehouses, and in your own community for years to come.
Start with the case that mattered most: Trump v. Slaughter. For 90 years, Congress could shield the heads of “independent” agencies — the Federal Trade Commission, and by extension dozens of similar bodies — from being fired by the president except for cause. The Court ended that, ruling that if an official exercises the president’s executive power, the president can remove him. In practice, that means voters who elect a president now have more say over the sprawling bureaucracy that regulates everything from consumer products to labor disputes, rather than leaving that power with unelected commissioners serving staggered terms.
A companion case, Trump v. Cook, carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve — Fed governors can be fired only for cause, a 5-4 compromise that Justice Barrett, in dissent, called out as arbitrary and going beyond what the Court needed to decide the case.
Women’s sports had one of their best days ever at the Court. In cases out of West Virginia and Idaho, all nine justices agreed that Title IX — the law that opened the door to girls’ athletics in the first place — doesn’t force states to let biological males compete on girls’ teams. A narrower 6-3 majority held that constitutional equal protection likewise allows states to protect female athletes. That means the 27 states that already protect single-sex sports are on solid legal ground, and cases are already wending their way to the Supreme Court asking whether equal protection and Title IX actually require the other 23 states to do so.
The Second Amendment kept winning, too. In Wolford v. Lopez, the Court struck down a Hawaii law that weaponized trespass law against concealed-carry permit holders: Instead of assuming that a valid permit holder could enter a business with his weapon unless told otherwise, Hawaii required businesses to explicitly invite him in first. The Court said that the law effectively criminalized ordinary daily life for lawful gun owners — a ruling that should also doom copycat laws in California and other blue states. In a separate case, the justices unanimously held that the government can’t strip someone’s gun rights merely because he’s an occasional marijuana user, absent any sign he’s actually dangerous.
The First Amendment had an outstanding term as well. The Court struck down Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” counseling, ruling that a state can’t let therapists affirm a client’s gender identity while banning them from helping a client move the other direction — that’s the government picking sides on a viewpoint, not regulating conduct.
Elsewhere, the Court protected a New Jersey pregnancy center’s right to keep its donor list private from a hostile state subpoena, and struck down limits on how much political parties can coordinate spending with their own candidates. The campaign finance ruling is the latest in a series of cases reaffirming that free speech includes the right to political speech, and it will likely shift fundraising and election spending back to the parties and away from outside groups and Super PACs.
The term also delivered a landmark election law decision: Louisiana v. Callais. The Court held that a Voting Rights Act lawsuit can’t succeed just by pointing to a correlation between race and party in a district — plaintiffs now need real evidence of intentional discrimination. The Court put that reasoning to work almost immediately in an emergency order reinstating Alabama’s congressional map, an order that invoked the “colorblind Constitution” — language borrowed from the first Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, and now, for the first time, adopted by a majority. In practice, this makes it harder to scurrilously repackage partisan gerrymandering claims with racial language. One disappointment: the Court left in place the counting of late-arriving mail ballots, though it noted Congress could set a firmer national rule if it chose to.
Immigration cases mostly went the government’s way, with the Court reading several statutes in commonsense, textualist terms — including a ruling that someone who is stopped at the border hasn’t yet “arrived in” the country, reaffirming that courts can’t second-guess the president’s determination not to exempt Haitian and Syrian immigrants from removal, and another making it easier to remove green-card holders who commit serious crimes. The exception was the birthright citizenship case, where the majority applied the traditional, broad meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause to cover the U.S.-born children of both illegal immigrants and temporary visitors. As an originalist matter, it was a difficult case, with both sides grappling with the historical evidence. Justice Thomas’s 91-page dissent masterfully presented a narrower view of the Clause, but even the dissenters concluded that the president’s executive order likely went further than the Constitution permits.
On the business side, the Court made it harder for trial lawyers to drag oil companies into friendly state courts over decades-old wartime production, ruling that those suits belong in federal court — a real check on the climate-litigation industry that’s grown up around this kind of lawsuit.
Not every case broke along predictable lines. In a dispute over the president’s tariff powers, originalist justices ended up on both sides — a useful reminder that originalism is a method, not a rubber stamp, and methods sometimes produce results conservatives don’t love.
The term produced a few decisions that disappointed the president or conservatives, but, taken as a whole, it stands as one of the most significant terms in memory for bringing the Court back to an originalist understanding of the Constitution. Presidential removal power, women’s sports, the First and Second Amendments, immigration enforcement, climate and election litigation abuse — the Court engaged all of it and got the lion’s share right. That’s not a disappointing term. That’s a historic one.
***
Carrie Severino is the president of the Judicial Crisis Network. Follow her on X <a href="https://www.twitter.com/@JCNSeverino">@JCNSeverino</a>

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The Supreme Court Term That Handed Originalists One Of Their Best Years Yet

birthright citizenship

Election Laws

executive power

Louisiana v. Callais

Second Amendment

Supreme Court

Title IX

Transgender Athletes

Trump v. Cook

Trump v. Slaughter

Wolford v. Lopez

Free speech is America’s greatest protection against tyranny. It also creates one of our greatest vulnerabilities to foreign enemies. Our challenge is to defend that freedom without letting our enemies turn it against us.
The First Amendment protects free speech for good reason. Once government gets to decide which opinions are allowed, every other freedom becomes less secure. But the same openness that lets Americans criticize the government, organize movements, and argue for radical ideas can also be exploited by enemies who would never permit that freedom at home.
In America and the West, people are free to fund nonprofits, organize protests, build campus movements, and use social media to shape public opinion, even against the country’s own institutions. You wouldn’t be allowed to use those same tools to undermine the regime in China, Iran, Russia, or North Korea. Those governments keep a tight grip on their universities, media, and public square.
That asymmetry is how a free society becomes vulnerable. Every society produces fringe ideas. That’s normal. But potentially harmful ideas usually remain harmless as long as they stay fringe. They become dangerous and divisive when someone gives them money, legitimacy, and a way to spread.
Right now, self-destructive beliefs that once remained on the fringe are growing in popularity across America and the West. Some of these ideas surely started organically. But that doesn’t mean these ideas are spreading at this scale on their own. They can also be magnified by foreign money flowing into the universities, nonprofits, and platforms that shape the worldview of millions of Americans.
Take energy. Radical activists push to block pipelines, shut down nuclear plants, and eliminate coal in the name of saving the planet, while China keeps burning cheap coal to power its economy. Taken to its extreme, this agenda, dressed up as climate virtue, becomes a form of industrial self-destruction while handing our competitors a massive economic advantage.
Or take immigration. Done right, legal and controlled with real integration, it’s a strength. Done wrong, an unchecked open-borders policy is a recipe for national self-destruction. No rational state would allow indiscriminate migration on a scale that destabilizes its own society. Yet many Western constituencies now treat basic self-preservation as something shameful.
We don’t need to prove that foreign money is the main driver of every self-destructive belief spreading through America. The vulnerability itself is the problem. Hostile governments don’t need to invent these ideas from scratch. They only need to find the radical ideas already capable of tearing us apart and fund their growth. Adversaries who have spent decades studying how to weaken America would be foolish to pass up such an obvious opening. Why spend trillions trying to beat America militarily when a fraction of that can get Americans to do the work for them?
What can we actually do about this?
Not censorship of Americans. That would be the most dangerous response. Americans have every right to argue and protest against America itself. That’s part of the deal free speech gives us. If we answer foreign manipulation by giving the government the power to police what Americans believe, we expose ourselves to something worse than foreign influence: a government powerful enough to turn against its own citizens. The First Amendment has to stay fully intact.
The better answer is to extend a principle America already accepts: foreign money should not be allowed to shape American public life from the shadows. <a href="https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/foreign-nationals/">Foreign nationals</a> already can’t donate to American elections. <a href="https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara">FARA</a> requires certain foreign agents to register and disclose their activities here. Those laws exist because America understands that foreign money can be weaponized, and that foreign influence can be restricted or exposed without touching any American’s right to speak.
We should apply that same logic more broadly to nonprofits, universities, and advocacy groups that shape American culture and politics. The distinction should stay simple: ordinary commerce is fine. Foreign money financing domestic influence is not.
Foreigners can buy products, hire American companies, or pay full price for their own children’s education here. That is foreign money exchanged for real goods and services, and it’s not the problem. The problem is foreign governments, foreign nationals, or foreign-controlled groups endowing chairs, funding programs, or financing research in ways aimed at shaping our culture, our politics, or how young Americans are educated.
If Americans want to fund radical climate activism or open-border movements, that’s their right. The First Amendment protects them. Americans are free to be wrong and free to be radical. But the First Amendment does not require us to let foreign adversaries bankroll our national self-destruction.
Perhaps a broad restriction is too blunt an instrument. We would welcome any narrower solutions that actually work. At the very least, full transparency about which foreign governments, foreign nationals, and foreign-controlled entities are funding our nonprofit institutions would be a good first step.
But transparency alone may not be enough. According to the <a href="https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-releases-latest-foreign-funding-disclosures-federally-funded-american-universities">Department of Education’s 2025 foreign-funding disclosures</a>, Qatar was the largest foreign source of reportable gifts and contracts to American universities, including Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, with China third. Qatar alone accounted for more than $1 billion. That fact is already public, since federal law requires universities to report large foreign gifts and contracts. Yet the money keeps flowing anyway. At some point, transparency must be followed by real restrictions on foreign money flowing into causes designed to reshape American society.
America does not need to become less free to protect itself. It needs to stop being naive. Our enemies understand that free speech in an open society can be used against it. We are under no obligation to give them the tools to turn our freedom against us. If we want free speech to survive, we need to defend not just our right to speak, but the society that makes that right worth having in the first place.
***
Rabbi Elie Feder, PhD, and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer host the “<a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/">Physics to God</a>” podcast.

100 US dollars on the background of the banknote of the Chinese yuan. The concept of a trade war between the USA and China

Free Speech Is The West’s Greatest Asset. It’s Also Our Greatest Vulnerability.

American Universities

Foreign Funding

Foreign influence

foreign nationals

Free Speech

The Supreme Court got this one right. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, decided today, the court struck down the federal limits on coordinated expenditures between political parties and their candidates. The vote was 6–3, with Justice Kavanaugh writing for the majority, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett. For decades, these restrictions rested on a bizarre fiction, that a political party could somehow corrupt the very candidate it nominates. Nobody who has ever worked in politics believes that. Parties exist to elect candidates. The court has now said what practitioners have known all along: the government cannot punish them for doing so.
The court did not mince words. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that Colorado II’s “reasoning has been rejected by subsequent cases and is no longer good law in light of the court’s more recent precedents. To the extent that Colorado II has retained any vitality, it is now overruled.” That 2001 decision, FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, had upheld the coordinated-expenditure limits by a 5–4 vote over a powerful dissent by Justice Thomas — the only member of that court still serving. Twenty-five years later, his dissent has been vindicated. As the majority acknowledged, Justice Thomas “explained that ‘the ordinary means for a party to provide support is to make coordinated expenditures’” and that “‘breaking the connection between parties and their candidates inhibits the promotion of the party&#8217;s message.’”
I have some stake in saying so. As a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, I was at the commission when this litigation began. The Biden administration chose to defend the restrictions. When President Donald Trump returned to office, the solicitor general shifted the government’s position, rightly, in my view, and conceded the limits were unconstitutional. That was not a political stunt. It was an honest acknowledgment of what the First Amendment requires. Because the government declined to defend the law, the court appointed Roman Martinez, a former clerk to both Chief Justice Roberts and then-Judge Kavanaugh, as amicus curiae to argue in defense of the statute.
The history matters. When the case went to the en banc Sixth Circuit, a majority of the judges questioned the continued validity of Colorado II, considering later Supreme Court decisions, particularly McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) and FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate (2022), but felt bound by the 2001 precedent. The Supreme Court freed them, and us, from that constraint.
Look at what these coordination limits did. They did not reduce the amount of money spent on politics. They just pushed spending away from political parties and toward outside groups. The court recognized this directly: the coordinated-expenditure limits imposed a “stifling effect on the ability of the party to do what it exists to do.” Meanwhile, donors sent their funds to Super PACs and other outside groups with a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money. The numbers are staggering: in the 2024 cycle, PACs raised over $15.7 billion, compared to $2.7 billion by political parties. A Super PAC run by consultants could spend without limit, but the Republican or Democratic party committee could not coordinate a mail piece with its own nominee. The First Amendment does not require that absurdity.
The majority applied what it called the “closely drawn” scrutiny from McCutcheon and Cruz, requiring that any restriction on political speech be “necessary,” “narrowly tailored,” and not “disproportionate” to the government’s interest. The only permissible interest in campaign finance restrictions, the court reaffirmed, is “preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption” — and only the narrow, quid pro quo kind. Not “influence.” Not “access.” Not “ingratiation.” The court wrote plainly: “Ingratiation and access &#8230; are not corruption,” but instead “embody a central feature of democracy.”
As for the government’s circumvention argument, the idea that donors would funnel money through parties to evade contribution limits, the court concluded that three existing tools already address that concern: base contribution limits to candidates, earmarking rules that treat directed contributions as direct donations, and robust disclosure requirements. The coordinated-expenditure limits were a “fourth line of defense” — a “prophylaxis-upon-prophylaxis” that was disproportionate to the interest it served. The majority pointedly observed that a majority of states “largely give parties free rein to make coordinated expenditures on behalf of their state-level nominees,” and yet “no evidence of corruption” via circumvention “has materialized.”
It is important to remember: parties disclose their donors. Their leadership is public. They file detailed reports with the FEC. The court itself emphasized that disclosure “offers much more robust protections against corruption” today than ever before, because of advances in technology and the Internet. If you care about transparency in elections, you should want more money flowing through parties, not less.
Critics will say this opens the floodgates. It does not. Contribution limits to the political parties still exist. Parties still cannot raise unlimited money the way Super PACs can. What changes is that parties can now spend what they raise in coordination with their candidates instead of pretending they operate independently. As the court stressed, the decision “treats all political parties equally” and will “allow all political parties, including the DNC and RNC and the respective Senate and House campaign committees, to participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process.” Some money will migrate back from Super PACs to party committees. That means more disclosure, more accountability, and more coherent campaigns.
Campaign finance reformers have spent decades getting this wrong. Every time Americans find a way to participate in political speech, the reformers’ knee-jerk response is the same: restrict it. They pushed for the coordinated-expenditure limits. They got them. The predictable result was that money flowed to outside groups while parties withered. The court has now corrected part of the problem by eliminating the coordination restriction, but the underlying contribution limits, themselves an unconstitutional restraint on political association, remain in place because the same misguided reform impulse that created them still dominates the conversation in Washington.
At bottom, this case asked a simple question: Can the government restrict political speech because regulators think there is too much of it? The answer is no. It has always been no. As the court reminded us, the “Framers were even more famously suspicious of government suppression of political speech” than they were of political parties. And it closed with the most powerful point of all: “For nearly 200 years after the ratification of the First Amendment, parties could spend on campaigns in coordination with candidates,” and no one suggests “that these elections were not functional or that they were marred by corruption.” The First Amendment is not a suggestion, and it does not come with a carve-out for election season.
That should not be a controversial statement. But in Washington, apparently it still is. Credit the court for moving the conversation in the right direction — toward freedom, and away from the reflexive assumption that government knows best when Americans speak about politics.
***
Trey Trainor is a partner at Dhillon Law Group, Inc., board certified in Legislative and Campaign Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and former Commissioner and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

Insider Trading

The Supreme Court Restores Some Common Sense To Campaign Finance

Federal Election Commission (FEC)

political speech

Special Reporting

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
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States are cracking down on illegal demonstrations, and radicals are panicking. Earlier this year, Utah enacted HB 331, which took several steps to enhance criminal penalties for crimes currently classified as misdemeanors. Arizona is close to sending a similar bill to the governor’s desk. These bills draw on a concept called “civil terrorism,” which I coined in early 2025 and have fleshed out since then, including in <a href="https://manhattan.institute/article/model-legislation-an-act-to-combat-civil-terrorism?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=mi">model legislation</a> developed alongside my colleagues at the Manhattan Institute.
Civil terrorism refers to the weaponization of “minor” crimes to intimidate or coerce law-abiding citizens into taking a political position. The best way to understand it is to consider its most common manifestation. Radical groups block a road en masse, chanting about their environmentalist, economic, or geopolitical views. They communicate to trapped drivers that no trip to the airport, their jobs, or their families will be spared from the threat of future disruption until some policy changes are made. Rather than persuading their fellow citizens to support the change, they threaten to make life miserable until enough people cry uncle and acquiesce.
That is not how we communicate or settle political questions in our democratic system. We have robust First Amendment rights that allow us to channel strong, offensive, or controversial opinions into peaceable arguments — including in public spaces. But the First Amendment has never allowed people to shut down all other elements of American life so that some group can express itself with maximal ruthless effectiveness. We have laws that prohibit disorderly conduct, vandalism, trespassing, and more. And if those laws fail to deter repeat offenders or treat the minor crime of road-blocking by one person — a nuisance, not a menace — the same as road-blocking by 15 people, they should be updated. That is what civil terrorism laws do.
Most Americans grasp this intuitively and recognize that civil terrorism laws present no First Amendment problem. Yet some organizations and media outlets seem invested in pretending otherwise. A recent attempted hit piece against me and the Manhattan Institute in <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-manhattan-institute-helped-kill-dei-now-its-coming-for-protests/">WIRED</a> made some classic moves in trying to argue that civil terrorism laws are somehow violations of the First Amendment’s speech protections. It made some classic errors and employed some recurring misdirection, which is worth addressing.
The piece&#8217;s subheader is self-refuting. It says that civil terrorism laws would “increase[e] penalties for minor crimes committed while people engage in constitutionally protected free speech.” If people are committing minor crimes, however, the fact that they are engaged in some expressive behavior is constitutionally irrelevant. There is no get-out-of-jail-free card for yelling about a political issue while you do something illegal.
What is a “minor” crime, anyway? Just because something is classified as a misdemeanor now does not make it inherently unimportant — certainly not deserving of First Amendment protection, as if it were almost legal. Civil terrorists exploit the fact that some crimes are treated with kid gloves and hardly prosecuted. They violate precisely those laws in creatively destructive ways, knowing that they will face minimal consequences and can return to breaking the law repeatedly.
Their sympathizers, like the author of the WIRED article, often emphasize that such lawbreaking is “nonviolent.” That’s a red herring. Many laws prohibit nonviolent actions because “violent” and “illegal” are not synonyms. Our laws protect against behaviors that erode the social fabric, such as subjecting thousands of people to needless traffic to make a political point. Americans have an interest in clean, functional, orderly public spaces, which is why vandalism can be prohibited — and treated as a serious crime when its message threatens further disruption or even violence.
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Another common criticism is that civil terrorism stigmatizes protest by labeling some demonstrators as terrorists. But these laws don’t label individuals “terrorists” as a pejorative or put them on a list. Civil terrorism simply describes the application of terrorist logic through less-violent means: We will continue to make your life miserable until you adopt our political position. Doing that with guns and bombs is violent terrorism. Doing it with other unlawful actions is still dangerous. More importantly, highlighting the logic of terrorism at play alerts lawmakers and our fellow citizens that the disruptions won’t stop if we ignore them. To the contrary, civil terrorists regularly vow to “escalate.” Our policy response has to be a crackdown, rather than a backdown.
Fretting about the invocation of terrorism or emphasizing the irrelevant (and arguable) element of nonviolence is a good sign that these critics don’t have much to go on. Frivolous First Amendment arguments attempting to extend constitutional protection to obviously illegal behavior shows that beyond all doubt. States have every right to ensure that their streets aren’t surrendered to radicals who only care about the Constitution when they can wield it in bad faith against law-abiding Americans. The movement to put civil terrorists in prison, investigate their organizers, and ensure that public spaces belong to the public again is gaining steam — and it is taking flak because it is over the target.
***
Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

TOPSHOT-US-IMMIGRATION-ICE-SHOOTING

Stop Tolerating Civil Terrorists Masquerading As First Amendment Warriors

Civil Terrorism

MI x DW

Political Violence

Protests

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
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Over the past decade, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment prohibits <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-victory-for-religious-liberty-and-educational-pluralism">excluding religious institutions</a> from public benefit programs. Yet some states have resisted this clear constitutional mandate. The Court has agreed to hear <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/supreme-court-church-state-st-mary-catholic-parish-v-roy">yet another case</a> involving rules that allegedly discriminate against religious schools seeking to participate in Colorado’s universal pre-K program.
Other states, fortunately, are embracing the First Amendment, revising their laws and regulations to put religious institutions on equal footing with other private entities. In recent months, Oklahoma, Florida, and Iowa have taken meaningful legislative or administrative steps to dismantle unconstitutional laws and regulations. These states should be applauded for recognizing that they cannot treat religious Americans as second-class participants in public life.
For years, courts misinterpreted the Constitution’s Establishment Clause as requiring the exclusion of religious institutions from government funding programs, even when those programs extended funding to virtually every other private organization. As a result, federal and state laws became littered with “sectarian” provisions expressly excluding religious individuals and institutions from otherwise generally available public benefits.
But since the turn of the century, the Supreme Court has steadily corrected course. It first made clear that government may include religious institutions in public programs on equal footing with other private entities, then ultimately <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-victory-for-religious-liberty-and-educational-pluralism">held</a> that the government may not exclude religious institutions and religious conduct from public programs open to everyone else.
As the Court explained in its 2022 <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf">decision</a> in Carson v. Makin, “a State violates the Free Exercise Clause when it excludes religious observers from otherwise available public benefits.” The Court further emphasized that “[a] State need not subsidize private education &#8230; but once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
The problem is that the Court’s new doctrine did not, by itself, force governments to revisit the statutes and regulations that entrenched these exclusions. As we have <a href="https://religiousequality.net/">catalogued</a>, hundreds of laws across the country continue to keep religious institutions out of otherwise generally available public programs. Moreover, when plaintiffs affected by these laws have sued, government officials often have attempted to evade their constitutional obligations. In some instances, states have <a href="https://www.mainepublic.org/courts-and-crime/2023-03-28/bangor-church-sues-over-law-requiring-its-school-to-accept-lgbtq-students-staff-to-get-public-funds">imposed new conditions</a> on public funding programs designed to create fresh obstacles for religious institutions seeking to participate on equal terms.
By contrast, some states have taken major steps to conform their laws to the First Amendment. Oklahoma has emerged as a leader in this effort. In 2023, the state enacted <a href="https://oksenate.gov/press-releases/religious-freedom-legislation-signed-law-0">legislation</a> that treated the sectarian exclusion of religious institutions from government benefits as a substantial burden on religious liberty. Then, in 2025, Governor Kevin Stitt issued an <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/OKGOV/2025/03/31/file_attachments/3215158/2142%20%282%29.pdf">executive order</a> directing state agencies to identify and eliminate laws, regulations, and policies that exclude religious individuals and institutions from public programs, funds, and benefits. The order specifically instructed agencies to review state rules in light of the Supreme Court’s modern Free Exercise decisions. Most recently, Oklahoma <a href="https://www.oklegislature.gov/cf_pdf/2025-26%20ENR/SB/SB1307%20ENR.PDF">repealed</a> several “sectarian” funding restrictions embedded in its law, including provisions barring religious organizations from participating in programs administered by the Oklahoma Historical Society and Arts Council.
Oklahoma is not alone. Last month, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued a <a href="https://www.myfloridalegal.com/sites/default/files/From%20the%20desk%20documents/opinion-4.2.26.pdf">formal opinion</a> concluding that state laws excluding religious institutions from public benefits violate the First Amendment. He announced that his office would no longer enforce such provisions.
Most recently, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed <a href="https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ba=SF2231&amp;ga=91">legislation</a> repealing multiple sectarian statutory provisions. Among other things, the law removed longstanding anti-religious restrictions embedded throughout Iowa’s education code, which barred religious institutions from participating in programs or required them to refrain from religious conduct in order to participate.
These recent developments may signal the beginning of a far healthier constitutional trend — one that does not require wave after wave of costly litigation simply to secure religious liberty for Americans. As Judge Daniel Traynor <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/31%20-%20PI%20Order_508FINAL.pdf">observed</a> in 2024, “Time and again the First Amendment rights of American citizens have been the subject of litigation. &#8230; Organizations must continually sue to keep the &#8230; government from infringing on basic and well-settled rights to freedom of religion.”
Rather than forcing religious individuals and institutions to spend years vindicating rights that the Supreme Court has already recognized, states should take seriously their independent obligation to bring their own laws into compliance with the Constitution. Thankfully, Oklahoma, Florida, and Iowa have begun to do exactly that.
***
This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. The original can be found <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/supreme-court-religious-freedom-first-amendment-oklahoma-florida-iowa">here</a>.
<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/michael-a-helfand" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michael A. Helfand</a> is the Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law and Religion at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, Visiting Professor at Yale Law School, senior legal advisor to the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition, and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/nicole-stelle-garnett" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nicole Stelle Garnett</a> is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and a faculty fellow of the Religious Liberty Initiative.

Separation Of Church And State

These States Are Leading The Way To Restore Religious Freedom

Religious Freedom

A financial giant blocked a Maryland gun shop from using its financial services after identifying it as participating in a “prohibited industry,” a debanking lawsuit claims. 
The lawsuit, filed by the Rockville-based United Gun Shop, accuses Capital One and Melio Payments of arbitrarily preventing it from using their payment services. The gun shop received messages in 2025 and 2026 suggesting the financial entities could not work with the firearms industry, emails viewed by The Daily Wire show.
The apparent debanking comes after the gun shop had previously used Capital One’s payment platform, administered by Melio Payments, for multiple business-related transactions and bill payments, according to the suit.
“As an American-owned small business operating legally, we were shocked when Capital One abruptly stopped processing our payments without any clear explanation and instead cited vague reasons tied to a third-party payment provider we never agreed to work with,&#8221; United Gun Shop owner Jonathan Bennett told The Daily Wire. &#8220;We filed this lawsuit to hold Capital One and its third-party partner accountable for what we believe is unfair discrimination against our company.”
The <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/1036217722/Filed-Melio-CapitalOne-COMPLAINT">lawsuit</a> accuses Capital One and Melio of blocking the gun shop from &#8220;making future payments&#8221; before later disabling them from completing payment transactions. 
“Defendants invoked generalized ‘prohibited industry’ and ‘restricted industry’ classifications after Plaintiff had already been onboarded into the Capital One-branded workflow and after some payments had already been processed,&#8221; the lawsuit said. 
The incidents caused the gun shop around $75,000 in damages and disrupted its business services, according to the suit.
Reached for comment, Melio said it did nothing wrong. “The claims have no merit, and we intend to vigorously defend them,&#8221; the company told The Daily Wire. It did not respond to follow up questions about specific communications to United Gun Shop. Capital One did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
Capital One previously <a href="https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/content/how-gun-companies-and-stores-are-pushing-back/">faced accusations</a> of politicized banking from the owner of a silencer company who testified that he was unable to use Capital One to sell federally regulated suppressors. Capital One says it does not make banking decisions based on politics. 
On April 11, 2025, a representative for United Gun Shop met with Capital One after “defendants canceled services without notice,” after the store had started to make bill payments with the banking giant&#8217;s platform, according to the lawsuit. A representative from Capital One informed United Gun Shop that it was not prohibited from banking and it had not violated any terms, the suit claims.
Yet three days later on April 14 the gun shop received a message from Melio Payments telling the company it belonged to a prohibited industry even though several payments had already been processed, according to a message viewed by The Daily Wire. 
“I understand that you are upset, and I know that some of your payments have processed, while others have not. There are times when we don’t catch it in time, but it appears that your account has been blocked from making future payments, as it appears to belong to one of our prohibited industries,” a message from Capital One Pay Business Bills said. 
“Per our agreement with our processing partners, we are unable to process payments in certain industries,” the message added. 
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1091127" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-12.25.56-PM.png" alt="" width="1356" height="675" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-12.25.56-PM.png 1356w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-12.25.56-PM-300x149.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-12.25.56-PM-1024x510.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-07-at-12.25.56-PM-768x382.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1356px) 100vw, 1356px" /></div>
United Gun Shop said it never agreed to Melio&#8217;s terms and only registered to use Capital One&#8217;s platform.
Exhibits attached to the suit showed successful payments being made with the platform starting in December 2024 before starting to fail in March 2025. 
A second written confirmation came on March 2026 when the gun shop received a message from Capital One Business saying that “our team wasn&#8217;t able to verify that your account and activity meet our eligibility criteria” and that “your account could not be approved and has been disabled from completing any transactions.”
One of the potential reasons suggested in the email why it was listed as ineligible was because &#8220;your business is considered a restricted industry.&#8221;
The suit said that message was the first “formal notice of non-approval for banking with Capital One” after “an informal deplatforming” and the meeting with Capital One in April 2025. 

Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, said the messages appeared to show political discrimination. 
&#8220;Capital One got caught red-handed debanking a law-abiding American business and hiding behind a middleman to dodge responsibility,” he told The Daily Wire. “The lawsuit suggests a clear pattern. A legal firearms retailer was cut off for no reason, even after bank officials admitted no rules were broken.”
The suit accuses Capital One and Melio Payments of violating numerous Maryland business laws including the Maryland Consumer Protection Act, causing commercial disparagement, and breach of contract. 
The gun shop has faced legal challenges from the Democrat attorneys general of Maryland and District of Columbia over accusations that it knowingly allowed a gun trafficker to purchase handguns from its store. That case was later dismissed. 
Across the state and federal level, Republican officials have moved to implement protections from debanking following allegations that major banks worked with the Biden administration to snoop on Americans who purchased hunting gear or Bibles.
The Trump administration directed federal banking regulators in August 2025 to ensure policies are in place to prohibit politically motivated debanking and stipulate that banking decision are only made based on individual, objective, and risk-based objectives.

US-WEAPONS-STORE

READ IT: The Message A Financial Giant Sent To A Gun Shop After Blocking Payment Access

Banking

debanking

Gun Sales

Maryland

Last year, Texas passed a <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/SB00010I.pdf__;!!F0Stn7g!CImtl3K4Z88KMhgOYxEgdmtoJl0WxJjjmW8dFAsrNxm3qZHNHJmiBfKfghp6EOtlMVfYBUfirq5Ll9TyRu07pKrBBLuO$">law</a> requiring all public schools to conspicuously display the Ten Commandments — just the text with no commentary.
Of course, challengers immediately ran to court, crying foul and claiming that this requirement violated both the <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment__;!!F0Stn7g!CImtl3K4Z88KMhgOYxEgdmtoJl0WxJjjmW8dFAsrNxm3qZHNHJmiBfKfghp6EOtlMVfYBUfirq5Ll9TyRu07pLOTmYYH$">First Amendment’s</a> Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.
But after careful consideration, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a masterful <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/25/25-50695-CV0.pdf__;!!F0Stn7g!CImtl3K4Z88KMhgOYxEgdmtoJl0WxJjjmW8dFAsrNxm3qZHNHJmiBfKfghp6EOtlMVfYBUfirq5Ll9TyRu07pMb3-xOm$">opinion</a> by Judge Kyle Duncan, said that’s just not so.
Importantly, Judge Duncan’s opinion reaffirmed a fundamental principle we should already recognize. If a practice was not understood at the time of the Founding — by those who ratified the First Amendment — as a violation, then it should not be considered a violation today. Judges are not tasked with updating the Constitution to suit modern times — or they shouldn&#8217;t.
While this commonsense proposition seems straightforward, it hasn’t been for many years. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its infamous <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/403/602/__;!!F0Stn7g!CImtl3K4Z88KMhgOYxEgdmtoJl0WxJjjmW8dFAsrNxm3qZHNHJmiBfKfghp6EOtlMVfYBUfirq5Ll9TyRu07pEifbWuB$">Lemon v. Kurtzman</a> opinion where it set forth a confusing three-part test to help courts determine whether the government had violated the Establishment Clause: Did the statute or action have a secular purpose? Did it primarily advance or inhibit religion? And did it result in “excessive government entanglement” with religion — whatever that means? Rather than providing clarity, this test quickly proved unworkable as lower federal courts struggled to consistently apply its prongs across cases.
And while the Supreme Court for far too long declined to overrule it explicitly, the Lemon test did lose favor among many justices. But because it continued to lurk among the Supreme Court’s case law, rearing its ugly head from time to time, Justice Scalia once <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-2024.ZC.html__;!!F0Stn7g!CImtl3K4Z88KMhgOYxEgdmtoJl0WxJjjmW8dFAsrNxm3qZHNHJmiBfKfghp6EOtlMVfYBUfirq5Ll9TyRu07pDGoBbZl$">described</a> it as being like “some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried &#8230;”
And it remained that way for almost 30 more years after Justice Scalia penned that line until the Court officially overruled Lemon and its progeny in <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf__;!!F0Stn7g!CImtl3K4Z88KMhgOYxEgdmtoJl0WxJjjmW8dFAsrNxm3qZHNHJmiBfKfghp6EOtlMVfYBUfirq5Ll9TyRu07pETCTrS6$">Kennedy v. Bremerton School District</a>.
So, with a stake through its heart, what comes after the dead-and-buried Lemon test?
The Fifth Circuit joined some of its sister circuits by agreeing that the Supreme Court now requires lower federal courts to ask whether those challenging a certain practice have “prov[en] a set of facts that would have historically been understood as an establishment of religion.”
Drawing heavily from the work of former federal judge and leading First Amendment scholar Michael McConnell, the Fifth Circuit said that for such an establishment to exist, approximately six “hallmarks” of “founding-era establishments” must be consulted. These include:
<blockquote>
(1) government control over religious doctrine, governance, and church personnel; (2) compulsory church attendance; (3) compelled financial support, especially in the form of land grants and religious taxes; (4) prohibitions on worship in dissenting churches; (5) use of church institutions for civil functions; and (6) restriction of political participation to members of the established church.
</blockquote>
As the court noted, none of those hallmarks are present here (even though some — <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://fedsoc.org/events/what-was-an-establishment-of-religion-at-the-founding__;!!F0Stn7g!CImtl3K4Z88KMhgOYxEgdmtoJl0WxJjjmW8dFAsrNxm3qZHNHJmiBfKfghp6EOtlMVfYBUfirq5Ll9TyRu07pB4Lv64G$">including</a> Professor McConnell — argue they could be, especially if circumstances shifted slightly). This historical analysis permits a more straightforward analytical pathway than previously available under Lemon. The malleability of that test and its flexible factors help explain why courts previously issued seemingly contradictory rulings, or held that Ten Commandments displays or Christmas crèches didn’t violate the First Amendment, only when surrounded by other secular displays too. That’s why some cities were forced to adopt the absurd and sacrilegious practice of flanking Baby Jesus with Frosty the Snowman or Snoopy, as though the latter are on equal footing with the former. Those types of requirements — which never should have existed — are no more.
Still, the challengers to this case argued that some <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/449/39/__;!!F0Stn7g!CImtl3K4Z88KMhgOYxEgdmtoJl0WxJjjmW8dFAsrNxm3qZHNHJmiBfKfghp6EOtlMVfYBUfirq5Ll9TyRu07pDMslZS0$">post-Lemon cases</a> that applied the Lemon test to various situations remained good law. But the Fifth Circuit correctly said that if “Plaintiffs’ view prevailed, [courts] would be applying Lemon’s dead letter far into the future.”
The Fifth Circuit also applied a similar framework to find that these passive displays did not violate the plaintiffs’ First Amendment Free Exercise rights either.
What’s clear from this case and others is that lower federal courts are starting to take seriously the requirement that courts should not impose their own policy preferences under the guise of interpreting the Constitution. Instead, they must interpret and apply the Constitution as it would have been understood at the time “We the People” adopted it. To accomplish that task, courts should — as the Fifth Circuit did here — look to history and tradition to guide their textual interpretations.
Courts have adopted that approach for Second Amendment cases — and now First Amendment ones too. And they should continue until they have adopted that correct approach for all constitutional cases.
***
Zack Smith is a senior legal fellow and manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program at The Heritage Foundation.

US-NEWS-TEXAS-SCHOOLS-TEN-COMMANDMENTS-LAWSUIT-LX

Court Rules That The Ten Commandments Aren’t Unconstitutional — Who Knew?!

Ten Commandments

On Tuesday, at the UCLA School of Law, history repeated itself — this time without even the courtesy of waiting for a federal judge. James Percival, the general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, had been <a href="https://dailybruin.com/2026/04/21/demonstrators-protest-ucla-event-hosting-dhs-general-counsel-james-percival">invited</a> by the UCLA Federalist Society for a conversation about immigration law. More than 150 demonstrators protested the event. Many heckled Percival throughout, yelling, playing doorbell sounds and ringtones, and tapping on desks after being asked to silence their phones. The open Q&amp;A never occurred. The Federalist Society had put it plainly in its invitation: &#8220;Come, ask your hardest questions, and make your case.&#8221; The students answered with noise.
This should sound familiar. In 2023, the UCLA script played out at my alma mater, Stanford Law, now ranked first in the nation. Judge Kyle Duncan — a Fifth Circuit judge nominated by President Donald Trump during his first term — had been <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/struggle-session-at-stanford-law-school-federalist-society-kyle-duncan-circuit-court-judge-steinbach-4f8da19e">invited</a> by Stanford&#8217;s Federalist Society to speak. Students greeted him with shouted insults, sustained disruption, and signs. Stanford&#8217;s own associate dean joined the heckling from the podium. Duncan was ultimately escorted out by federal marshals. Stanford&#8217;s president and dean later apologized.
Duncan, life-tenured and apparently unbothered, returned to his chambers and kept writing opinions.
This week, he may have written his finest.
On Tuesday — the same day UCLA students were busy shouting down the DHS&#8217;s top lawyer — the full Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld a Texas law requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Judge Duncan wrote the opinion in <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/25/25-50695-CV0.pdf">Rabbi Mara Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District</a>. It is a serious, carefully constructed piece of constitutional reasoning, and it deserves more attention than the protest theater unfolding across the law school quad. (Full disclosure: Rabbi Nathan is a college friend whom I respect but disagree with.)
The legal question before the court was straightforward: Does a classroom display of the Ten Commandments resemble any of the historic hallmarks of an established religion? Duncan shows, methodically, that it does not. No student is compelled to recite the Commandments, profess belief in them, or even glance at them. They are present as part of the moral and legal inheritance that shaped Western civilization and, with it, the country those students live in.
Critics reach reflexively for Jefferson&#8217;s &#8220;wall of separation between church and state,” a phrase that appears nowhere in the First Amendment. It comes from a 1802 <a href="https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html">letter</a> Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists as a promise of non-interference, not a mandate to scrub faith from civic life. George Washington was blunter in his <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Washingtons_Farewell_Address.pdf?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">Farewell Address</a>: A republican government depends on a moral people, and religion and morality are its indispensable supports.
And then there are claims that the display text is somehow sectarian. In First Things, a Protestant scholar, Mark David Hall, and a rabbi, Stuart Halpern of Yeshiva University, joined me, a Catholic, to <a href="https://firstthings.com/a-nonsectarian-version-of-the-ten-commandments/">show</a> that the text these states require was crafted through deliberate interfaith collaboration and recognized by multiple courts as nonsectarian. Judge Duncan wisely observes that it is not the province of federal courts to opine on such theological matters.
It’s worth noting that the generation least likely to have encountered the Ten Commandments in any formal setting is also the one now turning to faith in quietly remarkable numbers. Gen Z, raised on curated content and institutional skepticism, is discovering that ancient things sometimes endure for good reason. Washington feared that a republic without religion and morality could not long endure. A generation quietly proving him right is a development worth more than a classroom wall. But the wall is a good place to start.
The Texas case will likely reach the Supreme Court. When it does, the justices will have the opportunity to confirm what most people outside law schools already sense: that a civilization that acknowledges its moral inheritance is not establishing a religion. A classroom wall is not an established church. It is a reminder.
Meanwhile, Judge Kyle Duncan — the man they tried to silence at Stanford Law — just handed down the opinion of his career. He didn&#8217;t need a microphone; he had a pen.
Back at UCLA, the noise has likely faded. James Percival returned to Washington.
Stanford Law students shouted down a federal judge; now their counterparts at UCLA have done the same to the government’s top immigration lawyer. The targets were different. The impulse was identical. And the man they couldn’t silence at Stanford has just written an opinion that will serve as the roadmap for the Supreme Court when a key religious freedom issue arrives there — and it will.
***
Andrea Picciotti Bayer is director of the Conscience Project and recipient of the Religious Freedom Institute’s 2025 Religious Freedom Impact Award.

Heckled Judge Just Handed The Left Its Worst Ruling In Years

Public Schools

The U.S. Supreme Court <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/supreme-court-hands-down-major-conservative-win-in-near-unanimous-decision">ruled</a> on March 31 in <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/chiles-v-salazar/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped">Chiles v. Salazar</a> that voluntary conversations between a counselor and her young clients are protected under the First Amendment’s free speech clause. This monumental decision condemned the state’s unlawful and, according to the court, “egregious” attempt to censor discussions about biological reality in the counseling room.
In my role with Alliance Defending Freedom, I had the privilege of standing before the high court last fall and advocating on behalf of licensed Colorado counselor Kaley Chiles, who challenged the state’s counseling censorship law.
Kaley wants to provide what so many children and families are desperate for: A listening ear and compassionate advice as kids talk through what it feels like to wrestle with their identity and body. As more and more young people across the country are becoming distressed about their gender or sexuality, they want a professional to talk to about their feelings and struggles. The young clients who seek out Kaley for advice do so because they want to grow comfortable with their bodies and avoid harmful drugs and procedures.
<div id="attachment_1073215" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1073215" class="size-large wp-image-1073215" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles14-scaled-1-864x576.jpg" alt="Source: Alliance Defending Freedom" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles14-scaled-1-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles14-scaled-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles14-scaled-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles14-scaled-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles14-scaled-1-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles14-scaled-1-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles14-scaled-1-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Source: Alliance Defending Freedom</div>
Colorado’s law forbids Kaley from having those voluntary conversations with her clients under age 18. Indeed, the law violates her freedom of speech by prohibiting licensed counselors like her from engaging in voluntary counseling conversations with minor clients who want to change some expression, behavior, identity, or feeling associated with their “sexual orientation or gender identity.”
On the issue of gender identity, the law only censors counseling conversations in one direction. It allows conversations that push young people toward a gender identity different from their sex but forbids conversations that help them grow comfortable with their body and realign their identity with their sex when they desire to do that. The law also threatens severe penalties, including thousands of dollars in fines, suspension from practice, and even revocation of the counselor’s license.
This one-sided censorship comes amidst a growing national mental-health crisis and prevents many Colorado children from obtaining the counseling that they desire and that could help them. Roughly 90% of children who experience gender dysphoria before puberty will regain comfort with their sex if not pushed toward harmful drugs and procedures.
In its opinion, the Supreme Court explained, “We do not doubt that the question ‘how best to help minors’ struggling with issues of gender identity or sexual orientation is presently a subject of ‘fierce public debate.’ But Colorado’s law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint.”
“Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety,” the court continued. “Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. It reflects instead a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth. However well-intentioned, any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.”
<div id="attachment_1073217" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1073217" class="size-large wp-image-1073217" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles17-scaled-1-864x576.jpg" alt="Source: Alliance Defending Freedom" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles17-scaled-1-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles17-scaled-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles17-scaled-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles17-scaled-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles17-scaled-1-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles17-scaled-1-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/chiles17-scaled-1-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Source: Alliance Defending Freedom</div>
This is a massive win for free speech, common sense, and families desperate to help their children. The decision will help end the authoritarian days of Colorado inserting itself into the counseling room and silencing good counselors from speaking body-affirming messages their clients want to hear. It also takes us a long way down the road to ensuring that kids in Colorado, and around the country, who desire to embrace and live consistent with their sex are free to seek help by talking to licensed counselors like Kaley.
Significantly, the Supreme Court’s ruling will help protect counselors from similar laws in more than 20 states and over 100 localities across the country, giving them a path forward to help struggling youth seeking professional guidance.
From professional groups to medical malpractice verdicts, the tide is turning on how we as a society help young people struggling with gender issues. Those kids need quality counseling, not a one-way path to dangerous body-altering drugs and surgeries. All children deserve real help affirming that their bodies are not a mistake and that they are wonderfully made. The Supreme Court affirms that the First Amendment protects those messages in the counseling room.
* * *
Jim Campbell is chief legal counsel with <a href="http://www.adflegal.org/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped">Alliance Defending Freedom</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/ADFLegal">@ADFLegal</a>) and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Kaley Chiles in Chiles v. Salazar.

Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Policy Gets Supreme Court Hearing

The Court Just Said The Government Can’t Control What Your Child’s Counselor Says

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Colorado

Conversion Therapy

Counseling

Gender

LGBTQ

Opinion

SCOTUS

The Supreme Court issued one of its most clarifying rulings in years on Tuesday, directly challenging the cancellation efforts of modern progressivism, and the reaction from the progressive Left revealed everything you need to know about who actually believes in freedom and who doesn’t.
In <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/03/supreme-court-sides-with-therapist-in-challenge-to-colorados-ban-on-conversion-therapy/">Chiles v. Salazar</a>, the Court ruled 8-1 that Colorado’s ban on so-called “conversion therapy” — specifically, talk therapy that helps minors explore whether their gender dysphoria might resolve in alignment with their biological sex — violates the First Amendment rights of licensed counselor Kaley Chiles. Justice Gorsuch, writing for the majority, put it <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-539_fd9g.pdf">poetically</a>: laws that “suppress speech based on viewpoint represent an egregious assault” on First Amendment commitments. The ruling wasn’t close. It was a near-unanimous recognition that the government cannot dictate which therapeutic conversations are permissible and which are forbidden based on the ideological conclusion it prefers. Tuesday’s ruling should send a chill down the spine of other states that have taken similar action.
Enter Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY).
<a href="https://x.com/AndyBeshearKY/status/2039018698451677322?s=20">Beshear</a> decried the ruling, saying that “conversion therapy is torture,” and invoked his progressive Christian faith to say that “my faith teaches me that all children are children of God and practices that endanger or harm them are wrong.”
Beshear is welcome to espouse his convictions of faith in public life, including as a sitting governor (even if they depart from biblical teaching). He is not welcome to abuse it in the service of a philosophical position that he and other progressives fail to reason through with consistency.
Here is the question he, along with all other leftists, cannot or refuse to answer: If you affirm a minor’s right to pursue medical intervention — puberty blockers, hormones, surgeries — to align their body with their perceived gender identity, on what principled basis do you deny another minor the right to pursue talk therapy exploring whether their dysphoria might resolve without drastic intervention? Both involve a young person, a clinical professional, and a question about identity. The only difference is the direction of the therapeutic goal. And those goals are set against what progressivism thinks sufficiently aligned with its own aims. Beshear supports state-sponsored medical intervention when the conclusion is sufficiently progressive and lines up with what he bills as compassionate; he abandons the language of compassion when it runs contrary to leftist goals for using the government to advance transgender ideology.
The compassionate appeal to “children of God” is theologically sound as far as it goes — every Christian affirms it. But it proves too much and too little simultaneously. It proves too much because it could be deployed to ban any therapy a state deems harmful. It proves too little because it says nothing about which therapeutic goals are legitimate, which is the actual question before us. That’s an anthropological question, one that liberals do not like to answer because modern progressive anthropology lies on flimsy, irrational grounds, unable to determine what a man or woman even is. What Beshear wants is for his theological sentiments to do the intellectual work that his empty platitudes cannot. But a magistrate charged with upholding the common good owes citizens more than sentiment (Rom. 13:1-7). He owes them a coherent account of what a man and woman are, and which identity claims warrant medical affirmation and which warrant further reflection — and why. He has not given one. He cannot give one, because the moment he tries, the internal contradictions of progressive gender ideology become impossible to ignore.
Consider the logical structure on display in the leftist outcries to Tuesday’s decision:
Progressives opposed the <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-skrmetti/">Skrmetti</a> decision, the Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, on the grounds that the state should not prevent individuals from pursuing medical interventions aligned with their gender identity. The watchword was choice. Bodily autonomy. Access to care.
Now those same leftists cheer when states ban a licensed counselor from having a conversation with a minor who voluntarily seeks to explore whether their dysphoria might be addressed without medical transition. The watchword is now “protection.” Safety. Science.
The contradiction is absurd. When a teenager wants hormones, progressivism demands the state get out of the way. When a teenager wants to talk to a therapist about living in accordance with biological reality, progressivism demands the state intervene. This is the enforcement of ideological conformity through the selective and weaponized deployment of the language of compassion.
Progressivism is not, at root, about expanding choices. It is about ratifying the correct choices — the ones that affirm the progressive account of identity, selfhood, and liberation. Every other choice, including the choice to embrace one’s given sex, is categorized as harm, trauma, or abuse.
Kaley Chiles was not torturing anyone. She was a Christian counselor who believed — correctly, as it happens — that talk therapy aimed at helping a young person live at peace with biological reality is a legitimate therapeutic goal. Eight justices agreed that Colorado (which now has a long track record of punishing people of faith and losing, thanks to Alliance Defending Freedom) had no business shutting her up.
All children are indeed children of God. That is precisely why they deserve honest counsel and the opportunity to hear the truth about their design.
***
Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Managing Editor of WORLD Opinions. He is a Fellow at The Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Someone Ask Andy Beshear A Hard Question

Courts

gender ideology

A pro-life group challenged a Detroit ordinance creating a speech buffer zone around abortion facilities, arguing that the city’s policy violates the First Amendment.
The group Sidewalk Advocates for Life sued Detroit in federal court on Wednesday over an ordinance it passed instituting a 15 foot buffer zone around all abortion facilities where pro-life advocates cannot enter. The ordinance also creates an eight foot floating buffer within 100 feet of an abortion facility for any client.
“The Ordinance, which is enforceable through criminal penalties, violates the Free Speech, Free Exercise, and Freedom of Assembly Clauses of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as the Michigan Constitution,” said the <a href="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63d954d4e4ad424df7819d46/69bb229374c5d96c3dd7e4c6_DE%201-Complaint_SAFL%20v%20City%20of%20Detroit.pdf">lawsuit</a>, which was filed by the Thomas More Society.
Kevin Hammer, a member of Sidewalk Advocates, said that the ordinance bans him from handing out pro-life literature while holding a sign reading “Ask Me About Free Ultrasounds and Pregnancy Tests” outside of the Scotsdale Women’s Center in Detroit, Michigan.
“Our Sidewalk Advocates stand on public sidewalks offering a gentle word and information to women who are willing to receive it—that is what this ordinance criminalizes,” said Lauren Muzyka, the president and CEO of Sidewalk Advocates for Life.
The suit points out that a recent <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/brown-v-city-pittsburgh/">decision</a> from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar ordinance implemented by Pittsburgh. The court said that the buffer zone ordinance was overly burdensome on free speech.
Detroit’s ordinance was passed in 2024 and <a href="https://mcclibraryfunctions.azurewebsites.us/api/ordinanceDownload/10649/1365639/pdf">says</a> that “no person, within a 100-foot radius of any entrance door to a healthcare facility, shall knowingly approach within eight feet of another person for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education or counseling with such other person in the public right-of-way unless such other person consents.”
The suit says that this stipulation substantially burdens speech and does not serve a compelling government interest.
“This ordinance does not protect anyone,” said Thomas More Society head of litigation Peter Breen. “It makes it a crime to stand on a public sidewalk and offer a woman a choice. The government cannot wall off the public square so that women never hear they have alternatives to abortion.”

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