Tag Archives: Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

A Victory For The First Amendment

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On Monday,  The Alliance Defending Freedom posted an article about a recent lawsuit brought by a North Carolina high school student who was defending her First Amendment right to free speech.

The article reports:

To settle a lawsuit brought by a North Carolina high school student and her parents after school officials censored the student and repeatedly violated her constitutional rights, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education agreed to adopt a new student speech policy, exonerate the student, and pay $95,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represent the Ardrey Kell High School junior, who seeks to share her Christian faith and values with others at school. After the assassination of free speech advocate Charlie Kirk last year, she felt inspired to use her voice to commemorate Kirk’s strong public defense of Christianity. She received permission from the school to paint a message on the school’s “spirit rock”—a large boulder on school grounds frequently used for the expression of various messages—in support of Kirk’s Christian message. Within hours, however, school officials ordered her message to be censored and then engaged in public efforts to humiliate her and the friends who helped her, prompting the lawsuit, G.S. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.

…The student had seen other messages on the rock—ranging from support of National Football League teams to Black Lives Matter—so last September, after receiving permission from school officials, the student, her parents, and two fellow students painted it with the words “Freedom 1776” and “Live Like Kirk—John 11:25.” Within hours, the student learned from social media that officials ordered the “Live Like Kirk—John 11:25” portion to be painted over.

The next day, school officials sent out a schoolwide e-mail accusing her of “vandalism” and said that law enforcement was conducting an investigation; the statement aired on a local news station as well. The day after that, officials called the student out of class to write an official statement describing her actions and forced her to show them her phone logs. School officials never obtained permission from parents to go through her phone, nor did they inform the students or parents about their constitutional right to remain silent and contact an attorney during a criminal investigation.

I hope she received enoughs of the settlement to make a serious addition to her college fund!

Training the FBI To Work Against Religious Americans

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about groups targeted as terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The unfortunate part of the story is that the FBI is getting its information on exactly who is a terrorist from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), long known to be a very left-leaning organization.

The article reports:

The FBI trained personnel on countering extremism with material from the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), according to former special agent turned whistleblower Steve Friend.

In an interview with the Tennessee Informer last month, Friend recalled his experience at the FBI Academy in 2014: “We were shown a video that was produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center.” The film, Friend said, “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists.”

“I don’t know if they still show that,” Friend added, “but that’s what we were shown.”

The FBI still relies on SPLC material a decade later, leading a pair of top Republican senators to demand the agency sever ties with the leftist hate group that routinely smears right-of-center associations as “hate groups.” SPLC’s false “hate group” designations led to a domestic terrorist attack in 2012 on the offices of a pro-family organization.

The article concludes:

The SPLC also lists the first Amendment legal non-profit, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) as a “designated hate group.” ADF has won cases at the Supreme Court 15 times, setting significant precedents in favor of Americans’ constitutional rights.

Friend was asked on the Tennessee Informer whether students at the FBI Academy pushed back at the use of a leftist hate group to train agents that pro-lifers are a worse threat than Islamic terrorists.

“There was some eye rolling,” Friend said, because his peers at the time were a group that “leans more conservative, more libertarian. “It’s probably very different now,” Friend added.

“When you’re at the Academy for the FBI, a lot of people are a little bit older,” Friend said. “Now the FBI is actually recruiting young people so they can indoctrinate them further.”

I don’t think our Founding Fathers ever considered that people who stood up for the unborn would be considered a greater threat to our Republic than Islamic terrorists.

 

Protecting The First Amendment

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The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The amendment was put in place to protect free speech and to prevent the government from forming a national church such as the Church of England. It was to protect Americans’ right to worship freely. Separation of church and state appeared in a letter from Thomas Jefferson after the Constitution was adopted and was not part of the Constitution.

On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article about a recent court case involving religious universities.

The article reports:

An Oregon federal district court ruled Thursday that students are allowed to use federal aid to attend religious universities that operate according to their religious beliefs.

The case Hunter v. the U.S. Department of Education (DOED) was initially filed in March 2021 after 40 LGBTQ former and current students, who had applied to multiple religious schools, sought to amend Title IX’s provision allowing religious universities to discriminate based on sex, sexual orientation or gender identity and receive federal funding, according to the opinion. A judge ruled late Thursday to dismiss the case, effectively upholding the right of religious schools to practice their faith and obtain federal funding.

In the opinion, Judge Ann Aiken stated in the opinion that Congress had allowed for a limited exemption for religious institutions if they can prove that it is a religious organization that operates under “religious tenets.” She further explained that after reviewing the claims presented, the plaintiff’s case did not have standing based on the merits.

The article concludes:

During the lawsuit, a judge allowed three Christian colleges, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), to join as co-defendants and argue the necessity of Title IX’s religious exemption, according to an ADF press release.  Ryan Tucker, ADF senior counsel, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he was “very grateful” for the court’s decision.

“The government shouldn’t strip students of their financial aid just because they attend a school with widely held religious beliefs, and this case impacts everybody,” Tucker stated. “People of every faith would have to fall in line with government orthodoxy or suffer severe penalties according to the plaintiffs and what they were seeking, so the short version is religious students deserve the same access to financial aid as every other student.”

The DOED and attorneys for Hunter did not respond to DCNF’s request for comment.

Unfortunately, government money always comes with strings attached.