Defending Constitutional Rights With Attorney Brad Dacus – On the front lines defending religious freedom, Constitutional rights, and more are Brad Dacus and the team at Pacific Institute. Join us today to hear an amazing overview of the work these patriots are doing!

Air Date: 07/05/2021

Guest: Brad Dacus

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, where we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy, faith, and culture, all of those things that impact our lives, our family, our property, our churches. Everything that’s happening in the culture impacts our lives, but we can impact those things in the culture as well if we’ll take a biblical, constitutional, and historical perspective on those issues, and then do our duty as citizens do our duty as biblical citizens. And that’s why we take that biblical, constitutional, and historical perspective right here on WallBuilders Live every day of the week, and we appreciate you listening.

By the way, you can get more of our programs at our website wallbuilderslive.com. That’s a place where you can go into the archives of the last few weeks and catch up on shows you might have missed, some of those Good News Fridays. All of us need some good news every week, and so our Friday programs are chock full of good news. Thursdays, we typically dive into what we call Foundations of Freedom. We take your questions on everything from the Constitution, the Declaration, the Founding Fathers to public policy issues of today, and how they’re being implemented. So send those questions in, [email protected] is where you send them, and then we tackle as many of those as possible on our Thursday, our Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs.

And then typically, Monday through Wednesday, we have interviews with special guests from around the country. Sometimes it’s attorneys that are on the front lines, arguing a lot of these cases and defending religious liberty. Sometimes it’s congressmen or senators or people that are in the political realm on the front lines, educators, and citizens, pastors, people that are out there, living out their biblical citizenship. So Monday through Wednesday, you can catch those interviews.

Today, we’ve actually got a combination Brad Dacus is a great biblical citizen. But he’s also an attorney that’s out there fighting these battles with Pacific Justice Institute, great friend of the program, and just one of the great patriots out there that is standing in the gap in so many different ways, has cases dealing with all kinds of liberty issues. You can find out more from Pacific Justice Institute at their website. But today, we’re going to catch Tim Barton interviewing Brad Dacus out at the NRB, the National Religious Broadcasters convention. Just a week or so ago, and so glad Tim was able to catch up with Brad and we want to bring that interview to you.

By the way, my name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. He’s the one that’s doing this interview with Brad Dacus. And then David Barton, normally with us, he’s America’s premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders. He’s not going to be with us today, because we’re actually running out there to NRB to get this interview with Brad Dacus. We’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, we’ll dive right into that interview with Brad Dacus. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today.

And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things, like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

Tim:

Okay, welcome back. I’m so excited to have Brad Dacus from Pacific Justice Institute with us. And Pacific Justice Institute, traditionally, we would think California and when you spoke at our legislators conference this last year, you informed me, actually, you’re really all over the US, so you’re not really Pacific anymore, you’re more American justice Institute now. But Brad, thanks so much for being with us, really appreciate having you on.

Brad:

Well, thank you. Yeah, we have actually more offices across the United States Coast to Coast than any other legal organization in the country doing this kind of work. So from Seattle to Miami, from Orange County, California to New York City and many places in between, we have attorneys committed to making sure everyone gets help. And that’s our hallmark of distinction is that we don’t just cherry pick the high profile cases, we make sure that no one is left on the side of the road when it comes to religious freedom, parental rights, the sanctity of human life, and we do our work completely without charge. And we love to serve your audience any way we can.

Tim:

Well, you guys are so incredible. And we’re so grateful to have formed a friendship and kind of a camaraderie teamwork over the years because we so appreciate and respect what you guys do. We wanted to have you on knowing that you’re so involved on the forefront of defending constitutional rights, religious liberty, there’s a lot happening in America right now. There’s a lot of people that are concerned with the direction they’re seeing the Biden ministration go. But we know that President Trump was able to appoint a lot of federal judges and Supreme Court judges.

And so we actually are seeing, maybe at times mixed messages, sometimes some very positive things happening in the courts, so we thought we’d love to get your take. What is your impression from what you’re seeing happen at the US Supreme Court or maybe from courts in general? Do you see religious liberty being threatened more so than it was? Or is there hope now with some different judges? What are your thoughts?

Brad:

It is. It’s a fantastic time to be in America with defending religious freedom. And the reason is because the Supreme Court has become the most pro-religious freedom Supreme Court possibly in our nation’s history at least in my lifetime. During the recent decision that came out of Pennsylvania was city of Philadelphia versus a Catholic Services Center, it was a great decision, it was 9-0 upholding the ability for this Catholic Services Center not to lose their license and continue to carry out their religious beliefs when it comes to adoption, preference, etc. It was a narrow decision, but the majority on the court made it very clear that in order for the government to be able to violate the ministry or faith of an institution like this Catholic Services Agency, they just can’t say, well, it applies to everyone. There’s a higher level of scrutiny. And we’re really pleased to see the court come back to that level of analysis.

Tim:

So one of the things that that certainly from the outside we saw we’ve talked about on the program is it definitely seemed like there was a lot of hypocrisy in the application of the law. When I think Pacific Justice Institute, I instantly think California and you’re helping me not think that way anymore. But California instantly comes to mind. Where you see, right, the misappropriation of justice, so to speak, where you’re having marijuana shops, alcohol stores, right, grocery stores, Walmart, Lowe’s, Home Depot can be opened, but churches can’t. And I know you guys were active voices in that fight in California. So what we saw in Pennsylvania, will that shift maybe some of the application of what’s happening in California?

Brad:

Not directly in terms of the shutdowns of churches. But it’s still a wonderful case in terms of strengthening up the test used by the Supreme Court for defending religious freedom. But let me just talk a little bit about with California West Coast and the church shutdowns. So, Tim this was so outrageous. People thought they would never see this in our lifetime that the government would shut down churches and be criminally prosecuting pastors who decided to worship the Lord with their congregation safely and responsibly.

We have a case right now we’re defending a pastor. He’s been criminally prosecuted, has been going on for about a year because he had an Easter service, a responsible, very safe Easter service. It’s an inner city church in the San Francisco Bay Area. And we’re defending him. It’s a criminal defense case, we’re defending pastors across America, in fact, on criminal defense cases who just want to do public evangelism, public outreach.

Tim:

Brad, can I stop you for a second? You’re saying this pasture is in a criminal defense position because he had an Easter service, and arguably how to responsibly where to the best of his knowledge, right, whether it was social distancing, he’s doing what back then they’re saying follow the science, he was following the science, but California was so hostile toward faith, toward Christianity specifically that he now is in threat of being a criminal just for holding a church service?

Brad:

Exactly. Up to a year behind bars in prison, we’re looking at also some monetary penalties as well. So, of course, we’re representing him without charge, and other pastors who are evangelizing in public places, we’re representing them without charge as well. But they really, we were very strategic in our litigation to empower churches. Here we had Zoom calls every other Thursday, every third Thursday, to this day still empowering churches to overcome challenges that people register on our website pJi.org to participate in.

But we also are involved strategically on the legal side. So we when it came around to Amy Coney Barrett being appointed to Supreme Court, that shifted the court to a 5-4 majority in favor of religious freedom. We then filed a major lawsuit in federal court, our chief counsel Kevin Snyder did a fantastic job. But the federal judge disagreed. He says no churches, they can be shut down, they can be treated differently and discriminated against.

So we appeal to the Ninth Circuit. Ninth Circuit says yeah, governors can do that, they can to have a broad discretion to do those kinds of things against churches. And so then we filed a strategic tactical emergency injunction appeal to the United States Supreme Court. And they’re very, very, very difficult and very rare to be granted by the Supreme Court. Our legal team did such a great job, and God, of course, was behind the whole thing.

In three days after we filed for it, they granted the emergency injunction binding California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Santa Clara County, and it sent ripples across the country. And we’re still building and using this decisive victory to empower, and defend churches. Right now, the governors have the dark blue states, they’re on the run. And they know they’re outgunned, they know we’ve got the backing of the Supreme Court, and we at Pacific Justice Institute are holding and defending churches all across America to reopen private Christian Schools. And that’s a real positive.

Tim:

So Brad, I am always so encouraged when I hear people fighting for the side of what is right and what is true of what is just, biblical principles, obviously, constitutional values in America. But in the midst of us fighting the good fight, you mentioned that, you know, God definitely helped in the midst of this. I feel like our listeners need to understand the level of miracle that actually did take place, that in three days, three days, the Supreme Court responded with this injunction, that is almost unheard of on some level. So there’s no doubt you guys have done an impressive job getting that done. But there’s also no doubt that there’s some God moments in the midst of this, because that kind of stuff doesn’t happen if God’s not a part of it. So, really cool to hear that story.

With that being said, we know that you guys have been doing a lot since some of the shutdown started to really encourage pastors, embolden pastors, you guys are even doing a lot right now to work with pastors. We talked about on the program sometimes how encouraged we are by the fact that even though arguably the majority of the church in America, the majority of pastors in America have not really woken up, they’re not really standing for biblical truth, we’re still seeing more pastor stand up than we’ve seen ever in my lifetime. This is so encouraging for me to see so many pastors stand up.

Again, even though it’s a minority, we get it, still, this is so encouraging. Do you get that same sense as you’re representing some of these pastors in their fights, are you encouraging the level of pastor standing up? And certainly as you’re helping teach and train them to do that, that’s got to be encouraging. But what are your thoughts on that?

Brad:

Yeah, Tim, I’m very encouraged. We have on staff, a full time pastor liaison, Peter Mord. And Peter has been working with pastors across the country to get them to have their voice heard, and it’s called the Church Finds Its Voice campaign. And what we did and what Peter did during this last election, we targeted eight congressional districts that were pivotal districts could go either way in California. In those eight congressional districts., we had over 300 churches for the first time doing voter registration Sundays. We counted and we tabulated, we were able to get 10,454 new voters in those eight pivotal districts. At the time after the election, two of the congressional races were Republican, they stayed Republican. Four of the six flipped as far as the Democrat districts congressional races.

Tim:

Wow. So you helped hold two of the Republican seats, but of the six Democrat seats, four of them flipped to become Republican.

Brad:

Republican. So we it worked. So now we’re doing it again the wonderful Civic Stewardship Sunday. We’ve been able to garner over 500 churches to do voter registration Sunday’s, the Civic Stewardship Sundays, and it’s going to have a real big impact. It’s in California, Nevada, Arizona. But we’re working across the country with people like Chad Conley from Faith Win to really have a big impact on the kingdom in this regard. And it’s really encouraging to see churches realize that they have to stand up for their own survival. The fire is not three hills down it’s on their doorstep. They were shut down. We have pastors being criminally prosecuted. And I think that was a major wake up call for pastors to realize their voice needs to be heard.

Tim:

And this is one of the things that that as we’re looking at, there’s a lot of things in the midst of bad situations that we can be encouraged by, because we are seeing so many people stand up. And in fact, one of the other things that just as last fall in November, we had to come address a group of legislators at our ProFamily Legislative Conference, and you gave them some ideas for model legislation they could do in their states. And one of the areas we’re being encouraged is that we’re seeing a lot of state legislative bodies doing a lot of positive things to protect freedom, protect religious liberty, limit the overreach of tyrannical governors or mayors. And I know you guys are playing an active part in helping even legislators now be active in their states to make a difference. So what are things you’re seeing in that area?

Brad:

Yeah, you know, we have over 50 cases in active litigation across the country. But we know if we go up river, upstream and work with the legislators, we can have even a bigger impact. So, for example, we’ve put together model legislation to protect parental rights, whether it’s to homeschool, or a different medical issues or opting out of public schools for different issues, and that’s been very empowering. And we know a number of states have moved on that.

And then most recently, we have drafted model legislation for states who don’t want to allow males to compete in female sports, they want to protect the opportunity for female athletes to have a fair competition and opportunity. So Ray Hackey, I call him just are tough guy Attorney, if you will, out of Oregon, he’s worked really hard, he’s testified for the Idaho legislature back to a number of states across the country to provide them this model legislation, model support, and we’re seeing real impact and real results. And that’s one reason why we have so many offices across the country. Because well, we’re not just about, like I say, taking on high profile cases on a federal level, we get those. But it’s to make sure that every city council, every school board in America is held accountable, every state legislature is held accountable and has the resources to do what’s right. And basically to make it so that Satan has nowhere to go for vacation in the United States.

Tim:

That’s great. So let me ask a semi-related question. And maybe the last topic if we’re able to have time to really dig into this a little bit. So not only are you guys working to help protect girls, protect women, biological females, to be able to compete against other biological females, right? It’s so ironic to me that the Democrats couldn’t be the party of science, and they deny some of the most basic fundamental levels of science. But even in the midst of this, as you are protecting women in sports, whether it’s high school or college, one of the things now we’re seeing a lot of is there’s a lot of colleges now that are saying we’re going to require a vaccine or you can’t come or you have to wear masks. And I know you guys are getting those questions. We’re getting those questions.

What is your advice? What suggestions would you have maybe for students who are listening or parents who have students that are dealing with a scenario? So let’s start with college, and maybe that there’s bigger application we could talk about from the workplace or whatever else, but certainly college students that just we know the science, it would seem to indicate that college kids are not in a vulnerable stage of the COVID-19 virus, right. Unless they have underlying conditions, they’re young, they’re healthy, it doesn’t really affect them. These colleges are not following the science. But what do parents do?

Brad:

Yeah, we have actually a great resource, I’m going to say right up front, that everyone listening is to probably take advantage of, if they have concerns about the vaccine mandate, whether it’s in the employment area, whether it’s in the public schools, whether it’s just as a consumer wanting to go on an airplane flight. It is dealing with the vaccine mandate. Then go straight to our website pJi.org and download it under Resources, and just look for vaccine mandate, your defense, and that’ll be a very, very helpful. Our attorney spent a lot of time on this. It’s free. It’s without charge. In a nutshell, though, let me just say that parents and people do have rights, for example, the kids in college, the university says, oh, we’re going to require this vaccine.

Well, first off, it’s a public university, they cannot require it unless it’s no longer an emergency vaccine. And so that’s really important. And let’s say that they that it does get approved by the FDA, we think the FDA is going to prove it probably in August, usually, it takes three to five years, for political reasons, they’re going to be proving it early, even over 4,000 people have already died from this vaccine. So from this very safe vaccine, over 4,000 people have died.

Tim:

Not to mention now that the heart conditions that are being found in the young males that take it.

Brad:

Yeah, over 800 young males have had inflamed hearts, a serious condition who’ve taken the vaccine.

Tim:

Sure, or the miscarriages from females or how it’s affecting, right.

Brad:

There’s so many issues for the young people. So the good news is that in terms of the universities go, even if it’s approved by the FDA, there are still defenses in terms of medical concerns as well as religious objection. And we talk about that in this resource. And then as far as private universities and colleges, they have a lot of freedom, they can say we’re requiring this. But make no mistake if they require this vaccine, and a lot of private Christian colleges are not, they’re very level headed, but if they do, it’s a mistake, because there’s a potential liability.

If a student has a reaction to this, and this has been required for students’ admissions or students to continue out of university, that university can potentially be sued. That same principle goes along with private employers. You know, you’ve got the same defense with the American with Disabilities Act, someone has a mental psychological issue, to keep them from having it may be linked to their faith and faith reasons. Or whatever, they’re medical or religious, if they’re required to have the vaccine anyway, that private employer is potentially liable for any harm or damage that happens to that employee.

The government, right now they can’t do it, they can’t mandate it, because it’s an emergency vaccine. But if they do after the FDA approves it, once again, there are still those defenses with regards to religion or medical condition. And so there’s a lot of empowerment. And even for consumers, there’s potential empowerment for people, for example, have medical conditions. And we talk in this wonderful resource on how to implement these rights. There’s a right way to do it. And we at Pacific Justice Institute are here to serve and represent anyone without charge, but they need to get their resource to make sure they do it correctly so they will have a case if they still have problems.

Tim:

And one of the things we talked about for a long time on this program is that people need to understand their rights, know what the Constitution says, and so we appreciate where there’s organizations like you that are helping people know, here’s what the law says, here’s what your rights are, as a citizen, as a Christian, maybe what you should think and even what the Constitution says you can do.

And on this program, we’ve been a proponent for a long time of the freedom of choice, the freedom of conscience, where we said, look, if somebody wants to wear a mask, well, you should have the freedom to choose that. But when the government mandates, how you live your life, or what you’re putting in your body in the vaccine, that’s a different category, because you no longer have the freedom of choice. And this goes back to this notion, the First Amendment, the freedom of religion, the freedom of choice, the freedom of conscience, very clear from the Founding Fathers. And so we’re so grateful to have teams like you that are helping fight to defend some of these freedoms, and really help educate us as well. So Brad, thank you so much for being with us. We really appreciate it.

Brad:

Oh, thank you. It’s great to be on the program. And if people want to keep up with our cases, they can sign up to get our legal insider newsletter at pji.org. And it’s a blessing to work with you and to serve the listeners of this program. Thank you.

Tim:

Wonderful. Okay, so everybody heard it, pgi.org, go there, check it out, so much good information. We’ll be back in just a minute with David Barton and Rick Green.

Rick:

Alright, folks, that was Tim Barton, interviewing Brad Dacus is at the National Religious Broadcasters convention, a great opportunity, by the way, both to catch up with guys like Brad, find out what’s going on with their cases, but also just a meet and greet, to get to know a lot of these broadcasters, from across the nation, folks that have radio programs, TV programs, that are bringing good news to you, and then the folks that are producing the content, whether it’s the movies or the television shows that are glorifying God, that are bringing godly principles back into those arenas. So in NRB’s a wonderful opportunity and a great, great chance to meet a lot of the people that are out there on the front lines of the culture wars.

Now you can be a part of the solution as well. You can go to our website today at wallbuilders.com, get the Biblical Citizenship in Modern America DVDs and workbooks. You can be signed up as a coach and you can actually share this with your friends and family, bring them over and host a class right there in your living room, maybe at your church.

We’ve got 8,000 constitution coaches now across the country that are doing this. It’s a phenomenal growth and a phenomenal awakening, I guess is the right way to say it, because so many people that never paid attention to this stuff. You know, you may be one of those people. You may be listening today going, you know, I would have listened to a WallBuilders Live program a year ago, I would have taken a Constitution class a year ago. But there’s been a wakeup call in America. People are starting to say what is the proper role of government? How should I be involved in these things? What are the things I can do to help preserve freedom for my kids and grandkids? I’m watching them being taken away and I realized that I’ve got a responsibility that this is happening on my watch.

So millions of people are saying that to themselves, and thousands of them are actually taking action. And part of that action is actually studying the founding documents and getting your friends and family to do the same thing. If you want to preserve religious liberty, if you want to keep churches from being shut down in the future, if you want to preserve constitutional rights, if you want to stop the leftism that is taking over, the Marxism that has taken over in our country, this poison that is starting to permeate the culture, if you want to stop that, there are things you can do to be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles right there in your community. So we’re challenging you to get in involved.

One of the best ways to get involved is go to wallbuilders.com today, and get you a set of those Biblical Citizenship DVDs. It’s an eight week course. We’ve got Kirk Cameron in there, Mat Staver, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Pastor Rob McCoy, Pastor Jack Hibbs, all kinds of folks helping us to teach a biblical worldview of citizenship. In other words, what does the Bible say about my job, my responsibility to my family, to my neighbors, to my country, and how do I live that out? That’s what this eight week course is all about. It is so encouraging.

I’m telling you, we have so many people that call and write an email and let us know. I’m telling you, after that class, I felt for the first time hope for the future, peace in knowing that the system works. But I’ve got to work the system peace and knowing that God’s in charge, peace in knowing that his principles work. There’s just so much encouragement found in these courses. So make sure that you check that out today. Again, wallbuilders.com, it’s called Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, you can get the DVDs, you can get the workbook and you can start studying these things in your home as well.

I really appreciate you listening today. Thanks to Brad Dacus for giving us some time out at the National Religious Broadcasters convention, and Tim, being able to catch him for that interview. I hope that you have an absolutely wonderful, wonderful week. Don’t forget, we’re celebrating our independence. It’s not just July 4th. It’s not just a date to have a barbecue. It’s a day to remember our independence, to remember what our nation was founded upon, and to make sure that we’re preserving that for future generations. God bless you and have a great day. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.