Church Victory At Ninth Circuit – With Jim Garlow: Did you hear what a Californian bureaucrat did with the stroke of a pen to force churches to pay for abortion? Is it possible for good news to come out to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? Tune in to hear Jim Garlow share why it’s important for Christians not to remain silent.

Air Date: 6/2/2020

Guest: Jim Garlow

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.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live and we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy, faith, the culture. We’re taking it from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And we’re having our conversation with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders. Tim Barton is with us, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And my name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach.

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Alright, David, Tim, our friend, Jim Garlow will be with us a little later in the program. But for now, I don’t know if I can say this, if my mouth will work on this. But good news out of the Ninth Circuit. It worked and it’s not the first time, we’ve had multiple good news stories out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that we’ve made fun of for years for being so far Left.

David:

Well, it’s been almost a year now since I’ve been able to say the Ninth Circus, you know, I used to call the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals because it was so crazy out there; is the most overturned Court of Appeals in the nation. On some years, the Supreme Court only takes 80-85 cases and there were years where the court would have 26-29 cases out of the Ninth Circuit and would overturn all of them.

Liberal Justices

And we’re talking with liberal justices in the court, this was back before Kennedy left. I mean, it was so crazy out there that even the Supreme Court regularly took their cases just so they could overturn them because they didn’t want the precedent out there. So, when you look at that it has changed. I mean, Rick, you said, we can’t make fun of the way we had and hard for us to even say that. But we’ve actually seen the Ninth Circuit now come out in favor of Second Amendment decisions.

And by the way, just so everybody knows, the Ninth Circuit is out on the west coast. And there are seven states in the Ninth Circuit, there’s 54 million Americans under their jurisdiction. So, we’re talking all of California and Oregon and Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona.

I mean, all that Western State, that’s under one Circuit Court and that Circuit Court is essentially the supreme court for those seven states. 99% of the federal court decisions will be made by the Circuit Courts, not the US Supreme Court, which again out of 100,000 cases every year, the Supreme Court takes about 85. So, we’re talking, big thanks from the Ninth Circuit when they start upholding the Second Amendment, upholding immigration laws, etc.

Tim:

Well, in the Ninth Circuit too is one that Trump has had the opportunity to put several Judges on that court, which we’ve talked about, the 190, whatever Judges it was that went through the Senate, the federal Judges he was able to appoint and he had several, he was able to appoint to the Ninth Circuit. And I don’t know if they’re still not the majority of what you consider constitutional, conservative kinds of Judges on the Ninth Circuit. But it might be enough that it scared some of them into saying, let’s come back more in a constitutional direction. Because the numbers now are much more even with, you’re more conservative versus more liberal Judges than they used to be.

The Ninth Circuit

David:

Yes. Specifically, on the Ninth Circuit, you have 29 Judges on the Ninth Circuit, that’s a lot of Judges. And what happens is his case comes before him, the computers will pick three random Judges out of the pool and you have a three Judge panel and so three Judge panels are what make the rulings for Circuit Courts. And then if you don’t like that ruling, you can appeal to the entire Circuit Court all, 29 Judges and that’s called En banc.

And so, sometimes all Judges will come back and overturn maybe what the three Judges did. So, you have 29 Judges and when Trump took office, there were 18 Democrat Judges or 18 Judges appointed by Democrat presidents and 7 appointed by Republican presidents, so an 11 votes majority in favor of appointees by Democrat presidents. Right now, it is at a 16/13 margin, 16 appointed by Democrats and 13 by Republicans. So, it has gone from an 11 votes majority to a 3 votes majority. That’s a huge change.

And then as these Judges kind of move off the court, they move into what they call Senior Positions, they become a Senior Level Judge, which means they still issue decisions, but they’re not as active on the day to day stuff. Right now, on the Senior Level at the Ninth Circuit, you have 10 Republican appointees and only 3 Democrat appointees. So, I mean, you’ve seen a huge shift in the Ninth Circuit and they kind of decisions that are coming out of there.

And so recently, we saw the Ninth Circuit issue a decision in favor of one of our friends, Jim Garlow, who I guess, 5 or 6 years ago brought a case against the state of California for forcing their church to pay for abortions and insurance. And so, a decision came down this week from the Ninth Circuit and thought, wow, this would be really good to get Jim on and tell us about what’s happening with this.

Rick:

Yeah, so good news out of the Ninth Circuit, Jim Garlow is going to be with us when we return. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

Many of you out there are under stay-at-home orders by your governor or your local health officials and maybe you’re looking for something to do during this time. One of the most important things you can do as a citizen is to make sure that you know your rights, you know when they’ve been violated and you’re the better prepared to defend and assert them. To do that, you’ve got to study the Constitution and the history behind it.

Constitution Alive!

Constitution Alive with David Barton and Rick Green does exactly that. We take you into the WallBuilders library, we bring all those resources to life. And then we go out to Philadelphia, the Independence Hall and right there in the room where the Constitution and the Declaration were put together, we bring it to life, we relive it and we make sure that we as citizens know what our part is in preserving these freedoms for future generations.

At this time in our nation, it is so important to know the proper role of government and what we as citizens should be doing at this time. If you haven’t done Constitution Alive, check it out at wallbuilders.com. You can get the DVD set there, we’ll get it out in the mail to you as soon as we can. And you can study it at home or you can go to constitutioncoach.com and become a Constitution coach today. We’ve got a free license for you right now where you can sign up as a Constitution host and be the catalyst in your community to bring back these biblical and historical and constitutional values.

And what you do is you sign up as a host and then you get your friends and family together on Zoom. We coach you on how to do it and you’re able to create community and also study the Constitution at the same time. Do this and we will be able to pick up the pieces on the other side of this crisis and rebuild our nation even stronger than it was before. Check it out today at constitutioncoach.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live, thanks for staying with us today. Pastor Jim Garlow back with us. Dr. Garlow, always a pleasure, sir. We really appreciate your time today.

Jim:

Good to be on with you my friend. Thank you.

Welcome Dr. Jim Garlow

Rick:

Hey, I don’t have many friends that have won at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in fact, you might be my first friend to ever win at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. So, we’re excited to have you on today to talk about this. I know it’s been a long battle, but catch us up on what happened with California. It was something to do with, you know, an abortion mandate. And you guys fought back and I think, if I remember right, you fought this pretty much by yourself?

Jim:

That’s right. August the 22nd 2014, from bureaucrats in Sacramento, without any announcement, without any time of hearing., without any legislative action, it wasn’t done by the legislature simply decided that what they had previously allowed as a carve out and was where churches that had healthcare programs for their employees did not have to pay for elective abortions. Suddenly, they reverse that, did not announce it, did not tell in their releases, even their insurance providers simply said we’re expanding basic coverage, didn’t even mention the word, abortion.

An attorney came to me on September 2014, says you’re now paying for abortions, the health care you’re providing for your employees. I was Senior Pastor at the time at Skyline Wesleyan Church, San Diego, I was there for 23 years and I’m no longer there. As of the end of 2018, they have a new pastor now, but the court case continues on. But we immediately decided to file, I testified before Congress a couple of times on this…

Rick:

And this, Jim, if I could interrupt you just for a second, just to clarify. So, I want to repeat something you said. This was not your elected representatives didn’t do this. This wasn’t even a court mandate all of a sudden, this was a bureaucrat, basically with the stroke of a pen that as a result of what they did, was forcing you as a church to pay for abortion.

Planned Parenthood Scheme

Jim:

It was the Department of Managed Health Care. And once we got into the case, and they went into the mode called Discovery, which means when attorneys on both sides get to see all the documents, everything, we discovered that Planned Parenthood came to them and said, look, let’s bypass the legislative, let’s go directly to just administrative. You as a bureaucrat, make it a pronouncement and get this change.

You’ve given a previous exclusion to churches, they don’t have to pay for abortions. Let’s change this now. It all came about because the two Catholic universities, Loyola Marymount and sorry, I can’t remember the second one. And these two Catholic universities, the planned parenthood wanted to make sure that they had to pay for abortion. And so, that’s how it came about. We didn’t know all this once we got to the Discovery stage.

So, once we filed our lawsuit, there were three churches that filed the lawsuit, one particular methodology under the direction of Alliance Defending Freedom, a group of 3,000 Christian attorneys. Skyline Wesleyan Church sued the state of California. I had to testify before Congress, because California was in violation of federal law through what’s called the Coats-Snowe Amendment, the Weldon Amendment, the Hyde Amendment, they were against and the Church Amendment, which stands for Frank church and Senator [inaudible 10:31].

They were in opposition to federal law. The Obama administration let it drag on, did nothing, the Trump administration came and they began to take action. In the meantime, we went for a court hearing, the Judge recused herself. A Judge does not have to tell why he or she recused themselves from the case.

Mysterious Recusals

It went to a second Judge, he recused himself in the first day. It went to a Third judge, that person recused himself in a couple days. It went to a fourth Judge. Now, this is the first time my attorneys and all of his friends experienced, they’ve ever seen how many Judges recuse themselves from. We don’t know, the reason. We don’t know the background.

But then it was in a district court, as a federal court, district level here in San Diego. And the Judge says, well, there’s nothing really I can do about this, church doesn’t have any injury over this. This is really pertained to me, I’m not going to talk about the merits of the case. It was appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which is about 15 or 20 Judges, I can’t remember how many are actually on there. And it was heard by a three Judge appellate court, that was just a week ago, last week.

And they decided in our favor on one issue and that is, yes, you can. Skyline Church has a right, the legal right to standing. You know, we have the legal right to bring this court case. The lower Judge said, they don’t have the right to bring this up. And the Ninth Circuit says, yes, they do, so you’ve got to hear it on the merits of the case.

There was a second issue they didn’t decide on and that was the constitutionality. In other words, the US Constitution is being violated by this mandate out of Sacramento, California. They chose not to decide on that, because there is a case upcoming called Employment Division versus Smith that’s in front of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court is going to make a ruling and that has direct impact on our case.

But they pushed it back to the San Diego District Court, the Judge who dismissed it and said, hey, you don’t have legal standing. The Circuit Court, Ninth Circuit says, yes you do, you have to decide it. During this long journey, the last part between the two has been a year and a half, mind you waiting for a ruling.

But I got dispose, I got taken before attorneys. They went through everything on my computer. I just turn over everything on my computer, everything I ever uttered about abortion. It’s one of those kinds of, just to me, absolute harassment all because they want to force a church to pay for elective abortions.

Hobby Lobby

Rick:

You know, Jim, I got to ask you because you’ve hung in there in this fight and to put up with that kind of stuff is not just an inconvenience, I mean it’s almost like a violation, personal violation. Why for you was this so important that if you were paying for the insurance, you know, because some people don’t get this? I mean, Hobby Lobby has fought this same type of thing.

I mean, Christians all over the country have said, I’m willing to spend money, I’m willing to take fines, whatever it takes. Why is it so important to stand on this particular issue when you’re not actually writing a check to Planned Parenthood or for an abortion, but your money that goes to those premiums then helps pay for abortions? Why did you draw a line in the sand and say, I will not do this?

Jim:

80 years ago, many Christians in Germany were silent and 6 million Jews got gassed. Many Christians are silent over the murder of babies in the womb and 66 million have now been murdered. Thousands had been murdered every single day. I happen to be a father to four adopted children. One of my four adopted children was conceived as a result of rape, not only rape, but gang rape.

So, by the way, she happens to be the wife of a pastor of a church right now. And so, when someone comes to me and he’s flippant about abortion, they have no grasp of the issue that the slaughter, killing, the dismembering of a preborn baby is about as low as you can go. And even those who make the claim, well in case of rape, well, rape is a horrible, horrible thing, but there’s no sense in committing another crime and killing a baby.

And so, if we do not stand up, this onslaught, this murder is going to continue on and it will expand, it’ll eventually be expanded. And more like we see in many countries where it’s expanded to include the infirm, the elderly, people mildly, mentally challenged, etc. dispense with people, no value for human life [crosstalk 15:11] this got to draw a line. Unfortunately, there’s millions of people around the country who do care and are trying to protect human life and I’m just one of those.

Jeremiah Galus

And we’re very grateful for the Alliance Defending Freedom and Jeremiah Galus, these about 3,000 Christian attorneys across America and a number of other Christian organizations like them, they’re just fabulous. We can’t make it without them and we need them in this day in which we live.

Rick:

No, it’s so true, Jim, it really. It’s like it’s a duo that’s necessary. You need an individual that’s, you know, one person in your case, a pastor willing to stand up and stand for truth and then you need that good legal counsel to come alongside you, lock shields and get into this fight and ADF is just fantastic at that and when, you know all over the country all the time and just I love seeing it happen, brother, I love seeing the victory. And I guess now, you know again, prolong fight not over at all. In fact, this will go back and almost in some way, start over. The real trial begins now, right?

Jim:

Yes. And I just did a podcast interviewing Jeremiah Galus, a wonderful attorney and I will send that, a link to you, Rick on this so they can understand the intricacies. If they want to get in the weeds just a little bit more, it’s kind of important for them do that, because this are moment we must stand and drive back this evil force anytime we possibly can.

And by the way, the Planned Parenthood brought this on and conformed. They worked, not only with them, they worked behind the scenes, without the public knowing it, with the HHS on the State of California, worked with the Governor’s office. They were all in cahoots together, engineering this and when they pulled it off.

Once again, just so how receptive they are, when they notified people, everybody said your basic coverage is such and such. They did not use the word, abortion. Back when the attorney called me, September 2014, says you’re paying for abortions through your healthcare for your employees. I said, no, no, it can’t be. Are you sure? I said, well, they would have notified us, no. And so, I went right to the business office, they called our company, our company does an investigation. They said, sure enough, it has happened. No informed information at all to the public.

ADFLegal.org

Rick:

Well, Pastor, we’re going to absolutely get this out there in people’s hands. I would love to have… we’ll make that link available. If you’ll send that to me, we’ll get it on our website today so that it’s at wallbuilderslive.com, people can dive deeper. And then we also want to send people to Adflegal.org today, encourage you to get on their list so you know about their cases and donate and help them to do things just like this with pastors like Jim all over the country. Appreciate you, brother. Man, continue to stand for truth and we’re just glad to be able to come alongside you.

Jim:

A tremendous honor to be on with you, Rick. Thank you so much.

Rick:

That’s pastor Jim Garlow. Stay with us folks, right back with David and Tim Barton.

Hey friends, if you’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live for very long at all, you know how much we respect our veterans and how appreciative we are of the sacrifices they make to make our freedoms possible. One of the ways that we love to honor those veterans is to tell their stories.

Here on WallBuilders Live, once in a while, we get an opportunity to interview veterans that have served on those frontlines, that have made incredible sacrifices, have amazing stories that we want to share with the American people. One of the very special things we get to do is interview World War Two veterans.

You’ve heard those interviews here on WallBuilders Live from folks that were in the Band of Brothers, to folks like Edgar Harrell that survived being Indianapolis. There’s so many other great stories you’ve heard on WallBuilders Live. You have friends and family that also served.

Help Vet’s Share Their Stories

If you have World War Two veterans and your family that you would like to have their story shared here on WallBuilders Live, please email us at [email protected], [email protected], give us a brief summary of the story and we’ll set up an interview. Thanks so much for sharing here on WallBuilders Live.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. And thanks to Pastor Jim Garlow for joining us as well. Back with David and Tim. Alright, guys, good news, but you know, still a big fight to go, right, now they go back to the District Court Level. The argument is still the same, though. How can you make people go against their closely held religious beliefs in this way and actually help fund abortion?

David:

Well, the good news is the fight can go on, because they could have killed this thing right there and said, no, the fight doesn’t go on, it’s ended right here. So, the good news is that the Ninth Circuit is willing to let the fight go ahead.

Tim:

Well, and by saying let the fight go ahead, it’s just recognizing what’s common sense that the Judge, first of all, seems really interesting, the first three Judges recused themselves, which makes you wonder, right, were they donating to Planned Parenthood? But you know, what was going on for them, they had to recuse themselves? We have no idea. So, I’m not trying to impugn somebody, maybe who is honorable, but just it’s interesting.

For the fourth Judge to say you have no standing, that should have been a no brainer saying, wait a second. No, if you’re having to pay for coverage, for abortions, for your staff and faculty at a religious organization where you believe abortion is morally wrong with a violation of biblical standards and commands, right, against your sincerely held religious belief, for that fourth Judge to say you have no standing.

Common Sense Decision

Although we can celebrate what happened to the Ninth Circuit, and we should because this is great news, it wasn’t like they made some really tough, crazy difficult decision. It was just, at least in my mind, you guys can correct me if I’m wrong. To me, it seems they’re just recognizing what should have been common sense from the beginning, is that no, well of course you have legal standing in this.

Because your legal standing is you are being required legally to do something that violates your sincerely held religious belief and you see that as morally wrong and objectionable. That’s all the legal standing you need to say we want to oppose this. I don’t understand how the fourth Judge said they did not have legal standing in this, certainly, good news nights are going to recognize it. Guys, maybe I’m seeing it wrong, but this seems like just such common sense to me.

Rick:

The reason we’re having trouble comprehending is because we’re saying common sense and Ninth Circuit in the same way, that’s why this is difficult.

David:

Yeah, that’s another one of those connections we’ve kind of got used to not using those phrases together. And now, you really have to focus to use common sense and Ninth Circuit in the same sentence. But you know, part of what got me on this was listen, Jim, tell the story. You had a single bureaucrat who created a statewide policy on abortion insurance and in doing so, deliberately did not use the word, abortion in the policy.

Now, it requires them all to pay for abortion insurance, but did not use the word, abortion. And so, you know, that’s got to be one of the most devious, deceitful scheming kind of ways of going at it. But that really shows, alright, it’s not just a swamp in Washington, DC, we got a swamp at every level. And by the way, we’ve seen swamps all the way down to little local town councils.

Tim:

Well, it’s interesting too when he was talking about how the Discovery that was filed is what allowed them to identify that Planned Parenthood is the one who actually went to this individual and said, hey, we need you to make a mandate. Well, Planned Parenthood, the vast majority of what they do is abortions, they provide more abortions than anybody else out there and they say, well, we do a lot besides abortions.

Abortifacients Services

But most of what they talk about, they do a lot besides abortions, is things leading up to or surrounding the abortion. So, it’s largely abortifacients services, “services” being relative is what they provide. And for them to be able to go and say, hey, we need you to require everybody to do abortions. And you’re the one who directly makes a profit off people having abortions, seems like that’s a little conflict of interest in some of this and you’re getting direct profit and benefit.

And this is part of the swamp, dad, even as you’re mentioning, there’s a lot more swamp than just in Washington, DC. When you start looking at some of these States and some of the leaders over the States who first of all shouldn’t have the power to mandate that the State do something that was not done by the legislative body, which law is supposed to come from the legislature.

It’s why we elect them to represent us, to go make laws and pass laws in our State and then our US Congressman do it for the nation, that is the goal of that branch of government, so to speak, of that legislative bodies to make the laws, not to have some unelected bureaucrat that is now mandating law for the entire State and then changing the vernacular to not clarify what it is, so that you have to pay for things that you don’t even know what it is you’re paying for.

And in this case, again, just grateful they were able through Discovery to find out the role that Planned Parenthood is playing in all of this. And this is the same California Planned Parenthood that was exposed through a series of viral videos over the last many years that they were working with organizations that were taking some of the aborted babies, they were selling aborted baby parts.

I mean, you go down the list of all the things that they have really been, kind of exposed doing and participating in some of what was going on. This is a very dark, corrupt, devious, evil operation happening out in California.

If You Want an Abortion, You Pay For It

David:

Well, the other thing that stood out to me was their attitude Because, as Jim pointed out, Planned Parenthood did this because they wanted to make sure Catholic universities were paying for abortions. Now, is interesting to, they targeted Catholic universities. If you go back to what was called the Hyde Amendment in Federal Law and the Mexico City policy Federal Law, those all said, look, we’re not stopping abortions, but we’re saying that not everyone has to pay for them. The government is not going to pay for them.

If you want an abortion, you pay for it. That’s your elective surgery, you choose that. But here you have Planned Parenthood say no, we want everybody to pay for what we do. We want everybody contributing. That is such a coercive viewpoint. I mean, that is not, they claim, oh, there’s freedom of choice. So, why don’t you give people the freedom to choose where they want to put their money? No, no, no, we want Catholic universities to pay for the abortions. It’s not only devious and scheming and wrong, I mean, just the motives behind it are so egregious and so bad and hopefully, Jim is going to win this case as it goes forward. But it’s good news that they’re, at least, getting to move forward with the case.

Rick:

Well, one of the things we want to encourage people to do is visit some of those legal organizations, their websites, in this case, it’s Alliance Defending Freedom that was helping Jim, continuing to help Jim, they do these cases all over the country for free. But it’s possible because of the donations that people like you and me that we make. So, I encourage you to visit their website today, adflegal.org, all the other organizations as well, we have those guests, those attorneys on the program quite often. And so, we want to ask you to be willing to invest in freedom by doing that.

The Importance of Knowing Your Rights

And then you can be part of just knowing your rights, just as a guy like Jim Garlow, a pastor, he has to know his rights to be able to stand up and defend those rights. He perceived that his rights were being violated. So, John Jay said, in order for you to perceive your rights being violated, you got to know what those rights are.

Well, he was first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, he was a signer of the Constitution. And he challenged us he said, every American needs to study the Constitution so they’ll know their rights, perceive when they’ve been violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them. Thankfully, we have pastors like Jim Garlow that have done exactly that.

Church Victory At Ninth Circuit – With Jim Garlow

We challenged pastors out there all across the country take our Constitution Alive course and teach it in your church. You can pick up a copy of it at wallbuilders.com today, it’s called Constitution Alive. Or you can sign up and be a Constitution host right there at constitutioncoach.com.

And if you want to know more about your rights, watch some of those videos at constitutioncoach.com. We’ve got a bunch of videos, just tackling some of the issues of the day and giving you a constitutional perspective on everything, from quarantines to pastors, churches being able to meet and all those different subjects that are hot topics of the day. You can learn right there at constitutioncoach.com. Thanks for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.