We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Kashinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and to the premium
version of our website as well. I'm happy to be joined today by Jeremy
Todesco. He is a senior counsel and senior vice president of corporate engagement over
at Alliance Defending Freedom. Jeremy, thanks for joining the program. Thanks for
having me on. Yeah, I'm really curious about all the work you're doing
with the Viewpoint Diversity Score Initiative and all kinds of other stuff related to DEI
and ESG that is looming really large over our conversation about American culture and politics
right now, and no small part thanks to that wonderful testimony from Claudine Gay
and Liz McGill and everyone who couldn't answer some basic questions in front of Congress.
But I want to start Jeremy first by asking you what in your career
led you to ADF. Just some background, professional background, personal background,
whatever, you want to tell us about how you ended up doing this work
at ADF, that would be awesome. Yeah, I've actually been That's great.
I appreciate that. I've been at ADF for twenty years almost so May
is my twentieth year, and so I started here out of law school.
It was the only kind of job I ever wanted to have was defending free
speech and religious freedom. I went to law school to do that, and
I told my wife, if I don't get a job at a law firm
that does that kind of work, I probably won't even use my law degree.
And God was good enough to open up the doors to ADF, and
I've stayed here. It's been an awesome career. I a litigated for years
and years and years, and now I do a lot of work in the
corporate space, paying much of what I learned being a First Amendment litigator and
defending First Amendment freedoms and religious freedom and trying to apply it to the business
sector and help the business community understand why it's important for them to contribute to
a culture that respects free speech and religious freedom. You know, I actually
just want to stay on that point briefly, because ADF the work that ADF
has done has principles, have never changed the nature of the fight. I've
talked with Christen Wagner about this before. Over the years has evolved in ways
some people predicted and saw coming because they were in the coal mine and heard
the canary, but others sort of didn't understand how quickly some of this was
metastasizing and how quickly it would start to dominate our culture. And Jeremy,
maybe you can just speak to that a little bit, how you have seen
from this kind of front row seat to the culture war. Really the nature
of these conversations about religious liberty and free speech and the combination of religious liberty
and free speech that has shifted a mind just in the course of your time
at ADF. Yeah, it's so true. I just go back and look
at the course of my work. When I started at ADF, the main
thing I was doing for several years, many years was filing cases on behalf
of little Bible clubs at public schools and trying to get an equal access and
just saying, look, these Bible clubs have an equal right to be and
exist on campus with the chess club or something like that, and those are
really important cases. It's critical to be able to have the freedom to express
your beliefs as a public school student on campus. But it was Bible Club
pases, it was equal access. Now you know where I'm sitting the chair
I'm in at ADF. I'm trying to figure out how do we solve this
massive problem of social media censorship and d banking and the way in which the
government is actually co opting these private businesses to damage free speech and put their
thumb down and you know the marketplace of ideas, out views, they don't
like, silence them and punish them through these private corporations. So you know
where I've gone, And your directory of my career I think kind of shows
the scope and seriousness of the issues. I was deadly serious about doing the
Bible Club litigation I did years ago, and that was really important work.
But now at the scale has just has just really blown off the charts.
And can I ask, I mean, did you see that coming? I
imagine you never dismissed concerns, but things have happened really, really quickly,
and maybe because you were so up close to these battles you did see it
coming. But did you ever think that you know, from point A to
point B in your career, the change would be so dramatic. I don't
think so. No, we certainly. I mean, I think one of
the great things about being at ADF is that we are very forward thinking,
We're strategic, and so we definitely had our finger on the pulse of a
lot of things. We knew where some of the conversations were going. We
were combating gender identity ideology years before it became cool to do, so,
you know, we were twenty eleven, twenty twelve, we were some of
the first ones out trying to stop the Obama administration from changing what sex mean
meant in Title nine to include gender identity so that, you know, boys
could could participate in female sports or be in female locker rooms at schools.
We were kind of alone for the most part of that issue for several years.
And now there's just great and you know, very encouraging groundswell of you
know, just mainstream American people saying enough's enough on the way in which we're
treating women and girls. So, you know, I think we saw it
coming. I don't think we really anybody could really appreciate the magnitude of what
we would be up against in the way in which folks who are you know,
oppose these ideas and oppose these freedoms. The kind of tactics and strategies
they would use are very sophisticated, like the you know, just the taking
over the financial industry to force essentially force these private companies, publicly traded companies
to do their bidding when it comes to censorship and DEI and all these other
issues. Private companies are you know, largely a tool in the hands of
the left. Of course that's changing, but you know that was that was
one of the tactics they did that I don't think anybody really saw coming.
Yeah, and you know, I want to talk about the Viewpoint Diversity Score
initiative that you guys work on at ADF, And I know that's a huge
part of what you do because we teased this in the beginning of the conversation
that who's coming out of Harvard, Well, they're going to DEI positions or
DEI responsive positions. Basically every position at a place like you know, JP
Morgan is a DEI responsive position because everyone sort of has to agree to these
ideological litmus tests in order to do their work. At some of these major
corporations, which ends up touching millions and millions of people's daily lives around the
country through the consolidation of these ideological litmus tests that you know, are implemented
by the people who go to Harvard Graduate, you know, study under the
Claudine gaze of the world, and then end up running some of these major
corporations and overseeing again the lives of millions of people who work for these major
corporations. So Jeremy, first, maybe could you tell us a little bit
about the Viewpoint Diversity Score that you guys do it ADF, you know,
is what does it measure? How long has it been around all of that,
Yeah, and launched in twenty twenty two. It's a it's an index
that measures corporate respect for free speech and religious freedom. It's got forty two
performance metrics that we study, so it's broadest objective. It looks internally and
externally. How do you treat your workforce, how do you treat your customers
and vendors, How do you engage in the public square when it comes to
free speech and religious freedom. We are scoring right now. We score seventy
five companies and we're focused on finance and tech space, because from our perspective,
that's where the concentration of power is having a seriously detrimental impact on free
speech and religious freedom. You know, very far. You know, social
media companies, there's just a handful of companies that control the digital public square,
and they are all left leaning companies that have terrible policies that you know,
clearly imperil free speech. Have been used many times, not just by
themselves but by government actors to to shut down speech. And so, you
know, we're really concerned that the so called private sector, I mean,
this whole private public distinction anymore is hard to tolerate. That's there's there's a
lot of gray between a truly private company that just some person owns or some
handful of people owns, and then the government publicly traded companies, you know,
are in many ways heavily regulated and influenced by government actors and other external
activists, and so, you know, I don't think there's a really clean
private public distinction we can make and a lot of these as segments any longer,
and that's something we have to reckon with with as people who care about
free speech and religious freedom rights. We successfully defend those rights against the government.
Our record eighty percent win rate with the cases we file when we're living
against the government. But now private actors, or at least publicly traded companies
are the ones that are engaging in the censorship by design, because the Left,
what they're trying to do is bypass our civil liberties by going straight to
the companies and telling them adopt our social agenda and silence people who disagree with
it and so an adopt dei and push employees out who won't bend the need
of that philosophy and ideology. So, you know, this is something that
we have to deal with because the left and progressive activists have intentionally gone to
the private sector to force their agenda on the American public and really on the
world. And we have to be there combat at that. And so how
do you go about kind of measuring how different corporations stack up on these questions?
Yeah, well we look at their mainly, our index looks at their
policies. We've not concerned so much about what exactly have you done? Have
you enforced your paul We don't like it when they obviously enforce their policies in
a way that cuts the you know, account off of somebody. But it's
a policy problem from our perspective, and so we're looking at how do you
know, treat your customers from the standpoint of their access to services. We
require viewpoint neutral, you know, provisions in terms of use. The biggest
problem in both the financial and tech sector is that they have these very very
broad and vague terms of use. They use things like hate, hate speech,
and tolerance, misinformation, you know, you name it, reputational risk.
In the financial industry especially, these are you know, you could do
anything you want, You could discriminate against any viewpoint you want with terms like
that, because those terms don't mean any accept in the mind of the person
who's enforcing them. Is this offensive to somebody? Is it offensive to me?
If it is, well, then I think it's hateful and tolerant.
So those kind of policies we're worried about from the standpoint of how corporations treat
their customers. But we're also looking at, you know, do you respect
the viewpoint diversity amongst your workforce? Do you respect religious freedom in your workforce?
Do you have policies that don't just give that lip service but really provide
true protections for your workforce when it comes to those things, because people shouldn't
have to worry that they're going to lose their job or not get a promotion
because of their religious or political views. And I think a lot of people
are in that position in many corporations in America today. Yeah, I could
not agree more with that. I mean, it's I can't actually imagine working
for one of these corporations that's constantly pushing this stuff and just having to either
shut up or agree in some cases just to do your job. Jeremy,
could you describe a little bit and maybe you have specific examples, but a
little bit about how these companies kind of implement some of these agendas broadly,
you know, is it when you're doing your HR training? Is it in
meetings? So what does this sort of look like tangibly in the workplace.
Well, I think I don't we haven't studied that closely. What you see
from the outside looking in is that you know, over the last five ten
years, there have been a ton of diversity departments, d E and I
departments that have been you know, you know, just kind of created a
new to I guess bring all these these students who are learning DEI at college,
bring them to the workforce and give them something to do. HR departments
clearly are driving a lot of the d E and I and other toxic workforce
practices and training and programs, and so you know that those those seem to
be the focal points. But it's really kind of organization wide. We when
we study these companies, we see, you know, what we think are
aspects of kind of diversity, equity and equity and inclusion thinking and other kinds
of you know, uh CRT kinds of thinking across a lot of different policy
areas, and so it's it's embedded in a lot of ways right now.
However, I think that's also changing. You know, we've seen a lot
of news reports lately that company is starting to cut some people from their DEI
departments. They're starting to pull back from having departments at all. And these
are all positive things. That shows that DEI and those kinds of ideas are
starting to lose their credibility, I think, both in the business context but
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Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, it's a good point.
And what issues does this tend to touch because a lot of people remember in
twenty twenty, you know, their corporations were intentionally and there's reporting to this
effect that twenty twenty sort of shook corporate America in a couple of different ways.
One of those ways was, oh, wow, we have a bunch
of you know, normal seeming political radicals in our workplaces. But b we
need to hire DEI people. We need to do X Y and G,
x Y and Z and the e SG, the DEI diversity, equity,
inclusion, equity, social governance, there's all kinds of they clearly are are
trying to touch everything from transiteology to equity and racial ideology. Could you talk
to us a little bit about the spectrum of issues that often fall under these
umbrellas in corporate workplaces. Well, I think the most important framework, I
think is for people to understand is that ESG especially is essentially the progressive political
agenda packaged for corporate America. So anything you and it's very malleable, but
it's also very broad. And so es G is environmental social governance. Well,
environment is all the climate change stuff, all the false fossil fuel stuff,
the climate one hundred action, you know, the coalitions of banks and
insurance companies that have committed to you know, you know, decarbonizing the the
uh, you know the atmosphere, you know under the S. It's it's
d E and I. It's you know, whole host of all every social
issue you can think of. One of my friends likes to shorthand it by
the E is how we live and the S is what we believe. And
I think it really is that broad. The left's agenda, through ESG and
DEI is to touch every aspect of how we live and what we believe.
By weaponizing corporate America, to push their values in the culture and ultimately to
move that over to the windows so that we can't access business services or you
know, express our views on social media companies if we don't hold the views
that you know, these corporate elites think are acceptable. So I think it's
it's that big of a risk, and it's that big of an issue that
we're facing. You know, if you want to go down to brass tacks,
it's Disney, you know, deciding that they were going to push really
hard against the parental rights and education build down in Florida a year a year
and a half ago or so and utterly taking it on the chin because they
got over their skis and aggravated a lot of their shareholders, a lot of
their customers. Their workforce was even writing open letters saying, we don't feel
safe here as conservatives and religious people who are outside of you know, this
woke ideology because if we think if we if we get found out, we're
going to be pushed out, and so you know, there's it's you never
know exactly what DEI and THEESG are going to force, you know, these
companies to do, but all these political issues around the table, you want
to look at one interesting issue, the Human Rights Campaign does the Corporate Equality
Index, which is the LGBT kind of rating system. Is that the one
that's isn't that partially funded by Pfizer, don't they say on their website something
like I'll have to look at it up while you're talking. But they do
have it. One of their index is actually sponsored by Pfizer. I did
just know that, and maybe that is one of them, so that'd be
interesting to know. Well, But so the CEI this year to get one
hundred percent on that index, which all of these big companies really want that
hundred percent from Human Rights Campaign, you have to cover puberty blockers for miners
in your insurance programs for your employees. So what the CEI is telling companies
is you have to take a very controversial position on one of the biggest flash
points in the country. Maaly that if you look at the polling on providing
puberty blockers to youth, to minors, it's all whether it's Democrats, Independence
and Republicans, it's like sixty seventy percent are against that. So they're driving
these corporations just like they did with bud Light, just like they did with
target into brand destroying decisions all to advance their agenda. And I think that's
one thing I want to say about our Viewpoint Diversity Score project. In our
index, we're actually not trying to turn the companies into advocates for our points
of view on these issues. We went out of these issues. We want
to respect the fact that they've got a broad diversity of views represented in their
workforces and their shareholder community, in the broader community, and they ought to
take a pass on engaging directly on these social issues because they're just going to
make someone angry or aggravated, and it's not worth it from a business perspective
to do that. They're engaging on things that are just not germane to their
business at all. So hopefully we can get to a place. I think
there's been a lot of ground gained in convincing companies that it's not in their
best interest to just do everything that the HRC or the left wants of them
to do when it comes to how they engage on some of the political issues
of the day. We've got a lot more work to do, but we've
certainly seen things going in the right direction on that front. Okay, Yeah,
so I should correct for myself. I've just looked it up. HRC's
Healthcare Equality Index is sponsored by FISA and literally by pharma as well, which
is perfect in so many ways. But Pfizer in general is one of their
top corporate sponsors, so certainly is behind some of the funding of their work.
More broadly, and actually, Jemy, that's what's so interesting. I
don't know if you can speak to this, but I imagine you've had conversations
with people who are working in the corporate world in the last couple of years,
and it seems to me, like Bill Ackman recently saying openly he kind
of is openly pleading ignorance, not to exactly how rotten to its core DEI
is that it's not something that started with, you know, just the best
of intentions that if you look at those or of founding documents of these movements,
if you look at their charter statements, it's clearly promoting you know,
with equity, open racism, or sexism with DEI. Is there more understanding?
Is there greater understanding in the corporate world now of how these innocuous sounding
policies that may have at one point seemed good for business, as Mark Cuban
is in said sting, are actually, you know, really insidious things to
be pushing on their employees. I think there's no question that these corporations are
waking up to the fact that THEI is probably not good for them. And
I don't know how many of them are starting to question the concept in its
in the underlying ideology so much as they don't want to take they don't want
the pain that comes from publicly, you know, people publicly it being publicly
revealed that they are in the can for D and I and all these other
things. You know. I want to believe that we can convince them that
this is actually a bankrupt moral philosophy that's destructive to your business and to civilization
rather, you know, and I think some people are open to that.
I think some people are seeing that, but I think there's just a lot
of negative consequences, legal, political, public relations that have made them step
back from it. It might not be for the right reasons all the time,
but it's good to see the fact that we're moving in the right trajectory.
I think when it comes to D E and I, do you think
the bud light dust up during Pride Month and also the Dodgers, you know,
the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and all of the genuinely bad pr If you're
a pr person at either of those places you weren't happy with how June took
it turned out for you? Was that? Did it feel like a turning
point to you? Has it looked like a turning point now that it's almost
at least six months in the rear view mirror, Did any of those in
particulars seem to change the industry's outlook? I think that those have built upon
what was already started by Disney about a year before on the Parental Rights and
Education Bill in Florida, and so I think that I don't want to call
them a turning point, but I think they were additional wake up calls.
I think the question of the corporations are asking themselves, and I think the
answer is becoming clear. Is is this kind of center right pushback something that
is just going to fizzle out and it's just going to be some moment in
time that we'll remember but it's not sustained. Or is this a sustained problem
that we're going to have to deal with the fact that these people are unhappy
with how were behaving running our businesses, the positions we're taking on political issues,
the way we're treating employees and customers, and we're going to have to
change our behavior because that's half of our customer base, or it's going to
impairl our ability to get good employees. So I do think that the fact
that these are ultimately business people and they're starting to understand that this isn't like
some momentary dust up. This is a sustained problem for them that they're going
to have to deal with. They have to change their behavior and their policy
to build back trust with people who are very skeptical of their motivations and actions
right now. And that's another thing I wanted to ask you about because DEI
is sort of the fruit of the rotten fruit of the poison tree. It's
growing off of something in our culture that again ADF has been working on for
years. I mean, at the heart of these issues is the same sort
of toxic moral relativism and corruption of sort of the founding principles that you know
even at the beginning of your career. I'm sure it's what you were working
on. Is at the heart of all of this, it's just grown in
wild directions and destructive directions on as you said earlier, on a much bigger
scale. And that I mean, it seems to me that even you know,
twenty years ago, thirty years ago, the germ of this was there.
Because it's almost we just we no longer share consensus values or consensus interpretations
of what speech means, of what the Founding Principles were. And that's kind
of a huge topic, Jeremy, But I'm wondering if you have thoughts on
that, if even if we roll back the tide of DEI, there are
a whole lot of people in this country that don't agree that the Founding Principles
were essentially good, that don't agree that free speech in principle as we understood
it, you know twenty years ago is good. And you know, dealing
with DEI is at the heart of the issue. You're really also dealing with
that mentality, that ideology that is prolific now in the country. Yeah,
it is prolific. I think you're right about that, and I think that
we are going to reap the whirlwind for for many years now of the education
that we've permitted many of our major institutions and even our public schools to provide
to the next generation. I think, you know, we're going to have
a problem with that consensus you're talking about because because D. E and I
and this this, this, this you know, disgusted with Western civilization and
our form of government and outlook on civil liberties is something that has been taught
and ingrained in a generation. And I think it's worse than that. You
look at D. E and I, it's incredibly toxic. You know.
It teaches people that there are you can basically categorize people and to oppressed or
oppressor based on their personal characteristics, things they can't change about themselves, and
that the people who are in the oppressed category are really excused from anything that
they do to push back against the oppressors. And so you know, even
up to including violence. That's where you get this whole idea that you know,
violence is an appropriate response to pieces to speech you don't like. And
you also get the idea that speech is violence if if if they're speaking against
somebody in the oppressed class. So you know, at the root of it,
I think we've allowed a worldview to be taught to millions of folks within
the upcoming generation, and we are going to have to deal with that.
We're going to have to reckon with that. We're going to have to,
I think, be more vigilant than we ever have been in protecting our religious
freedom, our free speech rights, our form of government, in explaining to
people and holding the line on why our approach to the free market and civil
liberties is the best approach man has ever come up with. And I think
educational reform is necessary, but the first thing that has to happen is dismantling
DEI in all these institutions, because as long as we continue to teach it
to all these kids and build our workforces around the ideas of THEE and I,
you're going to be reinforcing these concepts every day in people's lives, and
that's going to lead to, I think, ultimately very destructive problems for our
society. In the spirit of disclosure, I always say, I'm like,
I am a big fan of ADF's work. I think you guys are doing
so much important stuff, and I always honor to speak or attend to your
events. And one thing I saw once I think this must have been around
the time you were launching this initiative was maybe steps that or how people who
might be at organizations, corporate organizations, big companies, are there steps they
can take Jeremy to maybe get in contact with you all to bring your attention
to different problems in their own workplaces. What should people who are maybe confronting
these problems do? Yeah, Well, we have a ton of resources at
our website related to the index, viewpoint diversitiescore dot org. We have model
policies, we have guidelines and different things available to people in the business community
who want to move the ball on these issues inside of their own corporations or
institutions, and so go there, get connected with what we're doing. One
thing that everybody can do, people who are employees of the companies, people
who are just consumers, is push back on these companies. One of the
things that we do right now with our index is we have a coalition of
shareholders who are pushing back on ESG and DEI and promoting the idea of viewpoint
neutral business services to these businesses through the shareholder process, and so they're filing
shareholder resolutions, just like what the Left has done for years. It's one
of the main tools the Left has used to co op businesses is the shareholder
proxy shareholder resolution process. We've got a bunch of shareholders are starting to hold
them accountable for that and push back and lots of times our shareholder resolutions will
end up on the proxy statement of a company, which means every shareholder in
the country who own shares in that company can vote on that proposal. So
when we're telling JP Mortgang Chase, for instance, you need to knock off
your politicized d banking, you need to eliminate policies that are vague that allow
for debanking people for political and religious reasons. You can actually vote your shares.
Many people are shareholders of these big corporations in favor of those resolutions.
You can get and you know, in touch with your asset managers or the
people who are in charge of your funds and tell them you care about these
issues and you want to tell JP Morgan what you think, and so you
know, there's a lot of different opportunities to make your voice be heard.
And I think you know, one of the things I've seen is we've done
the shareholder engagement work, is that the corporations actually listen. I think a
lot of people right of center think the corporations has just lost they're in the
can for you know, the left, and they're never going to change.
And I don't think that's true. It might be true for some companies and
Silicon Valley companies. I'm concerned about them, but we've also had a lot
of corporations who have responded really well when we talked to them. Our shareholders
have had terrific conversations and advanced the ball on trying to get changes at these
corporations that will actually provide real protections for people who are seeking services and are
afraid that they might lose those services because of their political or religious beliefs.
And you, on the other hand, you have all of these corporations stacked
with the graduates of Harvard and Penn and MIT and other schools who are very
committed to this agenda, and maybe their bosses are at this point too.
Have you noticed, Jeremy, our corporations are they getting sneakier about any of
this because you see competing reports that on the one hand, they are moving
away from DEI. On the other hand, certain companies you mentioned Silicon Valley
seem to want to give it a bear hug This is telling them it's more
important now than ever before. Are they adopting any methods that are making it
harder for you to track for the public to be aware of? Is that
an issue? Or in general is it they're maybe proud in some cases and
in other cases just walking away from it. Well, I mean, I
don't want to overstate where we're at. We're at the very beginning of a
long term battle to kind of pull corporations back to neutrality and hopefully to a
place where they're they're contributing in ways that build up a culture of free speech
and religious freedom for everyone. And you know, there's an incredible amount of
entrenched thinking inside these corporations and even you know, just like you're asking about,
is there are they are adopting any kind of tactics? I mean,
generally speaking, corporations are transparent to the left and not the people on the
right. What I mean by that is the corporations are happy to tell people
on the left everything about their practices related to environment and climate and social issues
they care about in the HRC corporate quality injects, But when we show up
and ask them, hey, what are you doing? When it comes to
your impact on free speech and religious freedom answer a few questions for us.
They're like, now, we don't want to we don't want to talk to
you, we don't want to provide that information. There's this massive lack of
transparency that especially inhibits people who agree with our values ability to really advocate to
these corporations. We don't even know necessarily what are you doing, what are
your policies, who have you know, debanked, or how you treated people
in the relationship to these issues, and they won't tell us. You know,
there's a fighter point on this issue. The lack of transparency is a
huge problem in the rising trend in d banking that we're seeing in the financial
industry. Tell you a story about Indigenous Advance. That's a ministry we represent
in Tennessee. They do work in Uganda helping widows and orphans and getting people
out of sex trafficking. Well, this April, Bank of America de banked
them out of the blue. They had banked with them since like twenty fourteen
or fifteen. D banked them and told them you're no longer a business type
we want to do business with in your risk profile has exceeded our risk tllarge
policies. What is it that it means nothing. It's not really an explanation.
And so our client went back and asked them, you know what specifically
have we done, like we have changed nothing about our practices. You're debanking
us and putting us in serious trouble in imperiling our ability to provide essential services
to people in Uganda, and Begabara Beric Aberica just said, we're not telling
you anything else than what we put in our letters, which was this one
line basically about risk tolerance. And so you know this, they completely lack
transparency about the reasons they're debanking people. They're starting to debank you know,
like Homespun religious ministries five oh one c three religious nonprofits in the United States
who do a really critical humanitarian work overseas. That is not a good trajectory
for these banks, and the lack of transparency around their policies why they're making
these decisions is part of the problem. So there's a lot of work to
be done. I'll go back to that point I was making. We are
really at the front edge of starting to hold these corporations accountable, and we
just can't take the foot off the gas. Well, and Jeremy, before
I let you go, speaking of those homespun guys, you were part of
the legal team that represented Jack Phillips in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, and
I want to just see Jeremy if you could you give us an update on
jack situation, because it's like he can never he can't just be at peace,
and it's amazing how he's kept fighting and how you all kept fighting.
But do you have an update for us on where everything stands for Jack right
now? Sure, his case was just argued, the third case against him
in the Colorado Court of the Supreme Court in December, and we're waiting for
a decision from the Colorado Supreme Court. Depending on how that goes will determine
our next steps. It could be if we don't prevail, if there's a
federal question involved, you know, we can go potentially the Supreme Court a
second time for Jack. So you know, Jack continues to be attacked and
vilified for his religious convictions. Unfortunately, we're going to stand by him and
protect him wherever this case goes. Jack, though, is unflappable. He's
an unbelievable man of God who has always is just the kindest and most generous
guy you could ever meet. I'm lucky to call him a friend, and
it's been a privilege to represent him all these years. It was a privilege
to represented before the US Supreme Court back in twenty seventeen when we won his
first case. Amazing, just such important work. Jeremy to desco is,
senior counsel and Senior vice president of corporate Engagement at Alliance Defending Freedom. Jeremy,
we'll have to do this again. It was so fascinating. Thank you
for coming on the show. Thank you. You've been listening to another edition
of The Federalist for a radio hour. I'm Alisashinsky, culture editor here at
The Federalist. We'll be back soon with us. Until then, be lovers
of freedom and anxious for the frays in the baz that you're born today. Staring