Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
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Become Who You Are
#641 Would You Stand Against the State to Defend Your Faith? Unlocking the Churches!
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What happens when the government tells churches to close their doors? During the pandemic, attorney Jeffrey Trissell found himself at the center of an unprecedented legal battle for religious freedom that would take him to the Supreme Court three times in a single year.
The fight began when California implemented severe restrictions on religious gatherings while allowing "essential" businesses to operate with fewer limitations. As Trissell explains, the constitutional implications were profound: if hospitals remained open because they were "absolutely necessary," shouldn't worship—which believers consider essential to spiritual wellbeing—receive similar consideration?
What makes Trissell's account particularly compelling is his perspective on courage in the face of pressure. Drawing inspiration from St. Thomas More, he reflects on how standing firm in one's convictions often means facing opposition not just from expected adversaries, but sometimes from friends, family, and even religious leaders.
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Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul Turin Newell Center. I'm Jack Riggert, your host. You know, while the attack on our freedoms, especially those with traditional Christian values, has been going on for some time, anyone paying attention knows that the COVID pandemic gave the so-called elite and rulers of this present age the catalyst they sought to further consolidate power, silence and even censor, of course, opposing voices. Most people that I know, you know, like sheep being led to the slaughter, simply fell silent and got in line, and we've seen this many, many times during history. But there's always a few voices, those who not only saw the threat clearly but had the courage to stand up and fight against the tyranny and the evils of our modern age. One of those voices is with us here today to share his firsthand account here today to share his firsthand account.
Speaker 1:Jeffrey M Trissel is an attorney who fought on the front lines in the heroic legal battles during the 20 and the 2021 COVID-19 pandemic and he wrote a book about it Unlocking the Church as the Legal Victory Against California's Pandemic-Era Religious Discrimination, detailing the unprecedented lockdown of churches in the United States. Jeffrey is a civil litigation attorney in private practice with the law firm LeMandry and Jonah. He obtained his bachelor of arts degree in French and philosophy as a fourth generation cowboy attending Oklahoma State University and obtained his Juris Doctorate from the George Washington University Law School in 2013. He resides in San Diego, california, with his wife and two daughters. The vast majority of his legal work is devoted to constitutional rights, including First Amendment, litigation, redistricting, defamation and education rights. Mr Trissel, thank you so much, sir, for being with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I should probably also mention, because I love them, the Thomas More Society. You work as special counsel for them, Thomas More our audience is pretty familiar with them and the ADL and these wonderful firms that stand up against really religious tyranny that we see all over. You made a number of appearances in courts and three trips to the US Supreme Court within a year and a permanent injunction ended up being entered against Governor Newsom in the state of California. You were a busy man. I love the book. I love the way you started out with some terms. For those of us who are not legally minded, I really recommend not going through those early, let's say, introduction and chapter, not even a whole chapter, but defining what the court systems are like, and so thank you for doing that. You set it up beautifully Well.
Speaker 2:Thank you, as I've gotten more feedback since it was written. I've actually been surprised by how many people greatly enjoy the sometimes tiresome description of how the law works, because if you don't go through that chapter you can't really understand a lot of the book. But once you do, it's really rewarding and then you can really understand how things progress. It also explains you know how novel this situation was. Most of my cases are not over, right, like I've been working on cases from 2016, 2020, and we're in 2015 now right, I mean 2025 now and those cases are still ongoing. The reason I could write the book was because this story came full circle in a year and ended definitively, which I don't usually have cases that do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, isn't that something? It just lingers on and on and on. Well, we saw and I don't know how you would describe this, but it was. I guess that when I look back and you make clear in your book, and even though you may not state it like this so I don't want to put any words in your mouth, especially since you're an attorney, so you could stop me and correct me but the hypocrisy was amazing. The hypocrisy and the way they used the law to go after churches and small businesses and other things and really twisting and distorting this. It was really something to see.
Speaker 1:And so the question becomes you know, when they step in, the government steps in and takes power like this, it's very difficult, especially for small businesses, for individual churches, to fight back because you know they have an unlimited resource, right? They have people on their payroll that can come after you, the government can. They have our tax dollars, and then they know we're limited because we only have the rest of our tax dollars to pay and defend ourselves. And there's always fear, right, there's always fear. Who am I? I'm just a little guy, and the whole state of California is coming after me. Who am I? I'm just a little guy, and the whole state of California is coming after me. So what's that? Like to fight against that, and should really? What is it when the pandemic strikes? Does the government have—because they're always going to come up with an excuse of some sort right, there's a war, there's this, there's this, there's this. Are there limits to this? And I think that's really what you're working at here with the book.
Speaker 2:Right, in most of my cases we can recover our attorney's fees at the end of the case and to do that we got to document how much time we've spent and I've done probably half a dozen attorney's fees motions and we usually have three 4,000 hours incurred right, which even if you, you know, at regular attorney rates, that's a lot of money, right, that's a lot of money, and so it takes really the support of the Thomas More side and other nonprofit law firms to help us do that.
Speaker 2:My firm will do a little bit pro bono, but we're a small firm of, you know, 10, 12 attorneys and we can't work for 3,000 hours without getting paid. We'd love to help people who have don't have the means to actually pay for attorneys, but without, you know, without that aggressive pushback of three 4,000 hours of attorney time, we're not going to beat California or the United States government. I mean, they're, they're, they're continuing going and you know the department of justice, united States government, I mean they're, they're, they're continuing going, and you know the department of justice, california has like a $1.6 billion budget, right.
Speaker 1:It's, it's a huge enterprise and they just throw money at things and they have people on staff and they can just say, hey, jack, you go that way and attack that guy, and you go that way, and, and, and, do this, you know, and, uh, and so, yeah, you look at, I was in business most of my life as an entrepreneur and really saw what was going on and you would get sued over something and the time and the money and the resources and the nervous energy it would take, you know it's really can suck the energy out of you. And especially when you're pouring your blood into these businesses and these churches and things, is religious liberty becoming a second tier constitutional right that the government can be free just to ignore. That's what seems to happen during this and if this is going to happen again and we want to kind of know how we should be handling this from looking at your bad cases so if you could bring us forward a little bit and up to speed on some of the work that you did, Right, so the book itself.
Speaker 2:It talks about the legal fights in 2020, right, my law firm filed three lawsuits and we won at the US Supreme Court in one of the three and the other two they were mooted out because that one victory. And when I wrote the book, I wanted to both detail the history and provide a lot of my own commentary, because I spent a whole year almost doing nothing but COVID litigation and had a lot of thoughts on it. And when I wrote the book actually it didn't take me that long to write, because that's what I do, I'm a writer but I sat on it for a while because I felt like we were in this period after the pandemic where we were still trying to figure out what it meant right, and people were tired of hearing about the pandemic. And now that we have you know, we're five years on I felt like it was time to publish the book and to feel like my comments could be not just instinctive reactions but maybe more measured and well thought out. And so I do think now we're getting a little bit of, hopefully, a renaissance, a third great awakening. I think the pandemic had a huge psychological effect on our nation, you know, in terms of realizing that, hey, we can't let our religious rights be completely trampled. I'm feeling more optimistic five years out. Our religious rights be completely trampled. I'm feeling more optimistic five years out.
Speaker 2:When I wrote the book originally I was a little bit. I was pessimistic because of how significant the trampling of our religious rights was. But I think I'm not the only one who saw that, and so I'm looking forward. I mean, we'll see. I mean there's the paradigm shifts in the Republican Party are quite fascinating and how things are switched from a. In my mind, the most important shift was really the Dobbs decision that kind of took the focus away from the federal fights to the state fights across all the culture, war issues, including religious liberty. Obviously, now with the Trump administration, I only have to sue Governor Newsom, I don't have to sue President Biden, which is, you know, that always is the next four years. It's going to be a completely different litigation for me, but at least even when we have a you know four, eight years from now, a President Newsom or whoever I don't know, I feel like there's a tone shift and I'm hoping that we won't have to sue the federal governor as much anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'll tell you what. And I meant to take that Trump hat down I hope I don't offend you and I meant to take it down. And I tell you why I put it up because we have an apostle that Mr Trussell on it, called Claymore. It's the big sword behind me. It's for young men, it's Gen Z men who stood up and voted for Trump. And I just had a show and we hung it there and what they saw is kind of what you're describing here. You know, they saw. They didn't know exactly what it was, but something was wrong, something was something was oppressive, something was wrong in their own hearts and in the culture itself. And when without getting into the weeds here when they saw Trump stand up, they thought somebody was fighting for them and they saw a window of opportunity. They didn't know why. So it's a great time, anyways, for us to evangelize. So again, I'm sorry I forgot about that up there, but that's the mood that changed and I think it woke people up. I hope so, even though I'll ask you this I saw a lot of fear.
Speaker 1:I was amazed by people that I knew. You know, men that I knew that I thought were men, you know, and, you know, mad at me because I didn't always wear a mask properly or, you know, keep my six foot distance, or whatever. Or I was pushing back. You know, with the John Paul II Renewal Center, we were pushing back on the Catholic Church for closing all these churches and I couldn't believe how much vitriol we got. I mean, I'm sure you got that too. How did you feel about that? People that would normally be behind you. You're fighting them at the same time, in essence, that you're fighting, you know, the other side. How did you feel about that?
Speaker 2:Well, not to get too personal, but my own religious faith was a little bit shaken right. Not in the sense of you ever really truly doubted, right. Like I'm a devout Catholic cradle Catholic I will always be, no matter what my personal confidence in the hierarchy of the church was a little bit less like. Well, you know, I'm supposed to be looking up to you and I'm supposed to try to be obedient and try to be deferential and respectful and, come on, you know, you guys, this, this is not right. And when you're trying to just be humble as a good Catholic, it can be very frustrating when you don't have good leaders. Yeah, have good leaders. So, yeah, I personally was very frustrated with the lack of strength by Catholic leaders, and whether they're, you know, bishops or priests, you know or just lay male leaders, you know, I attend men's groups. I think men's spirituality is a very important thing for men to study. And, yeah, it was challenging.
Speaker 1:And unfortunately look, I didn't mean to go and take you in the weeds here, but I mean particularly, it was the Vatican, you know. I mean, you know it seemed to be led by Pope Francis unfortunately, these are my words, not yours, but it was led by him, you know, with the church lockdowns and then the vaccine mandates and everything right in the Vatican. But here's what it did. I think it, you know, just put everybody back on their heels a little bit. You know people that would have had the courage.
Speaker 1:I think of John Paul II was there, knowing communism and what they did and the tyrants and the totalitarianism and the dictatorships. I don't think he would have put up with that and that would have changed it. You know, because let's talk about the cases that you had, because these were smaller churches, they weren't Catholic churches, obviously, and they were standing up very courageous, very courageous. Can you tell us a little about them and how that was to work with them, because I'm really enamored with the work that you did and also with the bravery of those pastors, right?
Speaker 2:We decided to file a lawsuit, really in mid-April 2020. My firm, you know, we're a bunch of devout Catholic men who are led by Charles Lemandri, who is a bulldog not afraid of anything, and he basically said the reopening that Governor Newsom had announced was not fair. And we discussed it, the partners and I, and roundtabled it and decided we needed to file a lawsuit and we had to find a plaintiff, right? That was really the initial thought was we need a plaintiff to sue. And so we called all the Catholic churches we knew, right, and we know the Eastern Catholic churches, we know the Diocese of San Diego there's quite a few Eastern Catholic churches in San Diego actually, that we work with. Everybody said no, right. And then we started calling the Protestant churches that we knew, because we had defended a lot of them over the years, and everybody said no.
Speaker 2:It was really like we couldn't find anybody. We couldn't find anybody to sue until one person connected us with Pastor Hodges, Bishop Hodges of the South Bay Pentecostal Church, and he was the first person who really said I think we need to stand up, and so we recruited him to join the lawsuit. Now he was eager to join the lawsuit but, frankly, we had never represented a Pentecostal church before. I mean, we'd represent a lot of evangelical megachurches in their fights against the state, but we had never represented Bishop Hodges. He was just not one of our prior contacts but he was willing to stand up.
Speaker 1:And he had already taken a stance that he was not going to close. Did he take that prior, bishop?
Speaker 2:Hodges like everybody else. Yeah, he closed the church his church. At that point we wanted to take as safe a case as possible. So we were basically saying we're not open yet. We want an order from the court saying we're allowed to open and if we do that we will enforce all of the safety requirements social distancing, you know which the theory of that case was. We wanted to say, look, we're doing everything we can, you know, everything possible. There's no reason we shouldn't be open, even though we didn't. Anyway, that was a theory of that case.
Speaker 1:Because there were, because, to your point, I mean you know and we know because there were stores and different, you know, retail spaces et cetera, liquor stores, et cetera, that were allowed to be open, Right, and well, even frankly, we would say, even hospitals right, hospitals are allowed to be open because they're absolutely necessary.
Speaker 2:Well, worship is absolutely necessary, right, it's life-saving, right, it's no less necessary than open heart surgery because it's absolutely necessary. It's just not something that can be given up. And so, after we filed a lawsuit on behalf of Bishop Hodges in early May 2020, by the end of May, we had our loss by the US Supreme Court five to four loss, which was very, very disheartening for me. I had spent to get to the US Supreme Court in three weeks. I had to actually do the first and first all-nighter I'd ever done, where I wrote a 8,000-word brief from 9 pm to 4 am and then sent it to my partners and said please edit this and file it. I'm going to sleep. And we did that three times overnight to get to the US Supreme Court, and then we got a 5-4 loss. Wow, and that was very, very disheartening.
Speaker 2:And the scary thing about that was we then got an announcement to the whole world that the Supreme Court was not on our side, and that's when we started getting a lot more pushback. That's when we started getting the prosecutions right, where the government was coming after churches who had just ignored what the government was saying, because, yeah, there are plenty of churches that just opened up. Depending on your local jurisdiction, that could have been fine. Here in San Diego, we are a purple city. We used to be very red and now we're becoming more blue. Now we're pretty much blue, but I still think of us as purple.
Speaker 1:You're an optimist, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm. We had a red mayor and there were no county officials or city officials coming after places that were open Towards the end of 2020,. We got a blue mayor and things started to change. So you know, that's when I had the case on Grace Community Church. On the case on behalf of Grace Community Church started in LA over the summer because they just decided to reopen and the County of Los Angeles decided well then, we're going to come after you and, uh, that became a very different, very different type of law. Right, where you're, you're, you're on the run and you're defending against, well, a city that is bigger than like 40 of the States, right, 10 million people city.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 10 million people county. And what kind of pressure do they put on those churches, jeffrey? And you know when you say they come after them. You know, and again, I was in business, so I have a sense of this. But for our audience that maybe wasn't. It can be very, very rattling for people that aren't used to this. How did they take that? And I always wonder how the pastor himself and the people around him they have a real conviction for this and how far are they willing to go, because it's not easy, is?
Speaker 2:it. So the first thing is you should definitely reach out to a non-profit law firm whenever you're dealing with the government in this context, because the initial thought is you can just ignore it. You push back and stand up and be strong and be a man, and that's probably the right answer. But you also need somebody to tell you what the risks are. So Father Burfitt, who we represented in Los Angeles County also, he got a citation. When he the citation says you know, approximately 11 people were seen leaving the church and it was just like this. This really, you know, it's just like a county health citation. It's fine, probably $250. It was left at his residence. Because he left the church unlocked. People could come in and pray if they wanted to. Depending on your personality, that citation could be intimidating or you could say it was 250 bucks, who cares? You know I'm going to leave my church unlocked.
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Speaker 1:A couple of things to share with people. Love Ed. Love Ed is just such an important apostolate, so it's within our apostolate, the John Paul II Renewal Center. This helps parents give the talk to their children. We're trying to push back on all these gender ideologies and the porn culture and give children the truth and do it through their parents, and we help them do that.
Speaker 1:The other one is really taken off too. It's Claymore. Miletus Christi, soldiers for Christ. That's where you see the sword behind me. That's the big sword. That's our logo for Claymore. Militants Christi, soldiers for Christ. That's where you see the sword behind me. That's the big sword. That's our logo for Claymore. That's a Claymore sword. And this is for young people, especially young men Gen Z, high school, all the way through, let's call it, till they're 30 years old or so. They're starting to really understand that something nefarious, very toxic is going on in the culture, and so they're stepping into the church and we're discipling them. So we want to help get the word out about those things and, lastly, consider financially supporting us. Everything's in the show notes. Hey, god bless you. Thanks again.
Speaker 2:And for a lot of the churches who got citations like that, that was fine. You just you pay the citation or you ignore it and eventually you know whatever the pandemic ends. You know there's one case of a church in California that I was following closely and I talk about in the book where I think their ultimate fine was $3,000. Even after they were hauled into court and they got a judicial order saying you have to close. The judge at the end of the day only slapped them on the wrist. But that's not every case, right you?
Speaker 2:talked about Santa Clara and the church up there was getting whacked, right I mean it was in the millions, wasn't it Millions of dollars in fines, and you know, there's a pastor in Louisiana who was placed under house arrest with an ankle bracelet, right. That's as far as I've seen them go in America, which was thank goodness, but obviously in Canada there were stories of churches being condemned and you know fences Pastors were thrown in jail up there right.
Speaker 1:Do we have any pastors thrown in jail here? Do you know?
Speaker 2:The only one I know of is Pastor Spell in Louisiana, who was under house arrest.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Father is a Burfitt that you had just mentioned. So he's a Catholic priest, right, he's SSPX, okay, sspx. And he was over five churches and were they all basically closed, but the door was open and people could go in and pray, but he wasn't trying to say, hey, I'm offering a worship service. From my recollection, right, right.
Speaker 2:So he oversees five parish communities. So in Los Angeles he has his church where his residents and the other priests and residents, but in San Diego, for example, they were renting a church. I think it might have been like a—because in San Diego we're a big military town. We have these old military churches that they no longer use and they just rent out. So I think he was renting a church but they were no longer able to rent it right, and the government shut down and so that one was just closed. And I don't really know all that much about what was happening in the other counties. A lot of them were rural counties where I presume the church was just open.
Speaker 1:Was anybody in the diocese there? So he fell mostly in the LA, in the Los Angeles diocese. So was the bishop there, the archbishop there, was there any support for him? I mean, did they come out and support them vocally, financially, I mean anything at all? Did you have a sense of anything like that?
Speaker 2:No, there was definitely no public vocal support in terms of behind-the-scenes support, not from the Los Angeles archbishop or the bishops there. We were getting support from behind the scenes from some bishops, but nobody was willing to stand up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how sad is that. Because if the Catholic Church were to put their weight behind this, more of these other pastors know pastors too in the evangelical churches, et cetera, would have had even more confidence. You know, you know it just shows you when we back down, you know, and we take that, you know, put your head between your legs, cowardice type of position. You know it doesn't bode well for the rest of you know, all of us fighting for religious freedom does it, and I know you have to. You should be careful and I shouldn't ask you stuff like that. And so just plead the fifth if you want to. When I do that, I'm just mystified myself and I get.
Speaker 2:I do think there's truth to the statement that if you stand up, you get your head cut off right, and so you have to be very careful in these cases and, for the most part, before I file a lawsuit, my cases are very, very well thought out, you know, in terms of choosing venue, trying to find a conservative venue, trying to find a conservative, a proper framing of the case and a theory about how we're going to win on appeal. It was this case. These cases were much more like. Well, this is life and death. Right, you know the emergency procedures that we used.
Speaker 2:The clerks who handle them are usually called the death clerks because they're dealing with emergency death penalty cases.
Speaker 2:Right, those are the ones where you say I need a ruling in less than eight hours. When the Ninth Circuit says you lose at noon on Saturday and I say I want to open up my church on Sunday, Well, the clerk who deals with you know a turnaround that fast is the death clerk. And so, like calling up the death clerk and saying we need to open our church for the on my normal case, right, they're not the one that has this huge rush. Yeah, it's very important to think things through very carefully, and that's why it's in my mind. It's been great. I feel like we've seen an explosion of religious liberty law firms in the past 15 years, including the Thomas More Society, because if you think these things through, they're winnable. If you don't, if you just stand up and you're being sued in San Francisco County State Court and your appeals process is the First District Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court, you're just going to stand up and get your head cut off.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's what really makes the rest of us nervous. Look, we have an apostolate here. We're not all that big and you know, we would, you know, go into churches and we were speaking to people etc. And you know, you do you feel very man. It's just like, you know, without armor, it almost seems like you know that you can really get picked off. So I think that's, you know, it's good to be talking to you and it's good to be, you know, reading books like yours, and I'll make sure, of course, I put this in the show notes. But, you know, because we have to get confidence, we have to get conviction. So the first thing you're recommending is we found, you know, can we get? Will somebody pick up the phone? For most of us? And, like you said, there are more.
Speaker 1:You know the Alliance Defending Freedom, of course, is out there at Thomas More Society. Now, I'm from Chicago, so they have a big office right here in Chicago, so that's wonderful. Is it Liberty Council? There's a couple really getting more and more well-known for this. Is it individual donors and people that are trying to fund this? In other words, if I call them up and I don't have unlimited resources right, they're going to do their best to work with me, but who's helping all of these firms underneath? I mean, are these patriots? Are these, you know, Christians? Christian patriots, probably, you know, but, and there's got to be others.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's for the most part small donors sending in payments to the law firms, which amazes me. My mother works for a, or she manages a crisis pregnancy center in Virginia, or a series of them, and comparing the fundraising practices of her group and our group, you know it's very similar and very different, you know. But you know, in a sense, that we're all just trying to do our best to help people, and I help people who need a lawyer, and so donations really just ensure that I can spend 3,000 hours helping somebody when yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. So you said you feel optimistic about the future here. I mean, I think most of the people that I talk to, especially with young families and stuff, really feel that the culture itself is under attack. You know marriage, the family, children of course, things like that.
Speaker 1:So you know the Catholic social teaching. I always look at it almost like a pyramid in front of you, like a triangle, like a pyramid shape in front of us. So, with marriage and the family, christ and the church, you know, is holding up the bottom, and then we go out to your realm there, which is, you know, taking this out into polity, taking this out into the way we, you know, organize our societies, you know, all the way up into our laws, and our laws have to be just. We really saw an attack on this. Will you keep it up? Will you keep working now that you have this? You know, you have this knowledge, now you have this background? It's an amazing amount of work and things that you've gone through and you specialize in those things. Is that your cup of tea? You know our constitutional rights, of course, but you also mentioned education in there and I wanted to ask you a question about that and what you're seeing in the educational realm too, because we're being censored there right now.
Speaker 2:Parents are being censored there, so I am right, I work for a private law firm, so we do pretty much everything.
Speaker 2:But because I know constitutional law very well, because I tend to specialize in First Amendment litigation free speech, exercise of religion that translates into the education context pretty well and most of my education cases have actually been on the not on the nonprofit side trying to help foster kids navigate the system in California and the foster education rights in California, but in terms of education in general, especially under the religious liberty context, the way I think of it is, the Supreme Court has the final say and they're moving in the right direction, but they don't want to be pushed too hard.
Speaker 2:So all the religious liberty attorneys and all the religious liberty law firms are basically trying to push the Supreme Court in the right direction and the Supreme Court says we're taking our steps, but we're going to do one at a time at a time, we're not going to jump to head of the line.
Speaker 2:So there was a very disappointing case at the US Supreme Court this year regarding whether a Catholic school can operate a charter school and be publicly funded, and the US Supreme Court decided not to decide the issue and kicked it back down to the lower courts and you know I was really optimistic because in California I'd love to have a conservative Catholic charter school funded by the state that's run by, you know, catholic church. But they are going to cite another education case in a couple of days, presumably regarding the rights of parents in schools. So right now there is kind of a split regarding how strong the parental right is past the threshold of a schoolhouse door. A lot of courts want to say that you get to decide whether to send your kid to a public school or a private school or homeschool. But once you send your kid to the public school you pretty much lose all your rights and that's just not right.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're in the and that was never the intention was it of schools to take away a parent's rights, you know Right.
Speaker 2:Well, the weird thing is that we had these really great Supreme Court wins in the 1920s and 30s and as a result, we got all these statutory protections. We passed laws saying like in California we have a very comprehensive opt-out scheme. You don't want to have your kid learning about weird sex stuff? You have a right under the education code to opt your kid out of it. But because we had such a comprehensive statutory scheme for the past 100 years, we haven't had to have cases litigating it, and it's only coming up again now when in California we have cases where your kid requests.
Speaker 2:In the California law, gender identity is defined as the asserted gender identity of the person asserting it without regard to any statement by anybody else, including the person's parents. This was a very circular definition whose only point is to say the kid gets to say what their gender identity is. Parents have no say, and discrimination on the basis of gender identity includes not using your preferred pronouns. So as soon as the kid requests, all the teachers and staff have to start referring to the kid by their alternate pronouns and they can't tell the parents because that would violate the kid's privacy and it's absurd, right, I mean, just from a common sense perspective it's totally absurd.
Speaker 1:But we know what's happening and that's why I mentioned spiritual battle, because they want to drive a wedge between parents and children themselves. It's really something. These are important cases. These are important cases to fight because the ultimate goal is—I don't want to make a perfect analogy here, which I, you know, I mean, you know, but it's not exactly the same but we had the Hitler youth camps. You know, we had this in Marxism. They always knew that if they could get the children away from the parents, teach them what they wanted to teach them, they can indoctrinate them. And you know, lenin, in a very short time, said you know, just give me a few years with them and I will change, I'll begin to change this whole society. And this is the danger we're under today. We could see. It's very clear, actually, if you have eyes to see it isn't it Right?
Speaker 2:There's not a lot of. Unfortunately, it feels like not a lot of people can see it. Even on the liberal side there's so many people who I feel like, wait, you actually believe your own propaganda. You do realize that's propaganda, right? It's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. I have to smile, because if I don't smile and laugh about this once in a while, I would go insane, and I'm sure you would too.
Speaker 2:But yes, they've, especially in California, and that's where I have my family. The way the education system is set up, it does seem like it's procedurally brilliant in terms of setting up parents to fail and for the state to steal your kids.
Speaker 1:Yes, Well, I'm in the belly of the beast here in Illinois. So you know we're right, you know we are competing with you to see who can ruin children and indoctrinate them and separate and knock down marriages and the families faster. And so, yeah, we're competing. I don't know who's winning right now, but maybe California by just by a nose, you know. But yeah, it's brutal here. And so that question tonight, if you don't mind. So tonight I have a presentation called Stolen Innocence.
Speaker 1:I'm giving in this area and Chicagoland area and it really talks about the stealing, the innocence of children, obliterating their moral imaginations, driving a wedge between parents and the kids. And we're fighting that right now here. What would parents do? I'm just waking up and I'm starting to recognize that there's something wrong. Finally, and we're trying to get them to move, we do two things. One thing is to actually take responsibility and teach their own children about sex education, et cetera, and opt out. But the problem with the opt-out agreements now. So we have to do more, because the problem with the opt-out agreements is that these gender ideologies, et cetera, critical race theories, they permeated every subject. I mean, you know they're in math, now they're in everything. And so we have to all stand up and just really have to stand up and be counted. But what can I tell them? From a legal standpoint? You know that somebody will have their backs if they go to a school board. You know we saw this with the Biden administration where they actually harassed people the FBI harassed people.
Speaker 1:This is really scary, scary for people.
Speaker 2:One of my education cases that is ramping up right now is all about gender identity and kids who are socially transitioned at school without their parents' knowledge or consent, and when that case first came across my desk as a potential, I was very anxious because I had studied a lot of these cases and there were already a dozen or half a dozen across the country that had been filed and lost, and so I was like, well, I don't have another loser, and we actually got one of the very first wins in the country, and probably the strongest win, and so I would say that Was that fairly recently.
Speaker 1:Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Well, we just got the preliminary injunction, which is a preliminary win, essentially in September of 23. And that, I think, really helped move the ball forward for a lot of other cases. And now we're going to be moving for final judgment later this year.
Speaker 1:Oh, we'll have to follow you on that. Keep it, you know we're going to follow you on that one. Are you feeling? Well, I don't want to give anything away.
Speaker 1:We're feeling optimistic. Yeah, good, good, good, good. Well, I'll tell you what I really recommend people get your book. Again, I'll put this in the show notes. I'll put a good picture up on the screen as we're talking about it, because it's very important. Up on the screen as we're talking about it, because it's very important. It's very important for people to be more familiar.
Speaker 1:If you want to stand up against some of this pressure, this tyranny I don't want to overuse the word, but that's what we feel a lot it's really a spiritual battle and if you want to have conviction to stand up, I think you need to know the law, at least the basics of it, so that when I contact you I kind of have an idea of some of the things that you're going through. You did a great job with that. You also did a great. You know it's very interesting all those cases. You know, in the limited time we have, you know we couldn't really unpack a lot of those idiosyncrasies, but it was really interesting. But I love this and maybe, as we go out here and I'm cognizant of your time Talk about Thomas, st Thomas More, because that's how you end. It's a great way to end because it's talking about to have the conviction to stand up, and can you talk a little bit about that and what that meant to you personally?
Speaker 2:One of my favorite essays about Thomas More was written by Hilaire Belloc and in that essay he talks about how it would be one thing if Thomas More were being applauded by his friends saying, wow, if only we were as great as him, as strong and brave and courageous. But no, his friends were saying this guy is crazy. They were saying this guy, who can be a little bit odd and wrote a socialist book called Utopia when he was in his youth, is now deciding to sacrifice everything over the objection of his wife, his kids, all of his friends. And yet now we think of Thomas More as a great man and that he was obviously in the right. But even the people of goodwill were saying he was in the wrong right, even the devout Catholics.
Speaker 2:And I think that was what the point I wanted to emphasize in that last chapter was that you do need to step back and think things through and know that you're in the right and then stand by it right, regardless of the pressures you get from your family, from your priests. Right, and I think that's also why I liked writing the book in the way I did is to educate people about how the legal system works so they can sit back, think it through and say, okay, I do know I'm in the right Because, yeah, half of the book is just a story of the cases. The other half of the book really is me doing my very best to explain the legal system for the layman so that they can follow these cases well. And once they know how to follow the cases, they can think them through for themselves and know where they'll go and go, no further.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes. In order to do that, you have to educate yourself and you have to understand not only the law here, but you also and when I say understand, at least have a sense of it and some of the legal terms that you outline. But you also have a personal conviction, and I think you know what you said earlier is not enough. People recognize what was going on, and I think this comes from that lack of faith. You know, lack of personal conviction, lack of understanding and knowledge of our own faith, because if you don't have that, you won't stand up either.
Speaker 1:You know, I think you said it so well in the book and again, this is a statement from St Thomas More is that we're all going to die. We're all going to die right, and there's no, it's inevitable. And so I die today, you die tomorrow and in essence, you know, you make the statement, you know what do you live for, what do you live for? It's very meaningful and we should all be pondering that. Are you pondering that as you're going about your work? You know you're a father with kids. You know, as a dad, we want to leave this legacy down, don't we? We want to say, hey, dad stood for something. Dad had courage to be a man in his profession, you know, and et cetera, et cetera. I think that's important to all of us, and it should be, don't you think?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the legacy that each of us needs to leave behind isn't really a legacy, right? I don't care that I went to the US Supreme Court. I don't care. To a certain degree, yes, I love my clients because I have very, very good clients and I love helping them protect their religious liberty, but at the end of the day, what's most important to me is my own relationship with God, and all of these things help that. You know we will all be forgotten.
Speaker 2:I mean, I can personally name the most important Supreme Court litigators right now, right, and I follow them and I respect their work. I'm sure none of your listeners know who any of them are, and it's you know, and there's no need to right as long as they're doing, because the reason they're doing their good work is not to build their name. The reason they're doing their work is to build their own personal relationship with Christ and to know that they're doing everything they can to help the world and know that by helping the world, they're building up their own relationship with Christ. And I think it's just important to keep our priorities straight. And that's what I was focusing a lot on at the end of it, because obviously I did pat myself on the back after winning at the US Dream Corps right.
Speaker 1:We got to take our wins when we find them, don't we? Because it's brutal, it could be brutal out there.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, you know it was okay, but don't, as my boss Charles Mandry likes to say, don't steal glory from God. Right, it wasn't my glory, it was God's glory. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he left us hanging on a cross, right, I mean. So he wasn't after that either. And I think the legacy that I think, as a man, we want to pass down is our faith right, and our conviction and what's good. You know what's true, good and beautiful the transcendentals and the beautiful faith of ours, and I think that's our legacy right, because when we pass that down, it's going to go from generation to generation to generation, and that's a beautiful thing, huh? So our Catholic faith means something, doesn't it? And I could tell, from when I read your book too, that your faith meant a lot to you. It was important for us and our listeners to read your perspective on that, and you did a really, really nice job. So thank you so much, thanks for bringing it. Where are we going to buy the book from?
Speaker 2:So the best place is sophiainstitutecom forward slash unlocking, but I would also call your local Catholic bookstore and see if they have it. You should always support your local bookstores and, if not, ask them to order it and then buy it from them.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, and not that you want anybody reaching out to you personally, but you said you do a lot of writing. Is it all legal writing or is there some place we could follow you? Do you do any writing for the general?
Speaker 2:public. This was my first endeavor at that. Each appellate brief is usually 14,000 words, so that's all I do every day, Gosh yes, hey well, god bless you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Thanks for being with us. Thanks everyone, thanks for joining us. Go out and get Unlocking the Churches. It's a wonderful read. Bye-bye, thank you.