The Arch-Villain

I have written about them many times, they are the ones who are pushing the case against trans athlete here in Connecticut. They are the ones who are pushing anti-trans legislation in red states. They are the ones who brought fake cases to the Supreme Court.

How one Christian legal group is shaping policy, from abortion to LGBTQ rights
Fresh Air – NPR
By Terry Gross
October 18, 2023

The Alliance Defending Freedom has won 15 Supreme Court cases, including overturning Roe v. Wade. New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick explains the group's influence and their next targets.

 This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The Christian conservative movement's most influential arm is the Alliance Defending Freedom, writes my guest, David Kirkpatrick in The New Yorker in an article titled "The Next Targets For The Group That Overturned Roe." The Alliance Defending Freedom, the ADF, is an activist legal group that works through the courts where it's been very successful. Overturning Roe v. Wade is one of 15 Supreme Court cases that the ADF has won. Others cited by Kirkpatrick include allowing employer-sponsored health insurance to exclude birth control, rolling back limits on government support for religious organizations, blocking pandemic-related public health rules and establishing the right of a baker to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.

The ADF's current goals include restricting access to the abortion pill, mifepristone, or banning it altogether, as well as limiting the authority of the FDA, which approved the pill and restricting LGBTQ rights with an emphasis on children and adults who identify as transgender. A little later, we'll talk with Kirkpatrick about his interview last week with one of the leaders of Hamas about the attack on Israel. David Kirkpatrick is a staff writer at The New Yorker. For 22 years, he was a reporter for The New York Times. He covered the Christian conservative movement and later covered the Arab Spring. During the Trump administration, he investigated ethically questionable ties between members of the administration and several Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia. We recorded our interview yesterday morning.

Judge shopping and then we throw a Trump monkey wrench into the mix...

GROSS: So the judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who ruled in favor in a lower court, who ruled in favor of the ADF, he's a Trump appointee who had previously worked as the deputy general counsel of First Liberty Institute, which is a conservative Christian advocacy organization that's received grants from the ADF. What does that mean? I mean, is that a conflict of interest?

KIRKPATRICK: We don't usually speak about the past work of a judge as posing a conflict of interest. The question is forum shopping. You know, ADF would say, well, look, our doctors were in Texas, and this was the district court judge we got. But realistically, they looked around the country, they saw a place where there was a judge whose legal background was likely to make him very sympathetic to their point. You know, the group that he worked for is very closely allied with ADF. One thing I learned in this reporting is that he had recently taken an ADF intern to work in his chambers. He's about to have another student from an ADF law program come to his chambers as a clerk. So he's somebody - they had to have a pretty good sense - was friendly to them. And that's why - in all likelihood, that's why they brought the case with the Texas doctors they did in the district that they did.

The ADL and the Heritage Foundation gives a list of “approved” judges to Trump who appoints them, then the ADL go judge shopping.

We are on their hit list, no surprise there!

GROSS: What else is the ADF doing on behalf of restricting LGBTQ rights?

KIRKPATRICK: Well, the crux of the issue for them now, I think, is around transgender youth. Specifically, I think, the place they've had the most success is in sports - you know, the question of whether a girl born as a girl is at a disadvantage when she is forced to compete in a track meet against a girl who was born as a boy. That's a case - you know, they were one of the first to bring those cases - I think possibly the first - to bring a case like that in a court about the rights of those girls born as girls. And that has helped to set off a national wave of legislation in, I think, more than 22 states to try to regulate that. And they continue to fight those battles in courts. There are other issues, as you know, about, you know, schools referring to a student according to the pronoun of their choice, possibly at odds with the wishes of the parents, the questions about what regulations there should be on transition medical care for minors. Those are all issues where ADF is very active at the moment.
As I mentioned the ADF was the legal organization that brought the case here in Connecticut.

It is a big circle. The ADF recommends judges who see the law their way, Republicans appoint favorable judges and block unfavorable judges (You remember that they blocked over 200 judicial appointments and the appointments of Supreme Court Justices of President Obama). The ADF then brings the cases to friendly judges.

But wait! There is more!

Amy Coney Barrett, Supreme Court nominee, spoke at program founded to inspire a ‘distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law’
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown and Jon Swaine
September 27, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, publicly grappled decades ago with the tension Catholic judges can face between their religious values and the law. She has since said that she would never bend the law to meet her Catholic faith.

But her role as a speaker at a training program for Christian law school students drew scrutiny three years ago when Trump nominated her to be a federal appellate judge. It may do so again now — as part of broader questioning about how she would balance faith and law — as she seeks confirmation to the nation’s high court.

Barrett was a paid speaker five times, starting in 2011, at the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, a summer program established to inspire a “distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law,” tax filings show. It was founded to show students “how God can use them as judges, law professors and practicing attorneys to help keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel in America.”

This is the last link in their version of the Tammy Tweed Ring.

The justices speak at these seminars telling the lawyers and students just what they are looking for in the anti-LGBTQ+ and abortion cases. These law firms then go out and craft a case to fit what they are looking for (I wrote about it here last month.).

And that completes the ring.
They tell Trump what judges to appoint. → Trump appoints them. → They judge shop for friendly judges → They create a case with all the “talking points” the Supreme Court justices are looking for.