transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] It's Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. These days, some of the most important news comes from the courts, some of the most important action undertaken by the courts, most importantly, the federal courts. And of course, there you're looking at the district courts, going up to the courts of appeal, and then eventually, you get to the Supreme Court of the United States. Now, from time to time, we discuss what takes place at the district court level or at one of the US. Circuit Courts of Appeal. Most importantly, we look at decisions and issues as they arise at the Supreme Court of the United States, simply because that is the ultimate court of appeal, that is the Supreme Court of the United States. But as we're looking at some issues, it's also important to remember that the Supreme Court has a great deal of latitude in terms of which cases it decides to hear. The court listens to petitions, receives those petitions, and decides from a vast number of cases on appeal which cases it will take. Now, some are almost automatic simply because of their massive constitutional urgency. Others are matters of choice. The court grants, in conference, and we have no access to that conference, that's entirely a private affair among the justices. The justices, in conference, look at the cases sent for appeal and they take the cases they want to take. The magic number is 4. It is often referred to as the Rule of Four. If four justices vote to take the case, the court will hear the case and eventually decide the case, or at least hand down whatever rulings are appropriate to the case. Again, the Rule of Four. If four grant a writ of certiorari or vote that the court should do so, the court announces that it is going to take the case and then it puts it on its own docket. Now looking at some of the most important cases, it's interesting to note that the court has decided to take the vast majority of these cases. The court could have taken other cases, could have declined to take these cases, but the court chose the cases from what comes to them in terms of issues addressed to the federal courts. They take it because they believe it to be their proper stewardship and authority. Again, four of the nine justices are all that's required for one of these cases to be taken. But if you have less than four, guess what? The case isn't taken up by the court. Thus we had big news just in recent days. When a case failed to achieve that number, we don't know how many justices, if any, wanted to take the case. We do know that the headline passed down, for instance, as reported by USA Today on Tuesday. Here's the headline, Supreme Court Side Steps Pronouns Case on Trans Rights. Okay, this is a case that came on appeal from two parents in Massachusetts. Their complaint is that the local public schools allowed their child to pose as, present as, a non-binary child. The child wanted to claim this genderqueer identity not to identify with either sex or either gender. And by the way, in the national reporting, there's no way to really know the biological sex simply because of the evasive way that the case is handled. But what we're told, nonetheless, is that this child, who is a minor, and clearly not of legal age, a student in the public schools had presented to the public schools the request to be known by the initials BF. And the pronouns are very much a case, the genderqueer identity very much the case. The parents found out about it, and they sued the school for not informing them of their child's action. And thus, you have a big parental case here, a parental rights case. It's just as clear as can be. And so I think most of us would be quite disappointed to know that the Supreme Court didn't muster the four votes to take the case, to offer a grant of certiorari and move forward. So we're looking at the case that this is now going to settle back at the US. Court of Appeal, the circuit, where the court found against these two parents. The two parents made the claim that the school system had violated their parental rights. It's hard to imagine how that's a weak case. It's hard to imagine how that's not a strong argument. Now, when you look at this, you can say, well, when you have six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, does this mean that the six conservative justices have just sold out to the transgender agenda, they don't recognize these parental rights? No, you shouldn't make that inference at all simply because even those who want to take this kind of case generally want to take this kind of case on the strongest facts possible. And so there are all kinds of considerations here. I will tell you that I think most of us who have a sane, not to mention biblical understanding of gender and of course of the role of parents, the authority of parents, the responsibility of parents, we certainly want to see the Supreme Court of the United States take, if not this case, then a case very much like it. And so it's going to be interesting to see what goes forward. It is also interesting to see that you have groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom. That's a very important group that defends religious liberty expressing concern about this, saying, quote, the court should grant review and fix it, meaning the situation there in the state of Massachusetts. We also gained some insider perspective on how the issue was handled by the public schools here in this Massachusetts district. We're told this, quote, In 2021, the student identified in the lawsuit by the initials BF emailed teachers and other employees announcing they identified as gender queer and asking to be referred to by a new name and array of pronouns, end quote. So again, gender queer and an array of pronouns. Following that, quote, after meeting with BF, the school counselor told staff the student is still in the process of sharing the information with the mother and father, quote, The student asked that the school continue using BF's legal name and female pronouns when communicating with their parents. Again, here you see the corruption of the pronouns in more than one way. There refers to a single child here who is evidently a girl, quote, The counselor directed school employees to honor that request according to court records, where then told the parents sued the school district, saying the school violated their parental rights protected under the due process clause of the Constitution, end quote. I can only say I think these parents have a very strong case. I'm glad the Alliance Defending Freedom is in on this. I'm disappointed that the Supreme Court did not decide to take this case, but given some of the very clear conservatives on that court, I have to imagine they may be looking at the facts in this case, the particulars, and they may be looking for a better case. But it is hard to imagine they want to avoid or evade this issue. And furthermore, for the sanity of our society, for the protection of children, and for the respecting of parental rights, it's hard to imagine how this issue will not have to be taken up by the nation's highest court, hopefully, to set the matter aright. Okay, then we need to shift to a different case, and this time the Supreme Court decided to take the case. The Supreme Court has announced it is going to take up a case dealing with Roman Catholic preschool programs in the state of Colorado, as Maureen Groppe of USA Today reports, The Supreme Court will decide whether Catholic preschools in Colorado must admit LGBTQ plus families if they want to participate in the state's tuition-free program, another opportunity for the conservative court to build on recent high-profile rulings affirming the rights of religious groups. Okay, this one, I promise you, is really interesting. So the state of Colorado has this program by which state funds go to certain preschool programs. The preschools associated with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese there are not qualified because they, according to the state, discriminate against LGBTQ persons as parents. And so when you have a situation in which the parents are LGBTQ, they present a child, well, the state of Colorado says, if the school is going to accept funds through this program, then it has to practice absolute nondiscrimination on that basis. That's not going to work for the Catholic Church in the state of Colorado. Again, the report here is in USA Today. I quote, the Archdiocese of Denver, which oversees 36 preschools, asks its schools not to admit a student if the family disagrees with the Catholic Church's teachings on biological sex and marriage, end quote. Now let's just step back for a moment before looking at further detail at how the cases come together. Let's just think about the issue. We're talking here about certain schools being disqualified from this program simply because given the fact that they're operated by the Catholic Archdiocese there in Denver, they do not accept children from parents who have, let's just say, an LGBTQ identity. In particular, they don't meet the standard of marriage. They defy the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. And now you have the case in which the Archdiocese and others are basically suing against what they claim is discrimination by the state. And I'll just say it can only be described as discrimination by the state. But here's where the argument gets really, really interesting. Because the state of Colorado has this rule in place, and they claim that it's fully justified and doesn't violate religious liberty, because it claims to apply neutral, religiously neutral, non-discrimination principles that apply to everyone, regardless of any kind of religious identity. So you have the state there claiming it's not violating religious liberty. And what's in the background of this is an extremely important issue, and that goes back to a Supreme Court case and a decision simply known as the Smith decision. Now sadly, that is one of the very few lamentable decisions in which the majority opinion was written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Antonin Scalia was a strict constructionist. He was a textualist. He was a clear conservative and a hero to conservatives. But in this particular case, he applied reasoning that has been, there's no other way to put it, absolutely disastrous. The Smith decision was handed down in 1990. And the bottom line in the Smith decision is that it claims that unless there is basically a direct violation of religious liberty, if the rule is otherwise neutral, then it can't be appealed on a religious liberty basis. Now the interesting thing there is that that particular decision, which really was on a very odd set of particulars, it set a precedent that has been very difficult to overcome for a long time. But it is clear that conservatives on the Supreme Court, as much as they admired Justice Scalia, they've been trying to undo the effect of that precedent over the course of the last, say, 20 or 25 years. I think it's also fair to say that the late Justice Scalia, I think, would be surprised to understand the effect of that decision. It's hard to imagine this is what he intended. Writing for the US. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, Judge Richard Federico had written, quote, the program, speaking of the program there, in the state of Colorado, quote, is a model example of maintaining neutral and generally applicable nondiscrimination laws while nonetheless trying to accommodate the exercise of religious beliefs, end quote. It's really hard to imagine that he could say that quite so straightforwardly. He went on to say, quote, it simply means that when a school takes money from the state that is meant to ensure universal education, then its doors must be open to all, end quote. Nonetheless, the argument that is being made in response to the claims made by the state of Colorado is that the state already allows certain exemptions and already qualifies what it claims is an absolute nondiscrimination application. The attorneys representing the Archdiocese of Denver here represent the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. It's a very important group that, like the Alliance Defending Freedoms, done very good work in terms of pressing constitutional issues related to religious liberty and the free expression of beliefs and, quite frankly, taking action by challenging these laws that on their face appear to be unconstitutional. The argument that's being made by the Becket Fund is that the state of Colorado already violates what it claims is an absolute nondiscrimination policy and that they're going to come up with a special case when it comes to other groups and they're going to have to respect religious liberty when it comes to religious groups as well. Now there are Protestant evangelicals who will look at this and say, well, this is a Catholic case. Well, it is a Catholic case in the sense that this is related to schools or preschool programs undertaken officially by the Archdiocese, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver. And this is where I just want Christians, and I'll just say specifically Baptists, to think about something. And that is that we have to look at these religious liberty cases as they're presented to us and understand that even if we and our denomination and our churches and the preschools related to Baptist work are not going to apply for this kind of program, the precedent here actually is very important to all of us when it comes to religious liberty. And that's because we have to recognize that behind all of this is a massive effort to normalize LGBTQ relationships in such a way that anyone who doesn't recognize those relationships is simply considered out of bounds for the culture and that's exactly what this legislation implies. It is interesting that according to USA Today and other news reports, the Department of Justice, perhaps prompted by President Donald Trump, quote, has taken a hard line against LGBTQ rights and took the unusual step of weighing in on this case without being asked by the justices, end quote. That's very interesting. It tells us something about the fact that the Trump administration and the current Department of Justice think that this is going to be an important case. They want the Supreme Court to take it and the Supreme Court announced this week it is taking the case. As yesterday's New York Times reported, quote, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether Catholic preschools in Colorado that declined to enroll four-year-olds with gay or transgender parents can participate in a publicly funded state program, end quote. The Becket Fund lawyers are making the case that, and I quote, the exclusion of the Catholic schools, quote, reduces access pushing parents and children toward preschools that share the government's views on these issues and penalizing the religious schools and families who disagree, end quote. I think all Christians need to listen to that argument. In particular, the first part of the argument, I don't think a lot of Christians have thought about this. Listen to the argument again. They're saying that the exclusion of the Catholic preschools, end quote, reduces access. Then listen to these words. Pushing parents and children toward preschools that share the government's views on these issues, end quote. That's an incredibly important argument. It is one that I have not seen put so clearly in a similar context. This is just a reminder to us as Christians, as Christian parents, Christian pastors, Christian churches, Christian leaders, it is an important reminder to us that what the government adopts as policy is what the government once adopted as moral judgment. And that's exactly what's going on here. The government is sending a moral message. It is sending a moral signal. That moral signal is the normalization of transgender and LGBTQ parents, period, and relationships, same-sex marriage and all the rest. The state of Colorado is stating that its official policy is that it is wrongful discrimination not to recognize transgender parents or same-sex married parents as being absolutely equal on the same basis as, let's just say, biblical heterosexual marriage, which every society basically has recognized for millennia until extremely recently. But this is how the moral agenda is further. This is how the moral revolution gains ground, not only by persuasion, but by coercion. Once again, there is a very valid disagreement among many evangelicals and many Roman Catholics over the level to which religious programs should cooperate with state funding. That's a complicated issue. But the point is, when you have a rule like this that disqualifies, in this case, Catholic preschools simply because they follow Catholic teaching, that's a religious liberty issue in which we all have a very urgent stake. One final very important point. The Supreme Court gets to decide what cases it takes and on what basis it will take them. So, it's important to recognize that Josh Gerstein of Politico was reporting, let me just quote this, In its order, the Supreme Court indicated it does not plan to consider overturning that ruling. That's the ruling in Employment Division v. Smith. That's the decision, the majority opinion by Antonin Scalia. We mentioned, quote, Instead, the justices signaled they will wrestle with the issue of whether exemptions and flexibility in the Colorado program require the state to grant exemptions to the Catholic preschools. End quote. Okay, that's really interesting for a number of reasons. It's important we note that. One of the reasons that it becomes very interesting is wondering when it comes to the six conservative justices on the court and knowing that at least four of them had to agree in order for the court to take this case, you have to wonder if at least some of those justices said, yes, we will take the case, but only if we exclude a direct challenge to the Smith precedent. Now, again, we desperately need a direct challenge to the Smith precedent, but until then, we'll hope for the very best outcome when it comes to this case. Next, while we're speaking about preschool and child care, there's another issue that is now very much in the news. The New York Times ran an opinion piece yesterday by Lisa Levenstein, a professor of history and the director of the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. So you can pretty much figure out what perspective that's coming from, what world view is represented there. The headline is, Child Care Must Be a Military Priority. Now the background to this is that in the current military budget presented by the Trump administration, the president himself said it's basically in some sense a question between armaments and military power and daycare. And the reason why that came up, oddly enough, it may have seemed somewhat angular, the reason it came up is because of how much the Pentagon spends, the US. Defense Department spends on child care, child care when it comes to soldiers. Levenstein is very much for it, very much for that government coverage. And by the way, it's not just a system of child care sponsored by the Department of Defense that covers children from 6 weeks to 12 years old in every service. It's also one that's deeply subsidized by the federal taxpayer. Now, here's the point she's making. And this is something we need to keep in mind. She's making the point that in order for these soldiers, those Americans bravely serving in uniform, for them to serve their country, they desperately need child care. Without child care, they really can't continue in those roles or certainly can't continue effectively. So let's just think about that for a moment. That's a very interesting argument. It raises all kinds of issues for Christians, and one of them is the creation order distinction. And this has to do especially when you're looking at men and women serving in the arms forces. And just think about this, not only men and women, but husbands and wives, not only husbands and wives, but fathers and mothers. Now, we don't have time today to go into the entire issue here when it comes to gender identity, gender roles, and all the rest. It's just to say that government at no level, there is no government program that can replace the family, that can replace a parent in the home. And if we are going to look at being a society in which it is expected that every parent is going to be fully deployed in the workplace, or even in this case, in the military, then it's not a wonder that our birthrate is falling so fast as it is. It's not a wonder that there are so many problems that, as they now appear, certainly demand our attention. It is the fact that we are telling parents, both mothers and fathers, that your primary identity needs to be outside the family. So in this case, I'm not speaking about this direct issue, though we should note it's very ideologically laden, even by the academic specialization of the woman who wrote the article. But the point is this, we have to understand that government can't replace the family, that government can't replace parents. Government can offer this massive child care program, it can even subsidize it, and basically require taxpayers to help underwrite it. It can even come with the argument that if we don't do this, we're not going to have a deployable military. In other words, there are all kinds of arguments, but it's because of a basic shift in our culture. And that shift was something that really wasn't voted on by Americans. It wasn't legislated by Americans. It has happened. And by the way, it just hasn't occurred in the military. It's occurred in other sectors of society as well. There are many powers that be in our society that will not be satisfied until every single adult, regardless of the question as whether they are man or woman or mother or father, whether they are parents or not, they should be fully deployed in the workplace, first and foremost, more than anything else. And I'll just point out that is really problematic from a biblical perspective. If you're going to make the workplace and you're going to make the career and you're going to make job the absolute highest priority, you shouldn't wonder if children are suffering and if the birth rate is falling. That shouldn't be a matter of debate. That should be just common sense and common observation. Okay, and speaking to you from the state of North Carolina, a very interesting legal issue has arisen here, and it has to do with home wrecker laws. It turns out that North Carolina is one of the states with the so-called home breaker law, and that means that if you have someone who has an affair, a sexual affair with a married person, and that affects the family negatively, you can be charged with being a home wrecker. It's a criminal charge in the state of North Carolina. It's quite substantial. Now of course, you're looking at major media responding to this and saying, oh, that is so outmoded. That is so outdated. How could a state like North Carolina even have such a law on the books? States like Utah even recently have moved to remove such issues from the book. It seems that the average American seems to think that when it comes to sexual behavior, even when it comes to adultery, when it comes to the subversion of marriage and the subversion of parenthood, it's all just about personal autonomy and personal choice. And thus, there is no moral responsibility. There is no home wrecker, according to the modern morality, to be charged with a crime of home wrecking. One Democratic state senator here in North Carolina doesn't like the law at all. Julie Mayfield said, quote, alienation of affection presumes this very simplistic arrangement where you are devoted to your spouse until some third person comes in and breaks it up and then can be blamed. The state senator wanted to say, quote, but I think that any therapist, any counselor, anyone who's been through divorce can tell you that for an affair to begin, there is already likely a problem with the marriage, end quote. In other words, this kind of law is so morally out of date. What kind of backward people would ever have adopted such a law with the idea that it could be a moral wrong, even a matter foundational to a lawsuit, grounds for a lawsuit, for a person to be charged with invading the sanctity of a marriage and the sanctity of a family in terms of a sexual affair? And so you understand there is multiple moral responsibility to go around. It does take two to be involved in this kind of sexual sin, but there is a particular moral responsibility on one who effectively becomes a home breaker or a home wrecker. So the classic case is one in which you have an older man, and by the way, it could be much older. It could be a husband. It could be a husband who's a father. It could be a husband who's a father and a grandfather. And then you could have, in the most classic case, a younger woman who is involved and they become involved with one another. This law on the books in North Carolina says that, for instance, the spouse, the wronged wife of that older man, can take legal action against that younger woman simply on the charge and the legal grounds that she has wrecked their home and wrecked their marriage. Now clearly, I think to most modern people, that's going to sound somewhat simplistic. I'll simply say, well, it is somewhat simplistic, but it is pointing to a basic moral fact, and that is that adultery is wrong. Breaking up a marriage is wrong. Breaking up a family is wrong. And there is moral responsibility to be a sign. It's not a healthy sign for any society that it becomes more and more incompetent at assigning blame for subverting the institution which is most central to the civilization itself. Let's just state, it's a society that is basically subverting itself if it decides that home wrecking isn't even a significant moral issue. That tells us a very great deal. I think it's very interesting that The Wall Street Journal says this, quote, a few other states including Mississippi and South Dakota still allow such lawsuits, yet North Carolina, which doesn't limit the amount of compensatory damages that can be awarded, remains the most aggressive battleground. End quote. I find that very interesting. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyscollege.com. I'm speaking to you from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And I'll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.