Thank you, Beth, for that generous introduction and thank
you for your outstanding leadership at the Office of Legal Policy.
I want to thank Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and our
acting Associate Attorney General, Jesse Pannuccio, for their leadership, as
well.
Thank you to Dorothy Williams from the Civil Rights Division
for sharing your beautiful voice with us and singing our national anthem.
And thank you to Archbishop Kurtz, my good friend Senator
Lankford, as well as all of our panelists: Acting Assistant Attorney General
John Gore, Kerri Kupec, Derrick Max, Professor McConnell, Asma Uddin, Shay
Dvoretzky, Emilie Kao, and of course Jack Phillips.
I want to thank all of you for your courage and insight to
speak out for religious liberty.
Let us be frank.
A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging
and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom. There can be no doubt.
This is no little matter. It must be confronted and defeated.
This election, and much that has flowed from it, gives us a
rare opportunity to arrest these trends.
Such a reversal will not just be done with electoral victories, but by
intellectual victories.
We have gotten to the point where courts have held that
morality cannot be a basis for law; where ministers are fearful to affirm, as
they understand it, holy writ from the pulpit; and where one group can actively
target religious groups by labeling them a “hate group” on the basis of their
sincerely held religious beliefs.
This President and this Department of Justice are determined
to protect and even advance this magnificent heritage.
Freedom of religious is indeed our “first freedom”—being the
first listed right of our First Amendment.
This has been a core American principle from the beginning.
It is one of the reasons that this country was settled in
the first place.
The promise of freedom of conscience brought the Pilgrims to
Plymouth, the Catholics to Maryland, the Quakers to Pennsylvania, the
Scot-Presbyterians to the middle colonies, and Roger Williams to Rhode Island.
Each one of these groups and others knew what it was like to
be hated, persecuted, outnumbered, and discriminated against.
Each one knew what it was like to have a majority try to
force them to deny their natural right to practice the faith they held dear.
Our Founders gave religious expression a double protection
in the First Amendment. Not only do we
possess freedom to exercise our beliefs but we also enjoy the freedom of
speech.
Our Founders’ understanding of and commitment to religious
freedom was truly brilliant as well as historic.
It arose in large part from the principals delineated in the
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—and its effective advocates: Madison and
Jefferson.
These guys were ferocious. This weekend, I was rereading
Gary Will’s fabulous book, Head and Heart, in which he quotes extensively from
the Jefferson’s Statute, as he refers to it.
I commend all of it to you; but one line stood out in
particular to me, “That almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested
His supreme will that free it shall remain, by making it altogether
insusceptible of restraint.”
Of course, this is entirely consistent with another of my
favorite Jefferson quotes that you will find at his memorial just across the
mall from where we are today:
"For I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal
hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." This is
what our Founders believed.
They clearly recognized that an individual’s relationship to
God is a natural right and precedes the existence of the state, and is not
subject to state control.
These concepts were placed into our Constitution and laws
and formed a national consensus that has greatly militated against religious
hostility and violence—and has helped us to this day to be one of the world’s
most diverse religious people.
There can be no doubt that we are stronger as a nation
because of the contribution of religious Americans.
Every day across America, they feed the hungry, shelter the
homeless, educate our young people, and care for the sick. They do so not because the government tells
them to, but because they want to. They
do these things because of their faith.
Their faith provides something the state can never
provide—meaning and purpose and joy in their life.
But in recent years, the cultural climate in this
country—and in the West more generally—has become less hospitable to people of
faith. Many Americans have felt that their freedom to practice their faith has
been under attack.
And it’s easy to see why.
We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives.
We’ve seen U.S. Senators ask judicial and executive branch
nominees about dogma—even though the Constitution explicitly forbids a
religious test for public office. We’ve
all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips.
Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds are concerned
about what this changing cultural climate means for the future of religious
liberty in this country.
President Trump heard this concern.
I believe this unease is one reason that he was
elected. In substance, he said he
respected people of faith and he promised to protect them in the free exercise
of their faith. He declared we would say
“Merry Christmas” again.
The Department of Justice has settled 24 civil cases with 90
plaintiffs regarding the previous administration’s wrong application of the
contraception mandate to objecting religious employers.
Last month, a district court in Colorado issued a permanent
injunction in the case involving the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of
nuns who serve the elderly poor.
This is a permanent injunction and a major victory for the
Little Sisters of the Poor and religious freedom.
The government has no business telling the Little Sisters
that they must provide an insurance policy that violates their sincere
religious beliefs.
And since day one, this administration has been delivering
on that promise.
Soon after taking office, President Trump directed me to
issue explicit legal guidance for all executive agencies on how to apply the
religious liberty protections in federal law.
Our team embraced that challenge.
I issued that guidance in October, and it lays out 20
fundamental principles for the Executive Branch to follow.
Those include the principle that free exercise means a right
to act—or to abstain from action.
They include the principle that government shouldn’t impugn
people’s motives or beliefs.
We don’t give up our rights when we go to work, start a
business, talk about politics, or interact with the government.
We don’t give up our rights when we assemble or join
together. We have religious freedom as
individuals and as groups.
In short, we have not only the freedom to worship—but the
right to exercise our faith. The
Constitution’s protections don’t end at the parish parking lot nor can our
freedoms be confined to our basements.
Under this administration, the federal government is not
just reacting—we are actively seeking, carefully, thoughtfully and lawfully, to
accommodate people of faith. Religious
Americans are no longer an afterthought.
We will take potential burdens on one’s conscience into
consideration before we issue regulations or new policies.
And this Department of Justice is going to court across
America to defend the rights of people of faith.
First of all, we are aggressively and appropriately
enforcing our civil rights laws, our hate crimes laws, and laws protecting
churches and faith groups.
Since January 2017, we have obtained 11 indictments and
seven convictions in cases involving arson or other attacks or threats against
houses of worship. Our Civil Rights
Division has also obtained 12 indictments in other attacks or threats against
people because of their religion.
And we are not slowing down.
Three weeks ago, we obtained a jury verdict against a man
who set fire to a mosque in Texas and sentenced for a man from Missouri for
threatening to kill members of a mosque.
In addition to protecting the safety of people of faith, we
are also protecting them against unjust discrimination.
In January, we filed a brief in a Montana court to defend
parents who claim that the state barred their children from a private school
scholarship program because they attend a religious school.
We also filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Archdiocese
of Washington, D.C., which was refused advertising space for having a religious
message—including “joy to the world” on Merry Christmas.
And, of course, we were proud to file a brief in support of
Jack Phillips.
We are taking steps to become even more effective.
In June I announced the Place to Worship Initiative. Under this initiative, the Department of
Justice is holding public events across America and improving training for
federal prosecutors about legal protections for houses of worship.
When I was in the Senate, we passed a law called the
Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA. Under RLUIPA, the Department of Justice can
file a civil action in court when religious groups are discriminated against in
zoning laws.
Under my tenure as Attorney General, we have not hesitated
to use this tool when necessary.
In June, we filed suit against a town in New Jersey that had
refused over and over again—for eight years—to let an Orthodox Jewish
congregation buy land for a synagogue.
And just last week we filed a brief in federal court
supporting the case of a Hindu temple in Maryland that claimed to have suffered
discrimination in its attempts to purchase land.
We are going to keep going to court. And I believe that we’re going to keep
winning.
Today I am announcing our next step: the Religious Liberty
Task Force, to be co-chaired by the Associate Attorney General and the
Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy—Jesse and Beth.
The Task Force will help the Department fully implement our
religious liberty guidance by ensuring that all Justice Department components
are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments
they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct
our operations. That includes making
sure that our employees know their duties to accommodate people of faith.
As the people in this room know, you have to practice what
you preach. We are also going to remain in contact with religious groups across
America to ensure that their rights are being protected. We have been holding listening sessions and
we will continue to host them in the coming weeks.
This administration is animated by that same American view
that has led us for 242 years: that every American has a right to believe,
worship, and exercise their faith in the public square.
This approach has served this country well. We are perhaps
the most religiously developed nation in the world and can take pride in
respecting all people as they fully exercise their faiths.
It is clear that these policies have furthered peace,
prosperity, freedom, lawfulness, and clarity.
As our nation grows order, we must not let it depart from
this magnificent tradition.
Now I have the pleasure of introducing Archbishop Joseph
Kurtz, someone who is an expert on these matters.
Archbishop Kurtz was ordained a priest of the Diocese of
Allentown in 1972. Over the next two
decades he served in a variety of capacities in the Diocese, including teaching
at two seminaries.
He was named a Monsignor in 1986 and appointed a pastor in
1988.
In 1999 Pope John Paul II appointed him Bishop of Knoxville
and in 2007 Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Archbishop of Louisville, where he
now leads the oldest inland diocese in the United States and the oldest
Archdiocese West of the Appalachias.
In 2010 he was elected Vice President of the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops and then served as President from 2013 to 2016.
In 2017 he was elected chairman of the Conference’s
Committee for Religious Liberty.
Please join me in welcoming Archbishop Joseph Kurtz.
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