Mahmoud v. Taylor

Because the conservatives on the Supreme Court are lowkey homophobic, they have made it easier for parents of kids in public schools to opt out of topics that make them uncomfortable. LGBTQ books, no thank you— evolution, not for my kids. If you're not a 5-4 Premium member, you're not hearing every episode! To hear this and other Premium-only episodes, access to our Slack community, and more, join at fivefourpod.com/support http://fivefourpod.com/support. 5-4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Transcriptions of each episode are available at fivefourpod.com http://fivefourpod.com/ Follow the show at @fivefourpod on most platforms. On BlueSky, find Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social, Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social, and Rhiannon @aywarhiannon.bsky.social. Our Sponsors: * Check out Mint Mobile and use my code mintmobile.com/fivefour for a great deal: https://www.mintmobile.com * Check out Quince and use my code FIVEFOUR for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We will hear argument first this morning in case 24297 Mahmoud versus Taylor.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about Mahmoud v. Taylor, a recent case ostensibly about the free exercise of religion for parents of students in public school. In 2022, the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland approved LGBTQ-inclusive books for its K-5 English curriculum. Three families sued the school district, arguing that requiring their children to read books with LGBTQ themes contradicted their religious beliefs, and that the school district had violated their right to religious freedom. The Supreme Court ruled in the family's favor, stating that the school district infringed on their

• 0:51Speaker 01

  free exercise of religion by requiring participation in a curriculum that conflicted with their beliefs.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  It's another example of the courts using religion to hide bigotry. We can't hide our children away from the reality of the people and the community that exist today, especially marginalized communities.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

• 1:17Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have shredded our civil liberties like Donald Trump shredding the Epstein files. I'm Peter. I'm here with Rhiannon.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  Hey.

• 1:30Peter Shamshiri?

  And Michael.

• 1:31Michael Liroff?

  Look, the man has to cover up his crimes. He's got things to do.

• 1:35Speaker 03

  There's shredding to be done.

• 1:36Michael Liroff?

  Yes.

• 1:37Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, it's so important to cover up your crimes.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  It's high on the to-do list right now. He's got a little star next to it, you know?

• 1:45Michael Liroff?

  Yes.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  Underlined, don't forget this. On the golden toilet at Mar-a-Lago, be shredding at the same time.

• 1:53Peter Shamshiri?

  And this is one of the unwritten rules of politics. You shouldn't foster a cult of anti-pedophile fanatics if you're a pedophile.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  That's right. Yeah.

• 2:05Peter Shamshiri?

  I've always said that. I think Chris Matthews should have put it in hardball.

• 2:09Speaker 03

  Like the number one rule of Fight Club or whatever, you know?

• 2:13Peter Shamshiri?

  Mm hmm. Absolutely.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Fundamental principles. But hey, guys, before we get any further, we should tell listeners about exciting news.

• 2:22Peter Shamshiri?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Exciting five to four merch news, news in merch. We have brand new merch, T-shirts, stickers, mugs, all kinds of stuff. We worked with a couple of really talented artists and we have some new designs. You know, the classic stuff, Scalia is dead and I dissent with a little Molotov cocktail.

• 2:45Peter Shamshiri?

  Allegedly.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Thing reference. Those are still there in the merch shop, but we have some new stuff as well. There are meteors involved.

• 2:56Peter Shamshiri?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Nature is involved. Insults are involved.

• 3:00Peter Shamshiri?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  And so.

• 3:02Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, it's it's beautiful stuff, I have to say, and.

• 3:05Michael Liroff?

  Very pleased with these designs.

• 3:07Peter Shamshiri?

  It's the first merch drop in a few years. And I have to say, we continue to have the best merch game in the podcast game.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 3:17Peter Shamshiri?

  We're the best to ever do it. This is the pinnacle of podcast merch. There's no question.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  No, no, for sure. What Supreme Court podcast has merch like this, you know?

• 3:28Peter Shamshiri?

  None of them.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  Not a single one.

• 3:31Michael Liroff?

  No.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  So people should check out the merch at our website. You can go to five four pod dot com, click on merch. That takes you to the dashery shop. Everything is there.

• 3:42Michael Liroff?

  It is a shame we don't have Epstein merch, though. Then it would be perfect.

• 3:46Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, we we couldn't do Epstein merch due to disagreement about whether it should be pro or anti among the hosts.

• 3:57Peter Shamshiri?

  All right. Today's case, Mahmoud v. Taylor. This is a case about the free exercise of religion, specifically the rights of parents with kids in public school to opt their kids out of instruction that violates their religious beliefs. This case dropped just a few weeks ago, one of the big cases at the end of the term. A school district in Montgomery County, Maryland, implemented an elementary school curriculum that included several books with LGBT characters or themes. The district also provided guidelines for teachers who received questions and perhaps complaints from students about the content.

• 4:38Peter Shamshiri?

  Some parents objected on religious grounds and sued, arguing that their right to freely exercise their religion should give them the option to opt their children out of instruction. And the Supreme Court, in a six to three decision, agreed with them. I have to say, folks, of the Supreme Court opinions we've read, and it's been many, literally hundreds, this one had the most pictures. There's like 50 pages of

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Just kids' books.

• 5:10Peter Shamshiri?

  Pictures of children's books, just like pages out of children's storybooks.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, and one side is being like, "Look at this disgusting children indoctrination." And the other side is being like, "Look at this beautiful inclusive curriculum." Yeah, it's really not more complicated or much more detailed than what Peter said. The Montgomery County School District in Maryland introduced LGBT inclusive books in their K through five ELA curriculum. This is English Language Arts, part of literacy curriculum in elementary schools. And originally, the school system did provide for an opt-out mechanism. Parents would be notified that this new curriculum was being introduced, and they

• 6:02Speaker 03

  were given the option to opt their children out of that instruction. Now, what happened with the opt-out option is that a ton of parents Used the opt out option and wanted to opt their kids out. And the Montgomery County School District said, you know what? We're introducing this as part, as an essential part of our literacy curriculum. And also having this many opt outs actually kind of disrupts literacy teaching and disrupts the classroom environment. Like imagine then you're trying to do a sort of like alternative curriculum or figure

• 6:42Speaker 03

  out how that time is used for all of the kids whose parents opted them out of the inclusive curriculum. So the school board, the school district takes the opt out option away and says, you know what? This is just going to be part of mandatory curriculum. LGBTQ themes through LGBT inclusive books and discussion are just going to be for all the children in our schools. So let's talk a little bit about these offensive and blasphemous books. There is a book where a prince marries a knight. A book where a puppy attends the pride parade.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Books where individual children sort of contend with and think about their gender identities. I'm going to read a little bit from, from some of these books. One about gender identity. Some may be confused that a kid like me can wear what I want and be proud and carefree. My friends defend my choices and place a bathroom like all rooms should be a safe space. Another where a child Chloe, her uncles are getting married. Mummy said, Chloe, I don't understand. Why is Uncle Bobby getting married? Bobby and Jamie love each other, said mommy. When grown up people love each other that much, sometimes they get married.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Do you guys feel scared? Do you guys feel the devil?

• 8:06Peter Shamshiri?

  Well, it's getting a little political.

• 8:08Michael Liroff?

  I feel myself becoming trans.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Do you feel Satan maybe?

• 8:12Michael Liroff?

  I'm being trans as we speak.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. So this is the material, the curriculum we're talking about. And, you know, we should be clear. This is curriculum within the total body of literacy curriculum. It's not like they were only reading gay books, you know?

• 8:30Speaker 03

  And trans books.

• 8:31Peter Shamshiri?

  They had straight books too, I'm sure.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  There are straight, there are straight books for sure.

• 8:36Peter Shamshiri?

  Berenstain Bears.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:38Peter Shamshiri?

  Classic straight book.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. And as part of these classroom discussions, as part of this focus in the literacy curriculum, teachers also had some guidelines about how to lead these discussions, about how to answer children's questions that came up. Guidelines like if a child said, oh no, like a boy can't be a girl. Teachers were given guidelines that said, like, you can, you know, start a response by saying, like, hey, that's hurtful and talking about why that is. Now, when the opt out provision was taken away by the school district, that's when this lawsuit was filed. Groups of parents representing sort of like a diverse array of religions, Muslim parents, Catholic, Greek, Orthodox, among others.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  I saw in some writings that Jewish parents also joined the lawsuit. They sued and said, we should have proper notice. We should have an opt out choice in this curriculum because this focus on LGBT themes, that kind of inclusion in our children's public school education, that violates our free exercise of our religion, that violates our ability to freely exercise our religion and raise our children with our religious beliefs. So, these parents in Montgomery County sued the school district and that's how we get to the Supreme Court.

• 9:58Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. So, let's talk about the law here. There are two dueling principles in this case. One is the idea that parents have a right to direct the religious upbringing of their children. The seminal case on that is from 1972, Wisconsin v. Yoder, where Amish families had said that compulsory education beyond the eighth grade violated their religious liberty and the court agreed. Wisconsin had this law that said you have to go to School until you're 16 and the Amish said, well, what about 14? You know? Yeah. And the court said, okay. But then there's another principle established in a 1990 case called Employment Division v.

• 10:43Peter Shamshiri?

  Smith, which says that just because a law burdens religion does not mean it violates the Constitution. What violates the Constitution is when religion is targeted or singled out. In legal speak, if a law is neutral and generally applicable, it won't violate anyone's freedom of religion. So if there's a law that says everyone has to do X, Y, and Z, and some religious people say, well, that that sort of violates my religion. I don't like that. Generally speaking, that law is actually going to be fine because it's neutral and generally applicable, right? As long as it's not targeting religion in some way, it's fine. Now, Employment Division v.

• 11:27Peter Shamshiri?

  Smith was a Scalia decision, but it was very much of a different time and conservatives often hate it now because they would prefer a world where there are essentially legal carve outs for religious life and practice, right?

• 11:43Michael Liroff?

  And important context here is like the religious carve out being asked for in Employment Division v. Smith was to use psychedelic drugs in a religious ritual. And Scalia was a big drug warrior.

• 11:56Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 11:56Michael Liroff?

  And was big into the war on drugs. And so you can see how, you know, it shook out this way.

• 12:02Peter Shamshiri?

  Right. So Sam Alito writes the majority here, and he says that the Constitution guarantees these parents the right to opt out of this instruction. He says that requiring the children to read the books would, quote, substantially interfere with their religious development. Now, first, he analyzes the storybooks themselves. And folks, if there's a better metaphor for the current state of American law than the justices of the Supreme Court trying to analyze a bunch of books for literal babies, I have not found it.

• 12:39Peter Shamshiri?

  Here is a long Alito quote. He says, quote, "Take, for example, the message sent by the books concerning same-sex marriage. The book Prince and Knight clearly conveys the message that same-sex marriage should be accepted by all as a cause for celebration. The young reader is guided to feel distressed at the prince's failure to find a princess, and then to celebrate when the prince meets his male partner. The book relates that, 'On the two men's wedding day, the air filled with cheer and laughter, for the prince and his shining knight would live happily ever after. Those celebrating the same-sex wedding are not just family members and close friends, but the entire kingdom. For young children, to whom this

• 13:20Peter Shamshiri?

  and the other storybooks are targeted, such celebration is liable to be processed as having moral connotations. If this same-sex marriage makes everyone happy and leads to joyous celebration by all, doesn't that mean it is in every respect a good thing?'"

• 13:37Michael Liroff?

  This was unreal. I was floored reading this.

• 13:42Peter Shamshiri?

  I think that what he's saying is that this would be okay constitutionally if there was one homophobe in the kingdom. And I think that's why every children's book, in order to be constitutionally acceptable, it needs one homophobe, and it needs to treat him with respect. That's what I think Alito is getting at here. That's what I think is missing from these books, realistically.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  It's so weird to read in this sort of impermissible, what he calls "moral connotation" to LGBT books or to themes, and act like that's the only moral connotation in children's books. Children's books have moral connotations. Like, a fucking kid's book about the United States' flag and red, white, and blue has moral connotation, you know?

• 14:35Peter Shamshiri?

  Right. Also, just to be clear, the reason that the entire kingdom has to celebrate a royal wedding is because it's royal, not because it's gay. Not because it's gay. It's because if you don't celebrate the royal wedding... Then you are rejecting the monarchy. It's a crime.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  You'll be beheaded.

• 14:54Peter Shamshiri?

  They don't put that in the book, but it's true.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah, you'll be thrown in the Bastille. Every Disney movie ends with a marriage that the whole kingdom celebrates.

• 15:05Peter Shamshiri?

  All right. Then there's Uncle Bobby's wedding, where two guys get married and everyone is excited for them. Right? Alito says, quote, "The book's main character, Chloe, does not share this excitement. I don't understand," she exclaims, "why is Uncle Bobby getting married? The book is coy about the precise reason for Chloe's question, but the question is used to tee up a direct message to young readers. Bobby and Jamie love each other, says Mummy. When grown up people love each other that much, sometimes they get married. The book therefore presents a specific, if subtle, message about marriage. It asserts that two people can get married regardless of whether they are of the same

• 15:47Peter Shamshiri?

  or opposite sex, so long as they love each other." Which, by the way, is... We're veering into objective fact territory with that one. Like, two people can get married.

• 15:59Michael Liroff?

  This is the law of the land.

• 16:01Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, you know, if of legal age, et cetera.

• 16:05Michael Liroff?

  Yes.

• 16:06Peter Shamshiri?

  We're starting to just get into the realm of, like, 100% facts. Then there are the books on gender identity, one of which asks the reader which pronouns apply to them, and the other features a biological female who identifies as a boy. At this point, Alito is absolutely fuming. He's losing his fucking mind. Now, in general, Alito's point here is that these books aren't just referencing gay marriage. For example, they are pushing a normative message about gay marriage. And he's talking about it like a complete freak, but I actually think that that basic point is correct. The books are, in fact, advocating for the tolerance and inclusion of LGBT people.

• 16:50Peter Shamshiri?

  I think, you know, that's the purpose of them and, to some degree, the purpose of the curriculum. So... Alito says that altogether, these books, quote, "impose upon children a set of values and beliefs that are hostile to their parents' religious beliefs." He basically says, "This is like Yoder, the Amish case." But in my mind, it's a really awkward comparison because in Yoder, they were arguing that like multiple years of secular schooling would undermine their religious beliefs, right? That seems a little more defensible than the idea that like a handful of books could, quote, "substantially interfere with a parent's ability to like raise their child per their religion," right?

• 17:35Peter Shamshiri?

  Like, what we're talking about is a few days of instruction in this case, right? I don't see how you can just be like, "Yeah, this is like Yoder." It's just not like that case at all. That case was about like the holistic output of secular education over several years. I'm not even entirely sure that I agree with Yoder, but to make that comparison like, "Yes, it's kind of like that," I don't think so.

• 17:57Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Peter Shamshiri?

  And the other thing about Yoder was that it was about like this very specific community, right? The Amish, one of the most unique religious communities in the country and a very insular community that sort of like relies on that insularity to propagate their religion. And so I, just to like draw this line, it's like being like, "Yeah, that's sort of like the Amish not wanting to mingle with the rest of secular society is a lot like me not wanting to read this gay book." Like, I don't think so. I don't think that's right, actually.

• 18:26Michael Liroff?

  Right, no. Yeah.

• 18:28Peter Shamshiri?

  He also says that these books go beyond advocating for mutual respect. The school district had basically said like, "Look, all we're doing really is trying to put out a curriculum that advocates for the respect of LGBT people." I think he's correct in some limited cases. The book that asks readers like what their pronouns are... That's having the child like engage with the question of their gender identity, which I think you could argue is going beyond like mutual respect. But he mashes that together with the gay marriage books, which as far as I can tell, are just about like literally respect, like respect your gay uncles. Like, that's the whole point of that book.

• 19:10Peter Shamshiri?

  And I don't see how we could say that that is going beyond mutual respect. I think that what's happening here is that Sam Alito's idea of respecting LGBT people might deviate from traditional definitions of the word respect. You know, I sort of feel like that's what's happening there.

• 19:29Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, I think that's right. His idea of respect is, well, look, we won't like lock you up in a torture dungeon like you deserve.

• 19:36Peter Shamshiri?

  You disgust me. You shouldn't be able to get married. But in this very general abstract way, I respect you.

• 19:44Michael Liroff?

  Right, right. No, I think it's worth unpacking a little bit the religious beliefs here because that Alito's imagining, right, that's animating this because like, again, like the gay marriage books, right? It's the plot, the detailed analysis he does is just like two gay guys get married and everybody's happy. If this interferes with your religious beliefs, like your religious beliefs are either, one, that gay people don't exist, two, that they exist, but there's like something deviant and bad about them that we should reject. And three, that they shouldn't have any like normal, social, you know, participation like marriage.

• 20:28Michael Liroff?

  And people shouldn't celebrate that. And if those are your religious beliefs, frankly, I don't think that the public education should, should give a shit about that. Like simply, there are churches that are anti-Semitic.

• 20:43Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Michael Liroff?

  That doesn't mean you can't have kids books where like the main character has a Jewish star and is celebrated like that's like, sorry.

• 20:50Peter Shamshiri?

  I mean, that's the fundamental problem here and like you end up dancing around it a bit, but there is like this real question of why the constitution should tolerate this level of bigotry. I actually think that the solution to it is like relatively obvious from a legal perspective, which is like there are equal protection concerns here too.

• 21:10Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 21:10Peter Shamshiri?

  It's not just the free exercise of religion that matters here. What about the equal protection of LGBT people, right? You need to factor that in. You can't be treating the tolerance of LGBT people as if it's like this separate thing that matters less than the tolerance of straight people or other religions or whatever. All right. Alito then talks about some of the guidance provided to teachers if children object to any of this instruction or raise questions about the instruction. If a child says two men can't get married, quote, "Teachers are encouraged to respond, two men who love each other can decide they want to get married. There are so many different kinds of families and ways to be a family."

• 21:56Peter Shamshiri?

  Again, veering into fact.

• 22:01Peter Shamshiri?

  Pretty much objectively true. If a child says a boy can't become a girl, the teacher is encouraged to say the comment is hurtful. This particular piece of guidance is what the conservatives hone in on. Thomas mentions it in his concurrence too. Alito characterizes this as, quote, "encouraging the teachers to correct the children and accuse them of being hurtful when they express a degree of religious confusion." But, hold on, right? The child did not express religious confusion. Yeah. The child made a comment about whether transgender people are real, right? If the child said, "My religion doesn't believe that people can switch genders," that would be a different thing.

• 22:45Peter Shamshiri?

  That might be religious confusion, and then the teacher might be obligated to respond in a different way. Right. I don't think responding "that's hurtful" to a child saying, "My religion doesn't believe this," would be the appropriate response. But that's not what the child said in this example, right? The child just said, "Boys can't be girls." To characterize that as religious confusion is... You're leading the witness a little bit here. I don't know about this. Yeah. You know, to provide a sort of counter example, let's say there's a book that includes a priest, and there's a feisty young Protestant in this class. And he says, "Catholics practice idolatry, and they have besmirched God's First Amendment, and they will all see hellfire." Right?

• 23:30Peter Shamshiri?

  And then a teacher responds that that is hurtful. Has the teacher run afoul of the First Amendment? If the rule here is that a teacher can't respond like that to a sincerely expressed religious belief, then the answer is yes, that that teacher has violated the First Amendment. And when that young Protestant says Catholics will all go to hell, the teacher has to say something else. The teacher has to be like, "Your religion is cool." Like, "We all have different beliefs, and yours are that every Catholic in this room will go to hell," right? Yeah. Surely, surely that's not the rule we're actually operating on here. And I don't think Alito actually thinks it's the rule. This is a specific carve-out for the gays. That's what this actually is. Right. I think the majority here is really inadvertently highlighting

• 24:15Peter Shamshiri?

  the danger of trying to accommodate religious beliefs that are inherently anti-pluralistic, that are inherently exclusionary. You can't actually accommodate those religious beliefs in a way that works in a public school setting, because a public school setting needs to be pluralistic. It needs to include every student.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors here about, I think, what actually the free exercise of your religion is. What this majority opinion is saying is that to be able to freely exercise their religion, they have to be completely... Free of basically like any dialogue that contradicts at all, any language, any vocabulary that would present a different lifestyle, a different viewpoint. It's sort of like protecting almost in this like baby sensitive, put it on a pedestal sense that anything different is offensive to being and exercising your particular religion.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  And I say it's like smoke and mirrors because anti-LGBT religious beliefs are hurtful to people who are different than you. It is hurtful.

• 25:35Peter Shamshiri?

  Well, you can't, you can't use that harsh terminology, Rihanna. That's the problem.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  Right, right. It is hurtful. It is different. Other people believe otherwise. And to identify, to label that you would be introduced to disagreement about your religious beliefs as an inhibition on your ability to exercise your religion and hold those religious beliefs is like you're saying, Peter, it's fundamentally anti-pluralistic. It's fundamentally anti-democratic. It's fundamentally sort of insular and protective of only certain religious beliefs over others,

• 26:19Speaker 03

  even though free exercise, the Establishment Clause are supposed to be about religious pluralism.

• 26:27Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 26:27Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, you know, I think like there's a way of thinking about tolerance as sort of like a mutual pact and you only get access to it if you join it, right? Like demanding tolerance for intolerant beliefs is like signing a contract to do work, not doing the work and then demanding payment, right? Like you're like a mutual thing.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:54Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Peter Shamshiri?

  If you imagine that all this is, is a rule that says, we don't have to tolerate this gay shit, then it makes sense. You can see the world that they're envisioning, right? But if you actually take the rule that they're claiming to follow to their logical conclusion.

• 27:11Peter Shamshiri?

  There is no tolerance anymore within the public school setting, right? As long as the objection can be framed as religious, there's no need for tolerance. Every child can express their intolerance towards other races, religions, sexualities, gender identities, doesn't matter, as long as they imagine that it's religious.

• 27:33Michael Liroff?

  I think I've told this story before, but back in 2006, I had season tickets to the Heat when I lived in Miami, and they went to the finals. And every game I went to, there were these protesters outside with all these signs saying that we worshiped false idols, with like pictures of Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal and the Larry O'Brien trophy, and literally being like, you're going to hell. You're eternally damned. You're going to burn in hell for worshiping false idols. And these people were nasty. They would like yell at you and scream at you. And what, could you do that in a public school? Is that protected?

• 28:14Michael Liroff?

  Can you go to your high school game as a student there?

• 28:19Peter Shamshiri?

  And not only that, if a teacher says that's hurtful.

• 28:21Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 28:22Peter Shamshiri?

  Has the teacher now crossed the line?

• 28:24Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, violated your constitutional rights.

• 28:27Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Peter Shamshiri?

  One final note here. There's something that Alito says here, and I looked back through his opinions in similar cases, and it's something he's brought up before.

• 28:39Peter Shamshiri?

  One thing that the school district said was, if you want religious education, you can go to private religious schools, right? This is a public school. We have different obligations. We have this obligation to be pluralistic, right? And Alito basically says, look, private school's expensive. And therefore, like, public schools must be willing to accommodate this, not just by allowing people to go to private school, but within the public school setting, which is a level of accommodation that you'll never see in other contexts, right?

• 29:12Michael Liroff?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:12Peter Shamshiri?

  It's so interesting now to see conservatives be like, Ooh, but that's expensive. Maybe this is a little bit of a stretch, but like so is running a PAC. But you seem to believe that that's like a fundamental right and you haven't created pathways for normal people who can't afford it to have access to similar speech, right?

• 29:32Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 29:32Peter Shamshiri?

  I mean, the premise here is that money is an obstacle to you affirming your constitutional rights.

• 29:40Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Peter Shamshiri?

  This is something that like the left talks about in different contexts, right?

• 29:44Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 29:44Peter Shamshiri?

  You should get access to a lawyer provided by the government, right? Because it's in the Constitution. It's not something that I've ever seen the right embrace in any way, except right here, right? This is, this is sort of the equivalent of saying like, well, there's a constitutional right to bear arms. So guns are expensive. I guess the government should provide you with guns.

• 30:07Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 30:08Peter Shamshiri?

  Right?

• 30:09Michael Liroff?

  Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I actually, I like the Citizens United one too. I was thinking about this because like the original case about money and speech, they talked about how you need money to access speech in Buckley v. Uvalde. And we're like, and that's why rich people should be able to spend whatever they want and flood the, flood the fields, essentially.

• 30:33Peter Shamshiri?

  Right.

• 30:34Michael Liroff?

  It went the exact opposite way. It's like when money specifically allows you to access a right that rich people want access to, it's like, yeah, let them go fucking hog wild and, and crowd out everyone else from exercising their rights. And tough shit for you.

• 30:53Peter Shamshiri?

  Suddenly Alito is like concerned about the disproportionate allocations of capitalism.

• 30:58Michael Liroff?

  Yeah. Right, right. Well, and it's also like back to the equal protection idea, like, okay, so wow, you want religious education, you don't have to pay for that. But you want an education, you want your kids to get an education where you as their gay parents are treated as a full and equal citizen. You do have to pay for that, apparently, according to Alito. You have to pay out the ass for that. Sorry. Sucks for you.

• 31:28Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 31:29Michael Liroff?

  So Clarence Thomas saw Alito getting to write all the bigotry and was like, I can't, I can't let that stand. I need to get in on this. Yeah, I want some of this action for sure. Yeah. He writes a concurrence, his whole thing, I didn't find it to be a particularly interesting concurrence, actually, but his whole thing is like a soft history and tradition analysis, where he was saying like, look, in Yoder, the Amish practice had been going on forever, for centuries, whereas this practice of compulsory education was rather new. And so he compares that here to religious beliefs of hating gay people going back forever,

• 32:13Michael Liroff?

  he doesn't say that, but he implies it, with sex education being new. Which is interesting, because you might be wondering, I thought this was a reading section for five-year-olds, not sex education. And yeah, you'd be correct, this is not sex education. But he has this whole thing about sex education and how teaching kids sexuality and all this stuff is new and not like well-established. And then at the end, he says, he says, of course, the storybook curriculum is also different in kind from traditional sex education. And then quotes a brief where it says, the storybooks are not sex education materials. So it's like, what the fuck are we talking about here? Two people getting married is not sex education just because they're gay instead of straight.

• 32:58Peter Shamshiri?

  Well, it's making him think about sex. So I feel like that's what's happening. It's like, they're like, this is sort of like sex education. Like, this is a little bit perverted, because when they see two gay people, all they can think about is them fucking. They're like, oh my god, they're gonna fuck.

• 33:15Michael Liroff?

  Oh, it's, it's so, it's so stupid.

• 33:24Peter Shamshiri?

  It's so silly.

• 33:25Michael Liroff?

  It's so stupid.

• 33:26Peter Shamshiri?

  It's ridiculous.

• 33:27Michael Liroff?

  It's just really, yeah, it's really gross. I mean, as far as Thomas's opinions go, it's not the craziest, but it's just gross. It's just gross. These guys just clearly... Hate gay people, right? Like that's and hate trans people like that's what's underneath all this. And there was another thing that Thomas wanted that talked a lot about in this opinion that I wanted to talk about, which is, he says, "The curriculum itself betrays an attempt to impose ideological conformity," which I thought was wild. I thought that's absolutely wild. Like, the whole point is respecting people who are different from you, right? Like, that's what this is, that's what this is about. And framing that as conformity

• 34:11Michael Liroff?

  is just demanding conformity to your viewpoint.

• 34:16Peter Shamshiri?

  Right, right. I mean, let's put a pin in this because I'm going to talk about Thomas's hypocrisy, or what I view as Thomas's hypocrisy in a little bit. But it's very interesting the way he talks about ideological conformity here. And what he's talking about is conformity. He's correct. It's conformity to the tolerance of LGBT people. You know, when you learn math, you will also be taught conformity, right? Conformity to certain mathematical principles.

• 34:43Michael Liroff?

  You carry the one. Like, everybody carries the one. You conform.

• 34:48Peter Shamshiri?

  It's a way to make everything seem scary. It's like, oh, it's conformity. It's teaching conformity. It's like, right. If there was zero conformity, you wouldn't really need school, but whatever.

• 34:57Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, no, but again, like, the conformity that they're scared of is like, being happy that two gay people got married and are happy together. Like, the right to tell your kids, no, that's gross, and you should be angry about it. You should be like, that's disgusting, and they're going to hell.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Which you still have the right to do. That's the thing. Like, you still have the right to do when they're taught.

• 35:19Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, just in private, you just-

• 35:21Peter Shamshiri?

  But they want to see them in the books. They want the kid, where's the one, where's the kingdom's homophobe?

• 35:26Michael Liroff?

  Where's the homophobe?

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, they want the transphobe in the bathroom with the kid. Yeah.

• 35:31Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah. When the little girl is like, "I feel warm inside when I identify as a boy." They want one person to yell at her, right in her face. "You can't play boy sports."

• 35:46Speaker 03

  And that's the only way their religion is safe.

• 35:49Michael Liroff?

  Yes. Yeah, that's right.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Let's pause here and take a break.

• 35:53Peter Shamshiri?

  All right, we're back.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Sotomayor writes the dissent here, joined by Kagan and Jackson, of course. This opinion six, three, just like you thought it was gonna be. And she starts by contextualizing like this LGBT curriculum within like normal age appropriate curriculum for children at these ages, right? Like she talks about like instruction in literacy in school. You read books about many different kinds of characters. You read fiction and nonfiction. You read different genres and the development and acquisition of literacy skills in kids means that kids practice and think about answering questions about characters, drawing inferences about a character's behavior or emotions.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  This is part of learning how to read beyond phonics, beyond sounding out words. Like this is learning fluency in English, actually. And so just contextualizing it there, like it's not, you know, it's not different from reading any other kinds of books and the instruction around any other kinds of books in terms of the skills that are being taught, which is actually what, you know, public school curriculum is about, is teaching skills. Now she goes, she writes a lot about precedent on the free exercise clause because she's really taking issue with Alito's, the new test, kind of the very real threat test.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  And Sotomayor is saying nowhere in our precedent, nowhere where we've ruled on the free exercise clause, have we said that some government policy that poses a threat, even a very real threat, is actually a violation of people's right to freely exercise their religion. Simply being exposed to ideas that are contrary to your beliefs is not obstructing your right to freely exercise. She juxtaposes, I think, very deftly, very sharply, Kennedy v. Bremerton, the, the football coach preying on the field. You know, this was kids being exposed to. Specific prayer for representing a single religion at a school event.

• 38:00Michael Liroff?

  By an authority figure.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  By an authority figure, by a school official, a school employee, somebody who represents the school by being employed by them. And the court rules that's not a violation of the establishment clause. That's not, you know, the government sort of lifting the establishment of one religion over the other. But here, in this case, the exposure to kids' books about gay and trans people violates people's right to exercise their own faith. This is illogical in, by its terms on its face. She goes on by kind of explaining like, parents have the right to raise their children with their own faith traditions, but this majority is interpreting that to mean that parents have the right to raise their children without any of that exposure to any idea that might contradict those beliefs.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  And it's like handing a parenting layup to a group of parents. Like, you're not actually instructing your kids on your sincerely held religious beliefs. If what the majority opinion in the Supreme Court and the law is going to do for you is just say, your kids have to never be exposed to anything that's different. Right? It's not actually like raising your kids meaningfully in a certain faith tradition or political tradition or a political ideology to just have it said to you at home or in a religious service and then never engage with it. You know, it's quite into intellectual, of course, which you can argue that a lot of religious tradition is.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  So, you know, this is, this is me, this is not sort of my, or, but this is me just being like, it's just, here's the easiest parenting you can do and you're welcome. You know what I mean?

• 39:39Peter Shamshiri?

  One of my critiques of the dissent is that I actually think she like hangs too much on this idea that it's just exposure.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:46Peter Shamshiri?

  Gay people.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:47Peter Shamshiri?

  The majority basically says, well, it doesn't matter if it's just exposure or, or it's not, like, that's not part of our legal test that we're creating here, but also it's more than exposure. Like, they take that angle, but I don't think we should be hanging our hat on that. And I think the reason that she does is because she doesn't want to go the extra step. And say, "We don't need to tolerate bigotry just because it's religious bigotry." Mm-hmm. Like, and that's the rule that we should be creating. And I'm disappointed that in a world where you're never gonna fucking win these, you're never gonna win these free exercise cases if you're the libs, right? Right. Don't try to create these half-baked ass rules where it's like, "Well, this is just exposure," right? Because you can very easily argue, "Well, they're not

• 40:30Peter Shamshiri?

  just trying to expose people to LGBT." It's not just witnessing an LGBT couple, right? The book wants you to think it's okay, which is true. Right. The book does want you to think it's okay.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:41Peter Shamshiri?

  The reason that this is totally fine and constitutional is because there's no fucking carve-out for anti-LGBT bigots. Right. And it doesn't matter if their bigotry is because they're Catholic or whatever.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:53Peter Shamshiri?

  It shouldn't matter, right? There are other concerns in the public school setting, and Sotomayor doesn't go there. And so actually, she makes a lot of independently good points, but I don't think holistically, I liked the dissent very much because of that, because she didn't cut to the heart of it. Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  I agree with you because what she's hanging her hat on, I think in the end, and the distinction that she's drawing or trying to make, is that nobody here with their children engaging or learning from LGBT curriculum, what Sotomayor is saying is that's not coercive. It's not coercing parents into actively violating their religious beliefs. This is the distinction she draws, but she's using mere exposure, right? As like, no, you can't say that's a very real threat. She's like framing it as mere exposure versus other cases where, like Yoder, the Amish parents and public school

• 41:50Speaker 03

  education, you know, in Yoder, she says, "It wasn't that their children went to school and were taught things that they disagreed with." It was about compelling parents of a certain faith to do something that actively their religion forbade, which was sending them to school. And there's another case called Ling, where a group of Native Americans brought a challenge to a highway. The government was, you know, proposing to build a highway that was going to cross through an area where this group of Native Americans held like religious rituals. And the Supreme Court ruled against that, ruled against the Native Americans. But they said even, yeah, this highway could and will interfere significantly with people's

• 42:35Speaker 03

  ability to pursue like spiritual fulfillment according to their own religious beliefs. But they're not being coerced into violating their religious beliefs. And so this is the distinction that Sotomayor is drawing, right? And like, are you actively being coerced? Are you coerced into actively violating your religion? Or is this kind of just mere exposure? And I think that's right. I don't think this is the most powerful argument against. I think it is an argument against. I feel the lack of like a gap in the dissent that is not squarely calling out. We don't do constitutional religious protection for bigotry, for anti-pluralism, you know?

• 43:18Peter Shamshiri?

  Again, to be a little bit nerdy, I feel like that gap can be filled by the equal protection clause. I feel like you can say there are multiple constitutional amendments playing against each other here. Yes, these people have the right to exercise their religion, but people are afforded equal protection of the laws. And that means you can't marginalize gay people within public school classrooms.

• 43:41Michael Liroff?

  Right. I also think like, big picture, dodging this issue feels like such a miss when religious fueled bigotry is like one of the animating forces in American politics and American life right now. Like, how can you just ignore it? How can you just pretend like that's not the figurative and literal elephant in the room? Or the double figurative elephant in the room?

• 44:06Peter Shamshiri?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Michael Liroff?

  Since it's Republicans.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, what you see here then is the Supreme Court weighing in, weighing quite explicitly in on legitimizing bigotry, saying it's legally protected. The Constitution protects your right to be religiously bigoted against other people. And, you know, to me, it's more than like a First Amendment thing where, yes, you can say and believe things that are different from other people. You can even express those beliefs and opinions. They can be hurtful to others. But what the Supreme Court is legitimizing here legally is that one group of people can be hateful, can be bigoted, and they are constitutionally protected

• 44:52Speaker 03

  from having to contend with the fact that they disagree, that their beliefs are hurtful, that their beliefs maybe don't comport with reality, aren't accepted by a greater majority. This is the legitimization of bigotry, not just to give people the right to have like different beliefs, you know? This is the legitimization of bigotry in terms of a legitimization of its practice, of building it in and protecting it in a way that these same conservatives would argue that the First Amendment is neutral on these kinds of things.

• 45:30Michael Liroff?

  Look, just today, as of the day we're recording this, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, said about Donald Trump being nearly assassinated a year ago, "God miraculously saved the president's life. I think it's undeniable." And he did it for an obvious purpose. His presidency and his life-

• 45:51Peter Shamshiri?

  To protect the Epstein files.

• 45:52Michael Liroff?

  Right, that's right. His presidency and his life are the fruits of divine providence. He points that out all the time, and he's right to do so. Like, this is, like, there's a religious cult that is building concentration camps, driving gay people out of public life, and destroying the federal government.

• 46:14Peter Shamshiri?

  It's interesting that we don't think about it like that anymore, because when all of us were coming up politically, it was the Bush administration. And it was very expressly religious, very expressly evangelical, and that's how people thought about politics, religious people versus non-religious people, or less religious people. And I think people don't think about it in those terms anymore, mostly because the religious people- Sort of like revealed themselves over the course of the Trump era. Like, they used to sort of present as like, well, you know, we live austere, disciplined lives. We abstain from sinning and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I think the Trump era revealed is actually no, that what they do is

• 46:57Peter Shamshiri?

  almost the opposite. They participate in a sort of like cultural and emotional decadence.

• 47:02Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 47:02Peter Shamshiri?

  Where they get whatever they want and they seek out like immediate satisfaction. They just sort of cloak that in their religion. And it's interesting that they now sort of like legally get to still put forth the cloak, right? Like, oh, we have these like religious objections. Even though I think everyone sort of understands that what they are is not like people guided by their religious beliefs. What they are are people who are guided by selfishness and decadence.

• 47:34Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 47:34Peter Shamshiri?

  Who shroud that in religion.

• 47:37Michael Liroff?

  Right, right. The religious theme to Bush's first campaign, he was supposedly reinventing conservatism as compassionate conservatism, which is, again, totally unmasked in the Trump era. When the conservatives are in all-in-out war on empathy. They literally talk about empathy like it's in evil. So, yeah, it's definitely a different paradigm. But when you're talking about religious privileges to opt out of things in public school, you can't not think about slippery slopes. And we are on the 100-year anniversary of the Scopes Trial, and it is worth considering whether or not the next step in this

• 48:22Michael Liroff?

  will be people objecting to the teaching of evolution in biology and the teaching of the Big Bang in physics. And it's 100 years later. I mean, Peter said it earlier, that the actual rule is, is basically that like, well, gay people are gross, right? That's the real rule underneath this opinion. But if you take the actual rule as stated, there's absolutely no reason why a religious parent couldn't opt their kid out of teaching of evolution.

• 48:56Peter Shamshiri?

  Or anything, literally anything. I mean, and-

• 48:59Michael Liroff?

  Dinosaurs, the age of the earth, all that shit.

• 49:03Peter Shamshiri?

  Weather.

• 49:03Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 49:04Peter Shamshiri?

  God does it. You know, I mean, what- There's no end to the potential opt outs and it presents all matter of logistical difficulties for public schools, obviously, right?

• 49:14Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 49:14Peter Shamshiri?

  And the actual function, for the most part, is just to create a chilling effect because schools won't want to add LGBT books to the curriculum if they know it's going to create this big opt out problem where you have all these complaining parents, students need to get notice and opt out, and then you basically have to like handle them separately, teach them something else, right? Fucking substitute teacher needs to come in and put on a straight movie. The actual function here is to just sort of scare schools away from teaching anything that might offend a Christian. And it's really important to like, just understand that this is really fundamentally designed

• 49:56Peter Shamshiri?

  to undermine public schooling, to create this private religious veto power over the curricula in public schools.

• 50:06Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, I mean, you can imagine like, if you live in a district that like 50% of the kids opt out of evolution, is the district just going to not teach evolution? What are they going to do about that? Like, what are they going to do when half the kids don't want to learn, or the parents, rather, don't want their kids to learn basic biology? Do you just not even teach biology at all? And what does that mean for you as a parent? You know, if you want your kid to learn evolution, you get to pay for the expensive private school now. You know, part of me thinks that this is just, we talked in the, our last Patreon episode

• 50:46Michael Liroff?

  about the court being run by this sort of amorphous, multi-headed organization that's always in sort of conversation with itself, that has no one leader. And I suspect at least some of the justices are hoping that like, people understand. This is just gay shit. Don't go trying to make your public school teach creationism or intelligent design. I'm sure like Roberts or someone doesn't want to see that case. But the problem is there are a lot of fucking nuts out there. There are a lot of nuts out there. And once you give them this power, Yeah. somebody's gonna go for it in the next five years.

• 51:25Peter Shamshiri?

  Hundred percent.

• 51:26Michael Liroff?

  For sure.

• 51:26Peter Shamshiri?

  Like hundred percent.

• 51:27Michael Liroff?

  For sure.

• 51:28Peter Shamshiri?

  I mean, this stuff

• 51:28Michael Liroff?

  For sure, for sure.

• 51:29Peter Shamshiri?

  Gets circulated on the right, in, in right wing religious communities. They are very aware of the political power they hold at like the school level, at the school district level.

• 51:41Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, on the point of like the relationship between the Supreme Court as an institution and the rest of, let's say, the right wing movement in the United States. There's a specific relationship here that's illuminated in this case between the Supreme Court and religious people, social conservatives, families, conservative families, where the Supreme Court is able to hand a win clearly to political conservatives, social conservatives, hand that win to them under the guise of religious freedom and what the Constitution says.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  And how does the Supreme Court benefit? The Supreme Court benefits in this relationship and the dynamics here by being able to say, well, oh, sometimes the rule in favor of like religious minorities. The named plaintiff here is a Muslim, our Muslim parents. But what you see in this relationship and in this dynamic is that it's conservatives aligning in bad faith and often only through like a sort of tokenism, it's superficial, aligning with some minorities sometimes on these issues, but really only because the results, it's still results oriented. It's only because it suits the right. It suits the broader right wing movement.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  And religious groups tend toward social political conservatism. And it's so easy in the right wing political project, in the conservative political project in this country, to cover what are political beliefs.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Conservative social beliefs in sincerely held religious beliefs. And so this is, this is why sometimes there will be some like bone thrown at a minority group, particularly in free exercise or establishment cases, because those are about religious beliefs and the practice of religion. And it's only because actually these six conservative Christians see that this result ultimately benefits Christians.

• 53:59Michael Liroff?

  Yeah, they love doing this, right? Like they, they got an Asian plaintiff to kill affirmative action. Like they, they love grabbing a minority to stand in for them for, you know, a legal fight that will ultimately hurt those minorities in the long run. All this is doing is establishing a place of privilege for dominant religious beliefs that the majority justice is ascribed to. And, you know, if you're Muslim, this opinion is going to hurt you more than it helps you in American public life.

• 54:34Peter Shamshiri?

  This case got me thinking about another First Amendment issue, which is free speech in schools, because the Roberts Court has been very unwilling to recognize the free speech rights of students, right? If you remember Morse v. Frederick, there was a student who held up a sign that said, "Bong Hits for Jesus", which the court said was not protected by the First Amendment. Way back in the eighties, you had Hazelwood v. Colmeyer, where the court said it was okay that a school censored stories about teen pregnancy and divorce in the school newspaper, right? We did that a few months back. And the whole rationale is like, well, public schools have to be able to control the learning environment. So in Hazelwood, the court said that the school can censor student newspapers because schools need to be able to control the curriculum.

• 55:19Peter Shamshiri?

  And the school's need to control the curriculum trumps the speech rights of the student journalists. But then here, the school's need to control its curriculum is apparently outweighed by the parents' First Amendment rights. So, students don't have the right to make jokes about drugs or write about pregnancy, but parents' First Amendment rights are so powerful that they can reach into the schools and block elements of the curriculum from being applied to their kids. There is a really fundamental hypocrisy in how they talk about the First Amendment in these contexts. I'm gonna read from the Clarence Thomas concurrence in Morse v. Frederick, the bong hits for Jesus case. He says, "During the colonial era, private schools and tutors offered the only educational

• 56:03Peter Shamshiri?

  opportunity for children, and teachers managed classrooms with an iron hand. Public schooling arose in part as a way to educate those too poor to afford private schools. Because public schools were initially created as substitutes for private schools, when states developed public education systems in the early 1800s, no one doubted the government's ability to educate and discipline children as private schools did. Like their private counterparts, early public schools were not places for freewheeling debates or exploration of competing ideas. Rather, teachers instilled a core of common values in students and taught them self-control." So, according to Thomas, public schools have an almost authoritarian mandate, right?

• 56:48Peter Shamshiri?

  They are not places for debate or competing ideas. They instead instill a core of common values. Here, in this case, in Mahmoud, he complains about them trying to initiate conformity among the students, right? Right. Back in Morse v. Frederick, he was touting their ability to instill a core of common values, right? Instill conformity. In this case, that all fades away, and suddenly the job of schools is not to provide a core of common values, but to accommodate whatever values religious community members might have. In fact, here, Thomas is complaining about the attempt to impose values on the students,

• 57:28Peter Shamshiri?

  even though in the past, he has described that as the central purpose of schooling. Right. And you might say, by the way, like, oh, this sort of squares because to conservatives, children are just agents of the parents. So they're actually kind of being consistent when they say children have no rights, but parents do have them. There is a truth to that. But remember how they talk about gender-affirming care for minors, which parents almost across the board do consent to. Suddenly, the child must be protected from the parent on behalf of conservative cultural norms. And before we wrap, you know, we've sort of touched on this a bit, but there's a big-picture concern for the left

• 58:08Peter Shamshiri?

  in these religion cases. This case and cases like it privilege religious beliefs over other beliefs, which you might think makes sense because there's a clause in the First Amendment about freedom of religion. But there's another clause in the First Amendment about freedom of speech, right? And the court has never said that that extends to the schooling of your children in the same way. They've created these frameworks where religious beliefs are more protected than other beliefs. And because religion has this conservative valence, it means conservatism is more protected than other political ideologies. You look at the status quo after this case, and it's that right-wingers get to functionally veto elements of the public school curriculum. But people on the left generally won't have

• 58:50Peter Shamshiri?

  the same ability because they can't claim that their objection is religious. And I think that the left needs to think about this seriously as a legal problem. First, because I think we should be arguing that many left and liberal political positions are in fact religious. You've seen this strategy before. This is like why the Church of Satan exists, right? The satanic church, they don't generally really worship Satan. It's just a sort of way of protesting the favorable treatment of religion. But then also, there's nothing in the Constitution that says religious beliefs are more protected than political beliefs. Your right to live and practice your politics could be just as robust legally as your right to practice your religion.

• 59:34Peter Shamshiri?

  And we should be thinking about the First Amendment that way, right? We should be thinking about the First Amendment as something that protects your speech, your expression, the same way it protects someone else's religion, right?

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:43Peter Shamshiri?

  There's really no reason for there to be a strong distinction.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  Use it as a tool. They're using it as a tool. They're using it as a weapon. We should be too. Like, it's that simple.

• 59:52Michael Liroff?

  I disagree. I think the way we should be thinking about the First Amendment is suspending it, rounding up anybody who's ever identified as a conservative, and putting them all in, quote, "tana mope."

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  The best deal.

• 1:00:08Peter Shamshiri?

  What I really want is to create a world where little seven-year-old Protestants in every public school class are telling Catholics that they're all going to hell, and there's nothing that a teacher can say about it.

• 1:00:26Peter Shamshiri?

  All right, folks. Next week, another First Amendment case from this term. This one about speech. Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a case about porn in Texas. Follow us on social media at 54pod, subscribe to our Patreon, patreon.com/54pod, all spelled out, for access to premium and ad-free episodes, special events, our Slack, all sorts of shit. And once again, of course, 54pod.com/merch for access to our sick new merch, our coolest fuck new merch that we got. We'll see you next week.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  Bye, y'all.

• 1:01:06Michael Liroff?

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:01:12Michael Liroff?

  Five to Four is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto. Leon Nefok provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. If you're not a Patreon member, you're not hearing every episode. To get exclusive Patreon-only episodes, discounts on merch, access to our Slack community, and more, join at patreon.com/54pod.

• 1:01:49Michael Liroff?

  I love linen shirts.

• 1:01:51Peter Shamshiri?

  I got too much linen. I have like seven pairs of linen pants. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm just going, every time I see a new one, I'm like, yeah.

• 1:01:59Speaker 03

  Need those as well. Yeah.

• 1:02:01Peter Shamshiri?

  I don't wear shorts really anymore, like around the house, but I don't wear shorts like outside anymore. I just wear linen pants. I feel like it's so much better.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  It's nice.

• 1:02:09Peter Shamshiri?

  Shorts never look good. I, it's so rare that shorts look good on like a grown ass man. You know what I mean?

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Michael Liroff?

  Well, I disagree with that, but that's because I come from a beach community.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  That's right. Yeah. That's South Florida talking.

• 1:02:21Peter Shamshiri?

  Right. I mean, that's a, that's a degenerate lifestyle that you.