The Supreme Court just secured two victories for religious freedom and election integrity, prevailing against cultural riptides attempting to sweep our freedoms out to sea.
Justices, appointed and confirmed by officials you elected, thwarted efforts to weaken election integrity laws and saved a faith-based organization from having its beliefs dictated by the government.
Think if these cases had been decided differently!
Fulton v. City of Philadelphia
Likely the most important decision of this past term, the Supreme Court delivered a stunning victory for religious liberty for foster care and adoption services. In 2018, the City of Philadelphia gave Catholic Social Services (CSS), serving children for over 200 years, a devastating choice: give up their religious beliefs about marriage, or the city would stop referring children to them.
Due to their faith-based convictions, CSS’s policy was to decline to place children with unmarried or same-sex couples, and instead to refer such couples to a different foster care agency. When the city discovered this, it refused to work with CSS.
By not working with such a large agency as CSS, the city deprived many children of the loving care of experienced foster parents. If CSS had lost their case, it would have put faith-based agencies around the country in jeopardy—along with the children they serve.
After three years of legal losses for CSS, the Supreme Court in June ruled 9-0 that the First Amendment protects their right to serve the public according to their religious beliefs. For the first time since the Court legalized same-sex marriage, religious liberty came head to head with same-sex ‘rights’ and won unanimously.
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
In the second momentous case, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) challenged two Arizona election procedures. The first required that election day ballots be cast in a voter’s precinct. The second banned the practice of “ballot harvesting,” where a third party can collect and deliver a voter’s absentee ballot, which Justice Alito acknowledged “can lead to pressure and intimidation” for the voter.
Last year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the DNC, stating that these two election provisions infringed voting rights by violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). The VRA was enacted to ensure state election laws do not result in “the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race”.
Earlier this month, however, the Supreme Court overturned the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling. In a 6-3 decision, they argued that Arizona’s precinct requirements and ballot harvesting ban do not discriminate against minority voters or violate the VRA. They also affirmed that protecting the right to freely vote and protecting against voter fraud are both valid state interests.
The Court’s ruling enforces the fact that protecting elections from fraud does not, contrary to leftist rhetoric, automatically entail the disenfranchisement of voters. In addition, this decision could indicate that in the future, the Court may also rule against the Biden administration’s lawsuit against Georgia’s new election integrity law.
It Starts at the Ballot Box
As a whole, America is more free because of these two victories. The assertion that religious organizations must violate their beliefs in order to serve the public was demolished. Likewise, the attempt to spin commonsense election integrity laws as an attack against voting rights was soundly defeated.
But, victories like these will not keep happening without informed, Biblically-minded voters like you. Like the first ripples on the surface of a pond, many legal battles for the soul of our country ultimately begin with who you elect to positions of authority, whether the local school board, city council, state legislature, or to those offices entrusted with power to appoint or confirm judges.
iVoterGuide is committed to helping you cast the ‘stone’ that generates those first ripples in numerous elections we cover.
