Point of View October 16, 2026 – Hour 2: Weekend Edition

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View Radio Talk Show, Kerby Anderson. Second hour today in studio with me, Lathan Watson, by phone, Hiram Sasser. Before we're done, we'll talk about some of their upcoming cases and maybe give you some more prayer targets in that regard.

[00:00:28] But I'm going to talk about debanking and again, we'll hold up this booklet that we set out to those of you that are donors. And one of the benefits of joining with us at the Truth Team level is every month we send out a booklet, this one on weaponization of intelligence. Now the first part of it deals with the deep state, of course we've done a booklet on that as well. But when you get to the section here about debanking, sometimes what is so interesting is it isn't just that the federal government is using it,

[00:00:55] they will sometimes with various kinds of influences cause other organizations like banks to do this. And I give you a couple of examples. Dr. Joseph Mercola lost his business and personal account because of some statements he made about the COVID vaccine. Mark Andreessen, you might remember him from Netscape. He was the founder of Netscape, not a small player at all.

[00:01:19] A while back on Joe Rogan, in that interview said he knew of 30 tech company founders who had been debanked in the past four years. And, plus I forget, President Trump and his son and his wife have all been debanked. And I have some quotes from Charles Gasparino who actually said, you know, I've watched politics forever, but I've never seen something like that. So, Lathen, of course I want to come to you because one of the articles I've posted here is from Alliance Defending Freedom.

[00:01:48] I've got a few other articles I haven't posted. We'll talk about that in just a minute. But the good news is not only did you have the president with his executive order guaranteeing fair banking for all Americans, but now the Comptroller of Currency released a very important report on Wednesday debanked guaranteeing fair banking for all Americans. This is really good news. Yes, it is.

[00:02:14] I mean, any time you can get, you know, the president to sign an executive order on an important issue is good, but we also know that when that president is out of office, there may be a president who thinks differently on that issue. He can just as easily reverse an executive order. So it was very good news to see the office of Comptroller of the Currency put this report out because they studied the issue.

[00:02:34] And they, you know, it's a very, it's a lengthy report, but it's worth your time because it goes into certain terms of service that a lot of the big banks use, terms like reputational risk or other vague sort of terms that, you know, are basically a fig leaf for them to hide behind to say, well, we thought maybe doing business with you could be a risk to the banks.

[00:03:06] You know, you know, we had a client in Memphis, Tennessee, Christian ministry that assists widows and orphans in Uganda primarily and a local church there in Memphis that supported their missionary efforts and they were debanked. Now, tell me how this is a risk to the bank's reputation. I do not know. That you allow these people who are literally caring for the least of these to have a bank account with your bank.

[00:03:34] So because of that, we took that client to the Tennessee legislature and had them tell their story. And the Tennessee legislature was one of the first, I think the first in the country. I remember that. To pass a law dealing with debanking. Now, since then, Idaho has done the same thing. South Carolina has done the same thing. And the report from the OCC cited those state laws as the reason that some of the banks have started to change these policies and get rid of these terms of service.

[00:04:05] Because in the world that we live in now, you know, access to the market, whether that's through banking or access to sort of the digital public square goes through these big tech companies. They are sort of the private gatekeepers. And especially when you're talking about the biggest banks, they are the ones that get the bailouts from the federal government when things go wrong.

[00:04:32] They are the ones that are so heavily regulated that they are almost quasi-governmental in themselves. Right. I mean, the relationship between – and I'm talking about the big banks, you know, half a billion in assets and up. Like your local teacher credit union is not likely going to debank you because of something you put on Facebook because they know you. They live in the community with you, right?

[00:04:57] But if the examples we have seen, the Wells Fargo's of the world, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, these very large banks are where these examples come from. So like Tennessee's law has an asset threshold. It's not going to apply to your local bank. It's going to apply to the big boys. They're the ones doing it. Same thing with Idaho. Same thing with South Carolina.

[00:05:19] So not just our clients that it's happened to, but Sam Brownback, former international ambassador for religious liberty, when he left the first Trump administration, started a nonprofit. And he was debanked and could not get an answer from the bank as to why. And they sort of eventually sort of hid behind these vague terms of service again. Reputational risk, yeah. That's really what these – A former U.S. senator, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:48] What these state laws are really about is sort of they put the onus on the bank to give you a real answer. And if it appears, you know, if there's the appearance of impropriety here that they did it because of your political beliefs, your religious beliefs, maybe your affiliation with certain industries, whether that's gun manufacturing or agriculture or whatever it may be,

[00:06:12] it empowers that state attorney general to then investigate and perhaps provide some civil penalties to the banks for doing this. And the OCC report said these state laws are the reason that the banks are starting to change policy. So I think we're moving in the right direction. Hi, Ron. Hi, Ron. Let me come to you because when we first heard about this, it was Nigel Farage, and he lost all of his banking privileges because of supporting Brexit. We just talked about, of course, Sam Brownback.

[00:06:40] But we've also had what was called Operation Choke Point 1.0 and then 2.0. So and I've said before that if you can debank a former United States senator, an individual that is very well known in England or in this case, a president of the United States, they could debank just about anybody, couldn't they? Well, listen, I want to talk about J.P. Morgan Chase. They're all over this report.

[00:07:04] I mean, you go to page 17 of the report, you know, between 2021 and 2023, they declined to provide commercial financial services to a politically conservative-leaning retailer. Yep. And you go to pages, you know, 18 through 20, you'll see all the – I mean, they debanked somebody for selling MAGA T-shirts.

[00:07:25] And I think that Stacey Friedman, the general counsel at J.P. Morgan, I think people need to look into her and find out what was she authorizing and what was she saying inside there. I mean, she's very proud of the fact that she's a supporter of pride and that sort of stuff there on the website.

[00:07:46] And, you know, there's nothing wrong with being a far-leftist person, but if you're starting to impose that illegally on your – in your commercial enterprise in a way that they were discriminating, that's documented – and this is the stuff that they've confessed to. Yes. That they, by the way, for years, Chase, for years, we're not doing any of this stuff. Of course, all of that was not true. The report details – but we don't – we're just scratching the surface on this report.

[00:08:15] They don't name the retailer in the report. They don't name all the various groups that they shut down. I want to get to the bottom of who everybody is that they shut down, and I want us to hold Stacey Friedman and J.P. Morgan Chase responsible for what happened. I mean, I think the president needs to – I know the president loves Jamie Dimon, but we need to get after Chase because they were hiding all this. We'll take a break. More to say about this right after these important messages.

[00:09:00] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Perhaps you have noticed AI's boom and doom. One-minute investors are talking about the wonderful benefits of artificial intelligence and encouraging potential investors to throw their money at AI development. The next minute, we're being warned that AI could lead to human extinction. While it is possible that both may be true, some skeptics wonder about the timing and motivation.

[00:09:26] Yes, there are instances when AI agents escaped and made some of us wonder what might happen when we have full artificial general intelligence, but the timing was also suspect. And Thropic CEO Dario Amade issued a warning calling for pacing the future immediately rivals Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of SpaceX agreed. But in the midst of his essay was a request for the U.S. government to issue an antitrust waiver. You know, we've seen this film before.

[00:09:54] After 9-11, Congress passed the Patriot Act. After the 2008 Great Recession, we got Doug Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. The solution to climate change was the Green New Deal. The pandemic gave officials the excuse for a mask and a lockdown. And at a private fundraiser, former President Barack Obama encouraged Democrats to make AI oversight the center of the party's campaign agenda. Are we ready for members of Congress to legislate AI when many of them may not even know how to use AI?

[00:10:24] They might not even know how to download a file. Are they supposed to craft responsible legislation when the warnings of the apocalypse are moving some towards panic? Of course, there is nothing stopping these AI firms from pacing the future on their own, to use their phrase, that's the current plan. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:10:49] Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, let me just mention that we have posted this very good piece that's sort of a summary from our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom, but there's much more where that comes from. Here is an article from Brittany Bernstein,

[00:11:17] Nine Major Banks Denied, Debanked, and Discriminated Against Conservatives. And, of course, that article is one that I've been pointing people to. Kelly Shackelford appointed me to one that I found after the fact. Four major banks use the Southern Poverty Law Center. Oh, here we go, Lathan. We'll get to you in just a minute on that issue in adverse decisions affecting conservative Christian groups,

[00:11:43] because Southern Poverty Law Center, of course, has targeted groups like Alliance Defending Freedom. But, Hiram, you made some comments, and I got a feeling we accidentally cut you off, but you're asking some very good questions. Who was debanked? How many people were debanked? I think there is much more where this is coming from, and this first report from the OCC is very helpful, but we need to have the Office of Comptroller and Currency

[00:12:11] and maybe the whole Trump administration dig into this even more, because this is a scandal that certainly deserves even more attention, don't you think? Oh, sure. I mean, look, if you go to pages 2 or 18, 19, 20 in the report, you'll see Chase was using the SPLC list to try to exclude people.

[00:12:37] And, of course, on that list are people that obviously are just there because of their religious beliefs. There's other bad people that are on that list that we'd all agree are bad, but they also use that to try to tarnish good people by throwing them on the list with those bad people, too. And it's amazing to me that we – where's the next step? Like, we've got to hold these folks accountable. I mean, I want to know what Stacey Friedman knew and when she knew it,

[00:13:06] and they need to be held accountable. And I'm just – I'm really – the gaslighting that took place over the past few years saying none of this discrimination is happening. I mean, even in this report, they detail how they went back and altered the records to make it sound like more neutral language that they weren't discriminating against people of faith. They went back and altered the records. We know that.

[00:13:34] I want to find out who all did that, who authorized it, and hold those people accountable. What about Southern Poverty Law Center? Because when I look at ADF, I know that they're supposedly the good guys that got put in with all those bad guys. But what about Southern Poverty Law Center? Well, you know, asking somebody who's been on the SPLC's hate list to comment on the SPLC is a dangerous game.

[00:14:02] Yeah, it's sort of like asking us to respond to charges from the SPLC. It's sort of like asking an astrophysicist to respond to claims from the Flat Earth Society. That's a good line. But I will say, you know, they've clearly been so discredited over and over and over again.

[00:14:24] And yet you see institutions like this still relying on their opinion about things, which, I mean, after a certain point, you have to just start assuming that, okay, you know they're discredited and you're using them anyway. Yeah. So I'm with Hiram in that there needs to be more done about this. And I think you will probably see some more action. I'm hoping James Comer may be in the House. Yeah.

[00:14:54] When Senator Tim Scott has been very active on this. And so I wouldn't be surprised if there's some more hearings and maybe some CEOs hold in front of Congress to face some questions. We'll see. But I think more states are going to start looking at the laws like we've been able to get passed in Tennessee, United, South Carolina.

[00:15:19] And I think more states that do that, that also sort of creates the kind of upward pressure for the federal government to do something on an official basis. But I also want to point out that ADF has been working on this for years and years and years. We publish a thing called the Viewpoint Diversity Business Index. We'll get to that in a minute.

[00:15:42] Where we score companies on – and the reason we focus on finance and technology is because those are the two biggest gatekeepers to the market. Right. And the most recent version of that that came out, we had – I think it was about 77 percent of the companies that we scored scored a zero. I know. I mean, goose egg. Right. Because they have all of these vague policies. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:10] And the report from the OCC shows you what – What the problem is. Yeah. What having those policies looks like and how they can be abused. Let me take some phone calls along the way. We'll go to California KNLB. Kathy, thank you for coming on the program. And you're on with Lathan Watts and Hiram Sasser. Yes.

[00:16:31] I was wondering because it's being used in medical and stuff, AI and quantum computing. And I was wondering what would – how could that be misused in the business world such as the stock market, banking, and stuff like that?

[00:16:56] Because there's a lot of ethical things being on policies, on medical. What could that mean in the business world? Because the World Forum Economics are telling leaders they need to get ready for this whole thing with the tech world. And I'm not against the tech world.

[00:17:23] I'm just bringing those two up because if they can come up with a way to come together with both AI and quantum, what could that mean? Sure. Well, first of all, let me just take the easy one, I hope, and that is AI or facial recognition.

[00:17:40] If you want to know where that goes, China is a perfect example because I can then, with all the kind of surveillance – and that gets us into another booklet I can hold up, but I won't bother – on terms of privacy and surveillance and even some of the weaponization of intelligence in that booklet. You can already figure out where people are spending their money. You can even figure out if they went to the wrong event. And so as a result, then, with facial recognition, you can debank them.

[00:18:08] And, of course, in China, you can also prevent them from getting on a train or a variety of other things. So we're getting into kind of a digital panopticon right here, aren't we? Potentially. I mean, artificial intelligence and any technology, honestly, is a tool. And how that tool is used determines good or bad. The tool in and of itself is not good or bad. It's how is it going to be employed?

[00:18:35] What are the right guardrails around that? And I think that's the spot that we're in from a policymaking standpoint is trying to determine what the right sort of guardrails to put on it are. We certainly don't want to live in a dystopian nightmare that is communist China. And some of this is starting in Europe. You've been following that with ADF, haven't you? Certainly. I mean, you know. European Union.

[00:19:04] Unfortunately, if you learn anything from the 20th century, the bad ideas that start in Europe don't stay there. Right. So the Digital Services Act in Europe is a really bad example of policy because what it does is it basically lets any member country in the EU look at any social media post.

[00:19:24] And if they find it to violate their vaguely worded hate speech or misinformation or disinformation, they can go to that tech provider and tell them that they have to remove that post. And if they refuse to do so under that law, they can be fined. I believe it's up to 6 percent, 6 percent of their global revenue. So these are, you know, all the major social media platforms, which today is sort of the digital public square.

[00:19:51] And so it's an attempt by the EU to sort of export their censorship to the world. The EU doesn't care if the person who posted it lives in America where we have more protections around speech than they do. Supposedly have a First Amendment. Right, exactly. But they don't. And it's, you know, it's an example of government sort of kind of outsourcing the censorship to the private sector. Right.

[00:20:17] And we saw that here, you know, during the COVID pandemic with the previous administration putting pressure on social media companies to pull down information that people were posting that they didn't want. So, but the EU takes that to the next level. And it's a threat really globally.

[00:20:36] So we're working there in the EU, working with a legal team from X, because I know you're going to be shocked that Elon Musk has already told him he's not going to take down stuff. And they've tried to fine him. And so we're, you know, we're working on that. But it's definitely something for everybody to pay very, very close attention to. Yes. And as you've said before, they read 1984 not as a dystopian novel, but as a... Instruction manual. So there we go.

[00:21:06] We're going to take a break. I do want to hear from Hiram. But Kathy also asked another question about quantum. I think she's also thinking about the fact that quantum computers could break the encryption in some of these various bank accounts. And so that's another issue that we can talk about in the future. But need to take a break. And when we come back, we'll keep talking about that, but also get into free markets and free speech. All that coming up right after this.

[00:21:32] I'm sure that you've noticed that social media is now filled with information generated by AI. Dramatic descriptions of politicians and music stars supposedly making statements about a current issue. Leaning into the microphone, looking into the lens, opponents silenced. It's powerful. It's riveting. And it's all lies.

[00:21:56] Even several national television networks were recently found using enhanced pictures, meaning manipulated, falsified, literally not giving a true picture. So many liars. So much deception. Where can we turn for truth? Right here. From Kirby and the team at Point of View. We need your support. Please join the Point of View Truth team today with a monthly gift of $30 or more.

[00:22:25] Together, we can shine the light of truth and dispel the darkness and deception of this day. Give now at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151. Pointofview.net and 800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this.

[00:22:53] You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kerby Anderson. Coming back for a few hours, again, of some of the conversation. Again, we've covered an hour and a half, and we have about a half an hour left.

[00:23:23] But in these two hours, we've tried to cover a lot of issues. One of the others I want to talk about is free markets and free speech. But I thought it would be good just to hear from Hiram for just a minute because it does seem to me, again, that this is another very important issue when we talk about the fact that even if the government doesn't censor you, because theoretically they're supposed to not do so, they can find willing allies,

[00:23:48] whether it's in the banking industry, in social media, to actually censor you. And Hiram, a lot of this has come simply because Elon Musk bought Twitter, now called X, and the Twitter files helped us understand that there were a lot of things going behind the scenes, weren't there? Yeah, it sure was. I mean, I remember a lot of times before he came on the scene and bought Twitter, it was like,

[00:24:15] well, you know, how do you even deal with or negotiate with these social media platforms? Because they have no incentive, to be fair. And the only reason they would be fair is if someone came along and sort of made a conservative bent version of these social media platforms. And the likelihood of that happening seems so low. But then, you know, Elon Musk comes along and he buys it, you know,

[00:24:41] and he's carrying in the sink into the headquarters and all that kind of stuff, right? Yes. And that really changed the tone. I mean, I don't know if you realize this, but, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, he got a personal trainer. He started getting into shape. I mean, everybody, they started shooting guns. They started kind of becoming more conservative. They started wanting to hang out with President Trump. And Elon kind of changed that dynamic. Look, here's what's happening in the future.

[00:25:08] There's going to be a lot of cool tools, a lot of cool AI tools. People are going to be able to use them. Government's going to be able to use them. Here's the lucky thing we have. Most government people are incompetent buffoons. And they're not going to be able to use these tools to their maximum advantage. And so we'll have some sort of edge over them a little bit. And there will be tools to counter the tools. And pretty soon we're going to be bringing back dinner by candlelight so we can get away from all this noise.

[00:25:38] And it's probably good for us anyway. If nothing else, I would have to say, and Lathan, you and I have talked about this before, conservatives have a better sense of humor. And the Babylon Bee and those, you know, they always want to censor all of that. And, of course, you've done some wonderful pieces over the years. Matter of fact, I sometimes like to read your editorials unedited because you do get some great lines in that some people have to take out. But I think there's some advantage in that.

[00:26:03] But let's get to your piece here on free markets and free speech because it gets back to that viewpoint diversity score. We've already kind of beat up the banks. And we now have mentioned, of course, the issue of social media. But it does seem to me that these are corporations that do control information and finances. And if we keep allowing them to control that, then we lose.

[00:26:30] But if we are able to really call that out, as you have sometimes done at some of these shareholder meetings, that has brought about a remarkable change, too. Yeah, several companies have sat down with us and talked about the policies that we want to talk to you about. And we've been able to talk about because shareholders bring a resolution in front of the rest of the shareholders in the annual meetings. And that's been pretty successful for us.

[00:27:00] A lot of times they don't really want to meet with our team until somebody who controls quite a bit of stock introduces a resolution saying, you know, we would like to know more about this and these sorts of policies. And we've been able to get, you know, to the table and really just sort of explain, like, look, we're not out to make your company, you know, conservative or liberal. What we're talking about is viewpoint diversity.

[00:27:28] Like, how do you deal with differing viewpoints in your customer base, in your employee base, and in your shareholder base on these very controversial social issues? Why would you opine about them at all? Yes. You know, either way, you're going to be alienating roughly half of your shareholders, your customers, and your employees.

[00:27:49] So that's what that index is really about, measuring companies on how they treat the diversity of viewpoints on these issues. And so in some instances that can look like a lot of big companies have what they call employee resource groups where you can form – it's basically like a little club of people. Like, if you work in a place that's got 1,000 employees, you know, there may be a gardening club that's an employee research group. These people like gardening. They want to get together after work and talk gardening. These people want to do this.

[00:28:19] These people want to do that until somebody wants to do one that's faith-based. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no, we can't be doing that. You know, well, if you're going to allow the gardening club, you've got to allow the people that want to do a prayer club too. And that's like an example of sort of viewpoint diversity. We're not telling you you've got to be one or the other. It's treat everybody fairly.

[00:28:41] And when it comes to these, you know, sort of controversial issues, there's also, thankfully, the cautionary tales that some of these CEOs can see in real time like Target, like Bud Light putting Dylan Mulvaney on a beer can. And then watching what happened to their stock price, you know, our cracker barrel. You know, so we're going to take the old man off the logo and we're going to bring pride to the porch and have rainbow-colored rocking chairs and all this.

[00:29:10] Are you serious? Yeah. So you have like example after example of this impacts your business. So we're just trying to get business back to being business. You know, it's sort of like make business boring again. You know, just whatever your business is, do that and do it well. And turn a good profit so your shareholders get a good return. That's your first fiduciary duty is to the shareholders. So that's where these resolutions come in. I think so.

[00:29:37] You know, to raise the issue and then sometimes we get a little better response after that. Yeah, I think so. Hyron, let me come to you because there's another aspect of that. I know American Airlines a while back was asking for perspectives on a particular case having to do with LGBTQ. And a couple of flight attendants, Lacey Smith, for example, and Marley Brown were expressing their religious beliefs. One was just simply asking a question.

[00:30:05] And you've had to fight that case in the courts because, again, they did not allow what you might call viewpoint diversity. And in some respects fired people for just expressing their deeply held religious beliefs. Yeah, well, it was Alaska Airlines. Oh, yes, they were. Okay, Alaska. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, they fought us all the way up to the Ninth Circuit.

[00:30:30] And we won at the Ninth Circuit that, you know, that Alaska is not going to get out of this case. We're going to go to trial. The trial is going to be May the 10th. We're going to have a jury trial. And, you know, and that's, you know, it's going to be tough. You know, we're suing them in their hometown, right?

[00:30:50] But I think if we can get all the evidence in front of the jury so they can see what kind of discrimination that Alaska did to these ladies, how they treated them, what they said about them, the terrible things that were done by Alaska Airlines. I think that a jury, I don't care what their particular viewpoint is. I think a jury is going to be able to say, look, whatever your views are, this kind of discrimination is not right in the public space.

[00:31:18] No one should be discriminated against because of their views that may favor the left, their views that may favor the right. Like, I don't think people should be discriminating against people based upon how they express their views. What we're seeing is a lot of one-way discrimination against people of faith who express things that, opinions that sort of match up with thousands of years of human opinions.

[00:31:44] And the Bible, you know, about marriage and about family and about, you know, that men are men and women are women, you know, sort of things that, you know, were in fashion until 2015 or whatever. But the point is, is that I think most people of good faith, regardless of what they believe about politics or whatever, think that we should not be discriminating against people because of their faith, because of their opinions.

[00:32:10] And hopefully this case will be a good reminder to all the other companies around the country to stop this kind of discrimination. Just evaluate people based upon job performance. That's it. Are they doing a good job? Are their customers happy? Then leave them alone when they express private opinions in spaces where you asked for their private opinion. You asked for their opinion and they gave it, and then you fired them.

[00:32:40] Like, come on. Like, let them do their job and judge them on the merit. Again, Alaska Airlines. But again, that case you can follow at First Liberty. And when we come back from the break, I do want to get into a piece that we have posted by Penna Dexter. Oftentimes when she has been here in the past, we've talked about her commentary. This one, A Place for Prayer. And this one involves First Liberty Institute and some others. And you might even have the question, so you might want to listen right now if you have access to a computer,

[00:33:09] why we would even need a law that protects the right of houses of worship to use their facilities for a religious purpose. But again, we'll talk about what that means in just a minute. And I think you will find that to be helpful. And just a good illustration that, as we've talked about it, there's a couple of cases in process. So I'll certainly encourage you to be praying about some of these in the future that are making their way to the Supreme Court. Others that we've talked victories about.

[00:33:37] And certainly we encourage you to go to the website and find out a lot of this information. We'll take a break. Come back with more right after this. Some people might wonder why we need a law that protects the right of houses of worship to use their facilities for religious purposes.

[00:34:07] But we do, and we have one. RELUPA, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. RELUPA was passed and signed into law by President Clinton more than 25 years ago. However, over the years, courts have weakened and confused the law's promised protections. Sometimes, churches and religious organizations run into opposition when seeking to use their property to carry out their mission.

[00:34:30] Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted a case that will affect churches and Christian organizations' ability to pursue their calling. First Liberty Institute and two other law firms are representing the missionaries of St. John the Baptist in their request for a permit to erect a small, modest grotto, a quiet place for prayer and reflection, behind their church building, which has stood on its property in Park Hills, Kentucky, for over 100 years.

[00:34:55] In 2021, the city granted their request, but a couple of disgruntled neighbors filed a lawsuit opposing the city's decision. A trial court rejected the neighbors' objections, but the Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed that decision and held that banning the grotto did not violate RELUPA. The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed that holding. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review this decision. According to First Liberty Institute, the case allows the Supreme Court to clarify the proper standards under RELUPA,

[00:35:24] which prohibits unlawful burdens on religious land use. First Liberty's senior counsel, Ryan Gardner, says the Supreme Court has never interpreted RELUPA before, and this case presents a huge opportunity to advance religious liberty for every single church in this country. He stated, Neighbors should not be permitted to wield zoning laws as a heckler's veto to oppose the cherished traditions of churches. May the court take this opportunity to protect the church's liberty to be the church. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter.

[00:36:00] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. After a few more minutes, if again you have been listening on your computer, you've heard Penna Dexter's commentary today on A Place for Prayer. If not, you can find it on the website. And Hiram, I thought I'd come to you because First Liberty and some other law firms are representing this particular case out of Kentucky. And again, you would think that you wouldn't need a law to actually protect the right of a church or other houses of worship

[00:36:30] to use their facilities for religious purposes. The good news is there's one called RELUPA, which is actually Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. And this is a case which actually the Supreme Court has never had a chance to interpret, but this is just a good example of why you exist and why we're so thrilled that there's an alliance defending freedom

[00:36:54] in a First Liberty Institute because you're able to defend these individuals that simply want to have a quiet place for prayer and reflection, but apparently people want to use the zoning laws against them. Can you explain? Yeah, this is really wild. It's a small little church. They just wanted to be able to have a prayer sanctuary. They're trying to set it up. And the city said that's totally fine.

[00:37:23] You know, we're totally okay with it. But under Kentucky law, the neighbors have this opportunity to be able to sue and try to intervene, and that's what happens. It's just sort of the angry neighbors, right? And then they showed up to say, hey, you know, we don't want you to have this nice little area of prayer and reflection. And it's turned into this case that's gone now all the way up to the Supreme Court where we're fighting over whether or not,

[00:37:50] is this a substantial burden on the church's religious beliefs and their practices and their exercise of their religion? And what does that mean, substantial burden? And a lot of people have kind of likened this thing to trying to do – it's asking judges to decide if something's religious enough or important enough for your religion in order to justify it being protected under the law.

[00:38:18] And that can't mean what – it can't be what it means because that's what the Supreme Court in the past has called a centrality test to say that the religion has to be – you know, the courts are not in a position to determine whether something's central to your religious faith or not. I mean, how do you even evaluate that? How do you figure that out as a judge? Like, we're not supposed to be getting involved in all this religious stuff.

[00:38:43] And so how can we decide, you know, what does it mean to be a substantial burden? And so what we're going to be fighting over is what that phrase means in the statute and how the statute should be applied. And here, I think saying, hey, look, you know, the Lord has called us to build a special place of worship, and they're telling us we can't do that. I mean, that's pretty obviously a substantial burden. This case is probably pretty easy on its face.

[00:39:11] But what the Supreme Court is going to be doing, though, is trying to craft what's the rule going to be for all the other types of situations. Very good. And these zoning situations where the Lord has called them to build something, the Lord has called them to do something, and then the city or somebody – angry neighbors come in and say, you know, you can't build that. You can't honor the Lord in that way.

[00:39:35] And judges are going to have to figure out, is that – is telling them to ignore God's calling on their life, is that a substantial burden on their religion? And we'll see how the court shakes out with that. And so often we talk about how some of these cases are broader than the individual case in Kentucky, and that's a good example of that as well. One other one I thought I just mentioned in passing, and that is one of the other articles from ADF, has to do with a mom who was denied reimbursement for faith-based homeschool curriculum.

[00:40:06] Well, we're going to beat up on Oregon this time again, because even though the curricula exceeds the standards for the state of Oregon, they say we're not going to reimburse you. And here we're back again very similar to some cases like we just talked about in Maine, aren't we? Yeah, and even going all the way back to, again, Trinity Lutheran. That's right, in Colorado. Yeah, they sort of started with Trinity Lutheran saying you can't exclude a religious organization from participation in your government program.

[00:40:36] And then it was extended to individuals with Espinosa versus Montana and Carson versus Van Agen and others. And so it's the same general principle. You know, like Oregon has this program to reimburse people for curriculum if they're homeschooling their kids. So you can't tell the religious person that they can't be a part of it or that their curriculum is too religious. So, yeah, it's unfortunately kind of the same song, different verse.

[00:41:03] But sometimes, you know, you've got to do these things over and over and over again before people get the message. But we have another case that the court has granted cert on that we argued in December. Daniel Grand in Ohio, an Orthodox Jew, who invited people from his neighborhood to his house to pray on the Sabbath. The city didn't like that and told him he had to have a permit from the city to do so. To pray at your house.

[00:41:31] Yeah, to host people in your home for prayer. So he actually initially tried to get the permit. And in the process of trying to get the permit, discovered that if he got the permit, then his home would basically be zoned as a temple and he couldn't sleep overnight there. So they put him in this, you know, catch 22. Catch 22. That's what I was thinking. There. But you can't do both, basically.

[00:41:58] So he actually represented himself. And this is going to the Supreme Court, right? Yeah. Yeah. We partnered with him on the cert petition. And so we'll be arguing that in December. But it's kind of a similar with the Arlupa cases. That's his house. Who are you to tell him who he can invite? Seriously. Yeah.

[00:42:24] Nobody needs a permit from any level of government in this country to invite people into your home to pray. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that. So it's unfortunate that these things have to keep being litigated, that you have to keep reminding some people of these things. But that's why we exist. That's why we do the work that we do. And, you know, again, God willing, we'll win this one. We'll settle this for everybody all over the country. Job security, because you always have something to do. You're nice to be out of a job.

[00:42:53] Hiram, just before I run out of time, I forget how many now cases you have before the Supreme Court. We mentioned one. But what's the count right now? Because we want individuals to pray about those cases you have before the Supreme Court. Well, sure. Well, we're 11-0 going into this term. And now we have two that are going to be argued this term.

[00:43:14] And, you know, one involving the rights of parents to be free from the government kidnapping their children in the state of Washington if they disagree about gender issues with their 12-year-old. And then also the one that we just talked about, about the zoning issue. And so two really important cases.

[00:43:38] And these are real people we're representing, and we've just got to win for them. We've got to win not only for them but for the country. But we've really got to win for them, our clients. Yes. Well, we're noticing Colorado, Washington, Maine seem to be, although we did get a shot at Oregon here as well a couple times. So those are prayer targets for you. And, first of all, I want to thank both of you. If anybody would like to know more about Alliance Defending Freedom,

[00:44:04] we do have a link there so you can find all the great information that they have in that particular area, as well as First Liberty Institute. And so all you have to do is click on the pictures either of these two guests or, of course, the articles related to those. And, Lathan, thank you for being in the studio today. And, Hiram, thank you for joining us by phone. Good to be back. Hey, thanks for having me. Let me just mention that next week you will hear me broadcasting from Georgia. That's on Tuesday.

[00:44:33] We look forward to seeing some of you at our meet and greet on Monday, which is 6 o'clock at Martin's Bible Chapel. And then, of course, we'll be playing, I think, one repeat. And then we'll also be hearing from Dr. Merrill Matthews. But it has been a great week. And I hope you've appreciated all that we've covered here on Point of View. You can look for those articles today. We have seven articles that we have covered. I can't believe we covered all seven, but we were able to do so very quickly in a few cases. And all of that's available at the website pointofview.net.

[00:45:03] As always, I want to thank Megan for help engineering the program. Derek, thank you for producing the program. Enjoy the weekend. See you back here on Monday right here on Point of View. Where does moral truth come from? According to 58% of Americans, individuals determine moral truth. A quarter of Generation Z says society determines moral truth. And morality can even change over time.

[00:45:31] Only 42% of Americans believe that truth comes from God. I don't know about you, but I find these numbers extremely troubling. It really is a crisis of truth. And that crisis has consequences. Look at society. Evil is called good. Good called evil. People with biblical beliefs are called bigots. Or worse, they're canceled. There is hope. The Bible promises the truth will set us free.

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