Episode 105 – How the Constitution Protects Faith Driven Entrepreneurs with Kelly Shackelford
Today’s guest has argued in front of the United States Supreme Court…Now, normally we try to list multiple accolades and interesting facts about the guest, but do you really need anything other than that?
Kelly Shackelford is the President & CEO of First Liberty, the largest law firm in the country dedicated exclusively to protecting the first amendment rights of Americans—that is, freedom of religion.
Kelly came on to talk to us about his entrepreneurial journey in starting First Liberty, how business leaders can better understand their constitutional rights, and yes, what it’s like to argue in front of the Supreme Court.
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Episode Transcript
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Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. This is an episode that we’ve been looking forward to since we’ve been in this Covid-19 season that we’ve all found ourselves in. And that is really just looking at this head on. What does it look like for a Faith Driven Entrepreneur to navigate through what they can or can’t do? What they should or should do as responsible citizens and his business leaders at this particular time. And so we’ve got a special guest who is going to have a perspective that I think is super valuable. Later, When we have guests on the podcast, we may have other views on this as well. But we are really, really blessed to have Kelly Shackelford, who himself is an entrepreneur on our podcast today. Kelly, welcome.
Kelly Shackelford: Thanks for having me on. Happy to do it.
Henry Kaestner: So, Kelly, before we talked about this season, we found ourselves in. You are an entrepreneur. You had started up this practice and have been doing it successfully for a while. Give us some background. Tell us about your personal story.
Kelly Shackelford: Well, really, mine goes back to, I guess, where I was in high school and what my gifts were in analytical thinking and speaking. And I thought, well, gosh, I can either be a pastor or a lawyer. And people kind of said, well, that’s like a God or Satan choice, thinking to be a pastor or a lawyer. And, you know, I went to my youth pastor and I said, you know, here’s what I’m thinking. What do you think? And he gave me great advice. He said, you know, if you’re called to be a minister, it’s a wonderful calling. He said, I will say this. I know a lot of Christian pastors. And, boy, we sure could use some more Christian lawyers. And as I started analyzing my DNA, I realized probably more meant for law than being a pastor. And so when I got out, finished really my first year after law school working for a federal judge, which you do for one year, and then really had a lot of offers that these big law firms and I just felt like was like I’d suffocate there, like that wasn’t what God wanted me to do. And I remember sitting in my little office and thinking, what do you want to do? And I thought, well, I want to use my legal skills because I feel like I’ve been shown I should do that. But I want to help pastors and churches with religious freedoms and our founding principles. And I’d even like to go to seminary if I could. I laughed because I was like, there’s no job to do these things. And two weeks later, I met two guys that I’d never met before, partners in big law firms. They called me out the blue, asked me to go to lunch. They said they’d started to give time for religious freedom and they’re starting to give so many calls that it was hurting their ability to make a living. And they were wondering, would I be willing to come on, do legal cases, help pastors, churches, religious freedoms and our founding principles? And I could even go to seminary part time if they wanted me to. And I said, if you’re interested in these things at all. Our only question is how much you need to live on. And these guys pitched in out of their pocket to get me started with a nonprofit and a little over 30 years later. And now First Liberty is the largest legal group in the country, nonprofit that all we do is religious freedom cases. So it was a God thing that I didn’t even know would exist. And he moved me into it. And I love doing what I get to do every day.
Henry Kaestner: Our listeners who don’t know. Tell us about First Liberty. What do you guys do?
Kelly Shackelford: We’re the largest nonprofit in the country that all we do is religious freedom. So, you know, if you’re a fifth grade boy, your name is Giovanni Rubio and you live in Miami area and you’re from a poor family and you’re told you can come to school and during free reading time, you can read a book you want until you bring your Bible and then you’re told we can’t have religious books at school. What do you do? You know, you can’t go out and hire a team of attorneys. And so what happens is we come in at first liberty. We represent them free of charge. We bring in the best litigators in the country who all donate their time.
And the result is we don’t just win for Giovanni and his family, which we did in that case, but we set a precedent that protects everybody in the country who cares about religious freedom. And so it’s really a unique way of representing people, which I can go into if you want. But our model is different than every other model of any sort of legal nonprofit out there by people who are given their time. Really it’s the body of Christ operating like it should.
Henry Kaestner: One of the big keys and kind of an underlying theme that we look at Faith Driven Entrepreneur is the why of leadership. Simon Sinek, the author, writes on that. And we think that that concept, of course, is really powerful dynamic for a Faith Driven Entrepreneur. You get interviewed a ton by the press. What kind of opportunities do you have to talk about why you do what you do? Are you able to talk about your faith being a motivation for why you do this personally?
Kelly Shackelford: Not a lot because, you know, as a person who’s fighting for religious freedom, I have to be careful that it doesn’t look like I’m just fighting for the religion that I believe in. You know, the biblical views that I have. And so we have synagogues in New York that are just being horrifically discriminated against that we’re representing. I mean, we represent a wide diversity. I mean, there are people I represent that are Christians, but I don’t agree with their theology. Right. So it’s more than often than not. What I am really getting to talk about or advocate for are truths that are certainly consistent with what God wants advocated. But they’re not ideological. Now, there are exceptions. There are times when we go in, you know, just the context allows it to talk about why this is important, why those beliefs are important, and we get into some of that. But more than not, really, what I’m fighting and talking about is freedom instead of the specific theology of whatever we’re talking about.
Henry Kaestner: Now, there’s a concept that I’ve really taken to that somebody I met four or five years ago mentioned me. And that is that truth stands out in the marketplace of ideas. As you advocate for religious freedom of all different types of faiths, do you find that to resonate with you and do you see that to be true as well?
Kelly Shackelford: Yeah, absolutely, I do. I don’t know if this is somebodys phrase, but it’s just something that I’ve had as my own little phrase for at least a few decades, and that’s that the truth cannot be outnumbered. I find myself and so a lot of times in context where maybe let’s say we’re on a national TV show and there might be three people who their views are all wrong. But what we bring is true. I find that it’s sort of like the light always pierces the darkness. If you’re loving and winsome, it doesn’t matter. Even if they’re being mean or shrewd or whatever they’re doing, the truth just cuts right through it. And so one of the things we try to do before interviews is really to pray and think about how to really crystallize maybe ten thousand pages of documents into one sentence that encapsulates the truth that you’re really trying to get across. And if you do a good job with that, no matter what the interview is or whatever the discussion, you know, the question is what people are going to leave with. What are they going to remember? And those powerful statements of truth that line up with biblical truth and what the Lord says is true. I think they cut through all the misdirection and the other things that are surrounding you. It adds clarity and people are looking for those kinds of things, especially in a relativist society like we’re in now.
William Norvell: Hey, Kelly, this is William here I want to jump back a little bit. You talked about how the idea came to be and how these gentlemen gave you your start. But could you tell us a little bit about how the model evolved, how you grew to the largest religious freedom practice in the country and how you got your cases along the way and how you get your cases today and where they come from? And just let us in to a little bit more of your world.
Kelly Shackelford: Yeah, the average non profit, and I don’t care if they’re left wing or right wing or what their issue is. They have the same model, which is raise as much money as you can raise. Use that money to hire as many attorneys as you can. Put him in an office in DC or L.A. or New York, and then you fly those people around the country and you cover as many cases on your issue as you can. Whether that’s, you know, the environment or property rights or you name the issue, that is not our model. Our model is there’s all these people of faith who went to law school because they wanted to stand for what was right. They wanted to make a difference. And 30 years later, these are now the best litigators at the best law firms in the country, in fact, the best law firms in the world. And they have done great work for their clients, but they’ve never gotten to do a case for their faith. For the kingdom. And so what we do is we go and sit down with those people and we say, look, if we give you everything you need, are you willing to give your time on one of these cases? And they’re like, man, I’ve been waiting my whole life, you know, sign me up and we know what’s gonna happen when we give him that first case, mean all their talent, all their gifts, all their training, everything they’ve learned in their entire career for the first time in their life is lined up with their faith and their love for their country and freedom. And it’s kind of unfair, but we now know we have them for the rest of their lives as one of our volunteer attorneys, because once they do one of these, you know, they’re got do another one and they’re the big partner. So they give cover to the younger attorneys who want to work on these to be able to work on these. And so we’ve done this now long. If you go through the top 100 law firms in the United States, most those law firms don’t just donate their time on our cases with us, but they’ll fight each other over who gets to donate their time because it’s such a joy for them to finally get to use all this immense talent for the kingdom directly. And it really is kind of how the body of Christ is supposed to work. Right. You’ve got all these different talents that make up the body, serving one another. And so the result of having these great attorneys is these people who are in need, who could never afford, you know, five or a thousand million how much of fees that they’re going to would normally be paying for if they bought this massive team of attorneys that are with them. They have great representation. And these people who are about to die because litigation will wear you out if you’re not working on things that really matter. It really energizes these attorneys. It gives much more purpose to their whole practice. But then the result of those two things is also that all of us get blessed because of good precedents come out of that. And our win rate now for 20 years in a row has been over 90 percent win rate every year.
Last year we had 300 cases. So it’s quite a large number of cases and a high win rate. And it’s it’s just a method. I came up with this approach because I wanted to save money. I thought we can get a lot more bang for our buck if we get some of these top notch attorneys joining our people. People on our team are very bright to top from Harvard and all these places, they’re bright attorneys. But the attorneys at these major law firms, they know those local judges. They practice in those courts. So we can put these dream teams together anywhere. And it’s just a great model. And I did it because, again, average case, every ten thousand we spend, we get sixty thousand donated. So it’s like a leveraging of six to one of our resources. But what I wasn’t counting on was that win loss ratio, I mean, in the normally in the nonprofit arena, if you’re really good cause you’re fighting mammoth, you know, battles against huge entities like the government and all this normal nonprofit, if you’re really good, maybe you’re winning 40 percent of your cases. So the fact that we win 90 percent of our cases is very, very unusual. And it’s just this method. Nobody else does this. Everybody else hires their own attorneys, puts them on staff, leaves them around. But we think this is a blessing to everybody. And their models really worked. We started in Texas. We did it in Texas. And we thought, well, the need is great nationally. And we eventually went national and we didn’t know, is it scalable? Does it work? And while it’s proven out, it really does work. And it’s blessed the attorneys, it blesses the client and it blesses all of us by the freedoms and protections we get.
Henry Kaestner: So it’s super cool. And I’m amazed by the caseload. Three hundred cases is a lot. I think a lot of that speaks to the fact that you’ve been doing this for a long time. Tell us how a little bit, I’m just fascinated by the model. So how did these cases come to you? And then as you go ahead and you win the Giovani Rubio case in Florida, how do you let other jurisdictions know that this precedent has been set so that you’re helping other attorneys out there and pointing to these different types of cases? I imagine there’s some amount of outreach or publicity that kind of goes hand-in-hand with your ministry as well.
Kelly Shackelford: Yeah. Oh, good. Very good questions. We have cases, I would say two major ways. One is people have something happened to them and, you know, a lot of times they don’t know where to go. I mean, they don’t think they can hire a legal team. You know, let’s take Gabriella Perez case we had outside of Orlando. Little 5 year old girl who’s, you know, quote, caught praying over her meal in the lunch cafeteria and is told, quote, It’s not good to pray at school. She goes home. Of course, her parents are just incensed by this. And what do they do? They don’t have any money. Well, they happen to talk to either their church, maybe a Christian radio. They talk to somebody who knows, oh, you need to call First Liberty. So half of our cases probably come from that where somebody talks to somebody else to figure out how they can get help. The other half comes from, to be honest us reaching out to them. We’ll see something. You know, we have people on our team who every day are watching newspaper articles and other things because like let’s say Giovanni or something shows up in a newspaper. And it says Giovanni this fall, you know, fifth grade boy is able to read his favorite book at school or we reach out to him because most these people don’t even know that somebody is willing to help them for free. And so we do it that way. So it’s sometimes we reach out. Sometimes they come to us. And then the sad thing is that for what I just described to you, probably for every one of those, there’s probably 30 or 50 or 100 others who never connect. And just think they’ve got to fold. And that sort of gets your second part of the question, how do we let people know? That’s why I tell our attorneys all the time. You know, winning a case is important. But if you win a case against one school district, you won against one school district.
But if you actually get on the media or do educational things where you show the rest of the country that you just won, that you’ve maybe affected a thousand or two thousand school districts that say, gosh, I don’t want to do that, because that doesn’t look so good for that school district. So education is, I think, even more important than the litigation, because if we win freedoms and nobody knows they have them. You know, what good are we doing?
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. So that’s fascinating to me to let these other schools, these other jurisdictions know that there’s a 90 percent chance they’re going to fail at something like this. And just what does it look like to meet with administrators and educators and to educate them on what their students can and can’t do? And so that you never had the lunchroom lady telling that young girl that she can’t pray because she had heard about this case so I’d imagine outreach is a very big part. OK. Very helpful. Thank you very much.
Kelly Shackelford: Great question. And they think that all we do is legal, you know, and education is really important.
William Norvell: Speaking of education, I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read 90 plus percent of John Grisham novels. So I feel like I’m pretty close right on the edge. And I’ve watched at least five of the movies. So I feel like I’m getting up the curve. The one thing Grisham never does, though, that you’ve done, he’s never written a book about the Supreme Court. He’s never gone into a Supreme Court. And I want to hear about what that feels like. In my imagination, you know, there’s this giant room. It must be 40, 50 feet tall where the Supreme Court hears cases and there’s robes. I’m guessing you probably still wear a wig, something to that effect. That would be my guess is how this plays out. But you can take that. You can leave it. But walk me through what it’s like a day in the Supreme Court, arguing in front of, you know, one of the most hallowed courts in the world in history?
Kelly Shackelford: It’s definitely hallowed, as you mentioned. I mean, the ceilings are very tall. I have no idea how many feet tall those ceilings are. And it’s pretty regal place. The way it works is you sort of wait in a lawyer’s lounge outside. I think that was probably the place I was the most nervous of any time of my life, just sitting in the lawyer’s lounge waiting to just come into the courtroom. Eventually you’re let in and you sit there. And at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, the arguments start. But how this works is you’re sitting there. The crowd is just completely full. And behind the justices are these columns and there are curtains between the columns.
And at 10:00 a.m. on the button, a gavel goes down very loudly and all. At one moment at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, all the justices who you don’t notice if you’ve never been there have been waiting right behind the curtains. And at 10:00 a.m., they all walk out when the gavel hits and sit down. So it’s pretty powerful sort of heads raising.
And then they start and then here’s what people don’t understand. Number one, you’re standing so close to the justices that you can’t see all nine at one time. You could really only see about four in your peripheral vision at one time, maybe five. And so you’re really close. It really is sort of a very personal conversation and people think that what happens is like some drama on TV. By the way, no wigs. We don’t do the barrister thing like in the UK. So no wigs unless you actually have a wig. But what people think is like somebody walks in. Like, I walk in there. I give this great speech and the justices clap and cry and all that. You know, that’s not the way it works. The way it works is these justices all have four of the brightest young attorneys in the country who are talking for them. It’s like a one year courtship. And they’re going through everything about your briefs, your legal arguments that have been filed and all the other briefings that has been filed. And so they have picked through everything. And if there’s a hole in your argument, which there always is, they know about it. And so as you walk in there and by the way, none of those justices have talked to one another yet. So they haven’t discussed their views on the case. They wait till after the oral arguments. So when you come up to make an oral argument, you get maybe 30 seconds uninterrupted and then they’re coming at you. But what’s happening is justice so-and-so is not necessarily really asking you a question. They’re asking that question to make a point to another justice. And your job is to answer the question. But to figure out what’s going on between them and what your numbers are and who you need to get to get to five to win. So it is a very fast moving, kind of thrilling you’re kind of a backboard for a battle going on with them, although they’re asking questions of you. So you have to do a couple things at one time. But I remember the first time I was up there in 1997 being very nervous in the lawyers lounge. And when I came in there, I was second my opponent got to go first. I remember two minutes into his argument, kind of like any athletic contest in my life. I remember thinking, I’m not nervous anymore. I just want my chance up there. I’m gonna cream this guy. And so it’s just kind of a normal adrenalin and everything, I think takes over like any other contest. We’ve all been in our life. But it’s definitely a hallowed ground. A real special place.
Henry Kaestner: Did you?
Kelly Shackelford: I did in the oral argument. But that didn’t win the case for me, unfortunately. All the reports were that I won the oral argument, but I was kind of fight an uphill battle. People thought it was a case that could be lost nine to zero. And I was able to pick up three of the justices. But I needed five. So it was a first good learning experience as a young attorney back in the 1990s.
Henry Kaestner: So now that was a loss. But clearly, 90 percent of that had been wins. What are some landmark victories that you’ve had?
Kelly Shackelford: Well, one of the big ones is what we just won this last summer. And that’s the Bladensburg Cross case. It’s a veterans memorial that was put up almost 100 years ago right outside of D.C., in Bladensburg, Maryland. It was put up by mothers who lost their sons in World War One and the American Legion. And it was to remember the forty nine young men in that county that had died in World War One. It was originally on American Legion Land. But because right side of DC, eventually they built roads. And when they built roads around it, the government state of Maryland took over the property for health and safety reasons, but they didn’t want to disturb a memorial. And so they didn’t. And then decades go by. And then the American humanists brought a lawsuit to say, hey, wait, you can’t have this cross that’s on government land. And they brought a lawsuit. And we went to the district court. We represented the American Legion as well as the descendants. You know, the mothers should put this up and their families on this monument. We wanted the district court, but the court of appeals. We got a very disturbing opinion. Not only did they declared unconstitutional all of a sudden after 100 years, but they said that maybe the solution was to cut the arms off of the cross so that they could keep it there, but nobody would have to be offended. At that point, we went to the Supreme Court and said, you know, look,.
William Norvell: So it would just be a singular vertical piece of lumber.
Kelly Shackelford: Exactly. And so we went to the Supreme Court.
William Norvell: That’s a pole at that point, not a cross.
Kelly Shackelford: That’s right. And problem with that is, you know this is three miles away from the Arlington National Cemetery. And you know, there’s a 24 foot cross there, the cross of sacrifice given us by Canada. There’s the Argonne Cross. There’s the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that says “known to God.” I mean, if this type of sort of anti-religious approach is going to become the law of the land, then I mean, the whole landscape and every community of our country is going to have to undergo sandblasting and bulldozing of monuments and memorials that mentioned God or have crosses or stars of David or anything else.
So we went to the Supreme Court. But we because of the justice makeup, we had had some changes with the justices. For instance, Justice Kavanaugh was the newest justice and justice Kavanaugh actually donated time with me 20 years ago. He was a young attorney, so I knew he was very committed to religious freedom and the constitution.
And we felt like we had five justices for the first time in maybe 50 years who could overturn a really bad precedent that was causing a lot of these attacks on religion our whole lives. You know, when you see nativity scenes or menorahs or Ten Commandments monuments all being attacked, in our view wasn’t because there’s anything about that in the Constitution, it was because of this bad case called Lemon back in the nineteen 60s and 70s by the Warren Court, a very liberal court. And so we not only argued they shouldn’t tear down this memorial right outside of D.C., but we argued they really need to get rid of this decision, this test that has led to so much hostility to religion and so much confusion. And we won the case 7 to 2. But even more importantly, I think we won 5-4 on the decision that Lemon was not going to be followed. And I really felt like what happened there is for 50 years we’ve kind of had this government in this hostility to religion position and that just flipped and that’s no longer going to be so. And so we’ve still got to build out the positive side to this. But it’s a sea change and really a historic shift that just occurred. That was a really important victory, I think, for religious freedom and the future of our country.
William Norvell: Wow. That’s amazing. It’s amazing to think about and read about from time to time just how these precedents, to your point can last for decades, upon decades and decades and just continue to influence so many parts of the country. And as we do that, I’d love to shift to as you know, a lot of business owners are going to be listening to us. Could you maybe one tell us a little bit about the limitations that business owners have in your perspective and how the law protects our right to religious expression? And then also maybe mention a few cases that you have taken on of business owners to really show us that in an example or two.
Kelly Shackelford: Yeah, and I would say because, you know, if somebody doesn’t remember this or good way to follow a lot of this stuff is on our Web site. We have a lot of resources. They go to first liberty, you spell it out first liberty dot org. And there are all kinds of rights. One of the great pieces of news for people in business is if you’re an employer and if you’re an employee, you have religious freedom protection in the workplace. That’s really important because, you know, this is your livelihood. And if you had religious freedom, except when you’re at work, except when you’re trying to run your business, that would be a disaster because that’s where you spend most of your waking hours. There would be a total loss of religious freedom. But we have not only saw a case law, but we have actually statutes, federal and state statutes that require, you know, protection of religious freedom in the workplace. Whether you’re an employer or an employee. And so that’s sort of the good news. What I tell people who are business owners are employers, and they say, you know, what are my limitations? And when I speak to the Christian audiences, etc. a lot, I say, you know, here’s the great news for you. The only thing you’re not supposed to do, no Christian would ever want to do. And that is, do you have the ability to live out your faith? Yes, you do. What you can’t do is try to force somebody to follow your faith. You can’t say, Chris, can you have a Bible study? Sure you can. Can you require that everybody attend or they don’t work there anymore? No. And by the way, these federal laws I’m talking about, typically there’s 16 employees. That is when they kick in. But these are the kind of things, you know. So can you talk about your faith at work? Sure you can. So the whole point is employers get the fullest extent of religious liberty as long as there’s not some sort of force, coercion, whatever from them. The employees then also get the most religious liberty. They get to choose, so can you invite people to church? Sure you can. Can you say if you don’t come to church, you know I’m gonna fire you or you’ll never get a promotion? No, you can’t. So, again, the only things that are prohibited are things that I don’t know any Christian would do, which is to try to use their position to actually punish somebody if they didn’t have the same religious beliefs or go to the same church or anything else. So that’s sort of the good news. There’s been a lot of cases on this and we’ve had I don’t know how many religious freedom in the workplaces we’ve had. But I’ll just tell you this. We’ve yet to lose any of them. We won every single one of them. So I don’t want people to get intimidated out of doing what God is calling you to do at the workplace.
You might want to call us and ask, hey, how do we do this? But I guarantee you could do it. And the enemy is always going to try to intimidate you and use fear and really misinformation to stop you from doing that great thing that God is calling you to do. So don’t let that stop you. Call us and ask a question if you’re wondering how to reverse that, because there are companies that are very big and very much strong about their faith and think that interstate batteries and a lot of these different companies that are really large and you think where they are, they they’re very large, yet they’re very, very intentional about their faith and their values that they stand for.
And yet they provide freedom for their employers. They just provide opportunities for them to come to the Bible study to get the counseling for their marriage. Yeah, a lot of different things to serve and love on them. And a lot of people use chaplains. There’s a number of chaplain groups, Marketplace Ministries and others. And maybe you have your business for 30 years and you have some success. But maybe the most important thing is you had some chaplains and maybe 20, maybe 50, maybe a hundred people came to know the Lord because you just had chaplains that were available to counsel, to help them, to marry people, because there are some people that come into your business that will never walk in a church. And the only way to have that access is if you have like a chaplain that comes once a month, once a week, whatever, to serve your people. So there’s just lots of freedoms and ideas. And I just encourage you, you know, do what the Lord’s calling you to do and call us if we can help you.
Henry Kaestner: That’s an awesome encouragement. And we’re right on with it. We love chaplaincy marketplace chaplains and corporate chaplains of America, great way to love on your employees in a way that points to something again greater than the manufacturing distribution of widgets. I want to bring in a topic that’s on the top of mind. And just to timestamp this event, we’re talking about this in April of 2020 during the time of Covid 19. And a lot of businesses been shut down and a lot of businesses are trying to understand what can they do and what can’t they do? What are their rights? How should they be thinking about Covid-19? Walk us through a framework on how to think about that, please.
Kelly Shackelford: Yeah, I’ll tell you, this is one of these unusual things I’ve been talking to a lot of national business leaders on this because there’s really an overlapping or similar issue for churches. And that is that churches don’t know how to open, just like businesses are trying to figure out how to open. And the problem is there’s never been sort of constitutional law in a pandemic. And there just wasn’t a lot out there. And so we knew when this thing started, I mean, one of the things we did as an organization is we sat down as soon as this started and we got all of our team together.
We said, look, this is different. Everything has just changed. The challenge to every person here is to begin thinking outside the box to be creative. You know, we’ve talked a lot in our group about how barriers a lot of times to what you’re trying to do. Sort of two things that happen. Number one, it causes you to try new things that maybe you wouldn’t have tried. Which is a great thing. And number, two. It causes you to focus much more intensely because you were blocked from what you’re trying to do. So we think that way here and we sort of almost became the religious freedom experts in the midst of a pandemic. And churches all over the country were coming to us. And the problem is we knew there would be a lot of power and deference to the government at the beginning of this, because there would be a lot of fear and there’s a public health and safety issues. But we knew that over time as that started to recede, that there would be some government entities that would want to keep that power and want to shut down people when they had no authority to do so. And we needed to be ready. And so the first case we had, it was the first case ever in the history of our country in the midst of a pandemic was the case we had in Louisville. It was a church that was doing a drive in service, meaning you drive to church in your car. And it was a way to have communal worship and everything except no danger and meeting every CDC guideline. So unless the CDC was going to come up with something new that you can now catch the corona virus from an automobile, which is obviously silly, then that’s safe and that’s what they did.
Well, the city of Louisville not only said they would come after them criminally if they held their service, but the governor sent the police all across the state to write down the license plates of anybody who was at church on Easter Sunday. And then they were going to be taking action against them, forced quarantines and all this afterwards. So we wanted a really good case to really set the standard in the press that says this is really important about our freedoms. And I think people were thinking. Things have gotten so off the rails are wondering, do we still have our constitutional system? And the great news is we had an incredible opinion by this federal judge. Just incredible. And it really said, hey, we’re still a constitutional republic. These freedoms are still here. While we respect the government in protecting public health. They can’t do things that are discriminatory, that are irrational. And he just went into the religious freedom history of our country and laid out a powerful order. And I think it set the stage for everybody, religious and nonreligious, about. We do have a constitutional system. So these guidelines and these government officials are going to be allowed to do things that really are shown evidence wise to be public health protectors, but they’re not going to be allowed to do things that discriminate, that that aren’t rational, that aren’t backed up, and that, you know, destroy constitutional freedoms in the process. So you have to analyze each of these and you have to look at what they’re doing. And, you know, I’m sure most businesses, just like most churches, they don’t want anybody to get sick or anything. And so they’re going to try to follow everything they can do to keep people safe. You know, it’s not a perfect world. So people are going to have things go wrong. And so what we’ve done with a lot of our clients so far is they’ve been following those CDC guidelines so that they’re safe if anybody does try to come after them. And I think that’s a great way for businesses to be safe as well as just make sure you’re following those, you know, social distancing and the different things that they’re suggesting. And I think as we go on again, more power will be returned to the individuals and to the businesses and less will be in the government. But it’s a scary time right now for a lot of folks. And another whole subject that we could talk about is liability, because that’s one of the things that we’re having to deal with right now, is if you don’t follow one of these things, if they give you a list of 17 pages of things you should do and you don’t follow one now, you’re gonna get sued by somebody because you didn’t noticefFootnote 4 on page fifteen. And so we’re actually talking a lot in D.C. to the White House and others about if there could be some sort of immunity to keep from a lot of these frivolous lawsuits that might come to try to harass. Because we want our businesses to open. We want our churches so open. And as long as they’re being very reasonable, then what They’re doing they should be protected.
Henry Kaestner: Do you get a sense that there’s going to be some sort of ruling on that? Because I know that that is indeed that liability is a big fear for lots of small businesses. And the fear of that, whether you’re a dry cleaner or barbershop, is somebody coming back after you because you didn’t file that footnote. You anticipate that’s something? Do you have any purview into the legislative agenda with the CARES Act and other related acts tha? Might address this issue.
Kelly Shackelford: Yeah, it’s being worked on right now. I just don’t know if we’re going to have the votes. I know that there are a number of people trying to carry this, whether they can get something through the House and the Senate to do that. If not, one of these we’re suggesting is that language be added in front of these CDC guidelines that make clear that these are not like some sort of medical standard of care that’s been hammered out for years and years and therefore, they shouldn’t be used in litigation. Something like that might be helpful as well, because some states are doing a better job than others. For instance, take churches. What Texas did is they said you can now meet in person. Here are the five things, though, we think you should do. You know what? People can do five things. But you give them the fifteen pages, you’re really putting them in an unwieldy situation. And so that’s the problem is if they go into a bill with, you know, every possible thing they can think of, then they’re really going to freeze a lot of people or scare a lot of people when, you know, I think people want to be safe and they’re going to try to be safe. And I think if you’re a little simpler with what you provide, you’ll get better results anyway. But it’s definitely something that we’re all concerned about, both on the business side and on the church or religious freedom side. And we’re hoping there’ll be a solution. Certainly we’ll be doing all we can to make that happen.
William Norvell: We appreciate that. Kelly, that’s an amazing story. Thanks for walking us through a lot of this today as we come to a close and I don’t know if we’re equipped for this, but I feel like a Q&A session with a bunch of our Faith driven entrepreneurs One Day would be an awesome podcast. So to figure out some production quality there. But as we close, what I would love to know is where does God have you today? We love allowing our listeners into our guest lives and seeing where the word of God can be coming alive to you in a new way. Could be something he brought to you this morning during this crisis. Could be something you’ve been meditating on for a season, your life or over a few years, just wherever his word may be coming to you, if you would share them with our audience, we would be grateful.
Kelly Shackelford: Yeah. I mean, for me, it’s been just sort of almost standing back in amazement at what God does. You know, as I said when we came into this, I mean, if you had told me four years ago, hey, can you get rid of that bad lemon case and really free up religious freedom? I would’ve said probably not in my lifetime. And, you know, three years later this last summer, we just changed really history with that case. And as we started this Covid-19 journey again, we were like, Lord, you let us have these opportunities. You know, we want to work really hard, but you’re the one who provides these things that allow us to do things we can never do on our own. And just in the last three or four weeks, we’ve just been blown away. I mean, we have a meeting on Monday morning, our prayer meeting as a group with people all over the country. And everybody is looking at each other on Zoom going, how did the Lord just allow us to do that? You know, the CARES Act legislation. People don’t know this, but every church is allowed to participate and every religious nonprofit. Well, we were able to see that there were some dangers in the act and we were able to get through a protection on the last day that protected every church and every religious nonprofit in the country. And they have no idea, you know, that Louisville case we’re talking about. It’s the first case ever in the history of the country in a pandemic about constitutional freedoms. And it was just a grand slam. And the fact that God let us do that. I mean, you know, every week there’s been another miracle. It’s almost like something we could have never constructed in our own hands, that God just let us have the opportunity. And so that’s been I guess, the really the thing I’m kind of sitting back in amazement and just saying, Lord, without you, we really can’t do anything. But with you, we can do anything. And if we’ll just trust and wait on him, the incredible things we get to do that we could never dream of is what happens.
Henry Kaestner: It’s a great word. Kelly, thank you very much for spending your time. Thank you for your life’s calling. Thirty years of protecting religious freedoms. May God bless you and your team during this crazy time. And we look forward to having you back on. We’re going to go ahead and put up a link to this show notes and some of thn materials and some of the cases that you are talking about. And in addition to the piece you mentioned, the federal judge had written about this time, just really grateful for it. Thank you.
Kelly Shackelford: Thank you, guys, for what you guys do as well.
