Ep. 197 ‘Are cakes speech?’ with Alliance Defending Freedom’s Kristen Waggoner

from So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast

by FIRE

Published: Thu Oct 12 2023

Show Notes

President, CEO, and general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Kristen Waggoner, joins us for a discussion on freedom of speech and religious liberty. ADF has played various roles in 74 U.S. Supreme Court victories and since 2011,has won cases before the Court 15 times.

According to its website, “ADF is the world's largest legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.”

ADF has litigated many high profile and controversial free speech cases, including the recent Supreme Court case involving a web designer who didn’t want to be compelled to design websites for same-sex weddings. Before that, ADF litigated the 2018Masterpiece Cakeshop case, which involved a cake designer who similarly didn’t want to provide his services for same-sex weddings on religious grounds.

After the initial conversation was recorded, The Washington Post and The New Yorker released articles critical of ADF. Nico and Kristen recorded an additional, brief conversation to address these articles. That is included at the end of the podcast.

Transcript:

https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/so-speak-podcast-transcript-are-cakes-speech-alliance-defending-freedoms-kristen

Timestamps:

0:43 - Introduction

6:16 - Kristen’s path to ADF

- ADF’s international team

- Pavi Rasanen controversy

- What does it mean to be a ministry?/blasphemy laws

- ADF’s Supreme Court cases

- 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

- Public accommodation laws/Masterpiece Cakeshop

- Pre-enforcement challenges

- Facial challenges

- Test cases or fake cases?

- Yale incident

- Other campus shoutdowns

- L.M. v. Town of Middleborough

- Kristen addresses WaPo article

- Kristen addresses New Yorker article