In an article covering the recent training the Department of Justice held for its attorneys on religious liberty issues, the New York Times claimed with a blaring headline that the event spurned “concern among lawyers” because the workshops supposedly taught ways to “blunt civil rights protections for gay and transgender people.” This liberal spin on the topic chooses to paint the department as bigoted and discriminatory and overlooks the progress it’s made to bolster religious liberty protections. It’s also a blatant attempt to diminish the importance of religious liberty and mislead the public.
Per usual, the newspaper embellishes its thesis with thin evidence to support it.
There are no specifics about which trainings harmed transgender rights, who thought so, why, or what purpose these trainings might have served. The “reporter” writes only that per some emails and messages she obtained, career lawyers had concerns that the DOJ “was working to further the use of religious freedom in ways that would push back efforts to protect gay and transgender people from discrimination.”
For additional proof, the New York Times report cites Vanita Gupta, former head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama and former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. She is a hyperpartisan source if there ever was one.
The paper does mention some other important cases the Civil Rights Division has taken on, such as tackling religious liberty violations that are inherently driven by anti-Semitism or racism. The article also acknowledges that the training sessions focused on other important religious liberty-related topics.
There has been a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism in just the last year, and the DOJ has tried to tackle it head-on. At least one training focused specifically on protecting the religious liberties of those affected by hate crimes.
The Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section prosecutes hate crimes that are based on religion and religious practice. Right now, it is working on the prosecution of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and the Poway synagogue shooting in California, two notorious hate crimes driven by anti-Semitism. Yet, for some reason, this apparently did not earn a mention in the New York Times article.
Another training focused on the enforcement of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act in our nation’s prisons, an overlooked segment of society. Recently, the DOJ reached an agreement resolving an investigation into the Virginia Department of Corrections to make sure men and women in custody there still retain their rights to worship and engage in religious activities, as is their constitutional right.
A senior Department of Justice official described to me in an email what the trainings were about and how important they were:
Does that sound somehow bigoted and evil to you?
Religious liberty issues are foundational to our nation’s core values. They’re a source of hope and freedom in times of struggle — even a time like this, with the coronavirus crisis pushing the United States into a shutdown.
Even amid a crisis, it’s still important to remember that the DOJ has supported religious liberty for all. It has fought for religious rights to be enforced for an Islamic cemetery, fought for students not to be barred from utilizing state funds to attend private schools when no public schools are nearby, and supported an Indiana archdiocese’s First Amendment rights to fire a teacher who didn’t abide by Catholic teachings.
The DOJ is not perfect, but I’m glad to see it is prioritizing religious liberty for all Americans. This is the true meaning of the First Amendment. Freedom of religion remains vital, no matter how hard the New York Times tries to spin its stories to suggest otherwise.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
