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Humble Jurist is where faith and law meet. We advance the values and mission of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society by highlighting those who are defending religious freedom, serving their communities, and striving to uphold the rule of law. Should you or someone you know be featured on Humble Jurist? Fill out this survey: gonzaga.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b4pOcSqafE4itMi
Welcome to Humble Jurist, the J. Reuben Clark Law Society podcast. I'm Lucas Stevens. First, some updates: the JRCLS wraps up a successful month of service. BJ Duke, chair of the Service Committee, will join us for our next episode to share stories and highlight the impact made by society members around the world. Looking forward, the Religious Liberty Fellowship for law students and recent graduates takes place in Washington, DC, June 1st through the 5th, and the Asia Pacific Philippines Multi-Area Conference will be in Auckland, New Zealand, June 4th through the 6th. This episode, I'm joined by Blaine Evanson. Blaine is a partner at Gibson Dunn and chairs the J. Reuben Clark Law Society's Religious Freedom Committee. He previously clerked at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and graduated from Columbia Law School and Brigham Young University.
Blaine, thank you for joining the Humble Jurist podcast. To start, could you introduce yourself, your background, your practice, and how you became involved with the J. Reuben Clark Law Society and Religious Freedom Committee?
Sure, thank you for having me. It's an honor to talk with you today. I did my undergraduate at BYU, and then law school at Columbia. I was active in the Clark Society at Columbia. We had a great group of law students. I clerked for a year after law school on the DC Circuit, and then came to Gibson Dunn in Los Angeles, and I've been at Gibson Dunn for almost 20 years, and my practice at Gibson is civil appellate litigation, and it's, you know, federal and state courts across the country in a variety of cases. I started my career in Los Angeles, and I was quite active in the Los Angeles Clark Society chapter. I was chapter chair at one point, would have been around 2014 and in 2016 I moved with my family from Los Angeles down to Orange County to Gibson's Irvine office, and around that time I started doing some pro bono religious liberty work, mostly writing amicus briefs in religious liberty appeals, and it was around that time I think that I joined the Clark Society's Religious Freedom Committee.
Okay, so you currently chair the Religious Freedom Committee. Could you give us an overview of the committee's work?
Sure, the committee does a number of things. We support the chapters of the Clark Society around the world in their planning and putting on a religious liberty events, so we get emails and calls from time to time from chapter leaders asking for ideas or for potential speakers. Our committee's vice chair, Hannah Smith, works for the BYU International Religious Freedom Center, and she does a lot of speaking at these Clark Society events around around the world, really. So, that's one thing we do. We also have a religious liberty fellowship that Tanner Bean and Annika Barkdoll run, that is an amazing program every year, where 30 or so law students and recent law graduates come together for a week of instruction from judges, practitioners, and academics, they, they're taught the basics of religious liberty law, and are mentored on projects that they come up with, they design them, and then they implement them to further the cause of religious liberty. It's really a wonderful program, and Tanner and Annika do just an amazing job running it. We also write amicus briefs in important religious liberty cases. We teach a series at Education Week at BYU on religious liberty, and we are beginning a new effort to track legislative developments related to religious liberty. So I'm sure I'm leaving a few things out, but those are the main things that we, as a committee, do.
You mentioned the amicus brief initiative, which you've let out on. For listeners who may not be familiar, what is an amicus brief, and how can it influence case outcomes?
Sure, so amicus curiae is Latin for friend of the court, and essentially, an amicus is a person or organization who has some interest in the outcome of the case and wants to offer the court a perspective to assist in deciding the case, and often amicus briefs will just repeat the arguments in the party's briefs to express their dis their agreement, and those are generally not very effective briefs, but sometimes an amicus brief will offer a unique perspective or a concern for the court to consider that if it decides the case a certain way, there will be either positive or negative kind. Consequences that may not either occur to or be of interest to the party, so it may not be something that's developed in the briefs, and these are the more effective amicus briefs, and sometimes a brief like this will take a minor point in the parties' briefs and then expand on it and offer some sort of social science or other expert perspective, so that's generally speaking what what amicus briefs do in, in cases normally in the appellate courts, but also sometimes in in trial courts.
Now at this point, the society has filed multiple amicus briefs in significant religious freedom cases. Could you walk us through those and explain the legal issues and impact of one or two of those briefs?
Sure, we have now filed five briefs in three cases at the US Supreme Court, at the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth, 10th, and DC Circuits, and one in the District Court in Utah, and these briefs have all been focused on what's called the Church Autonomy Doctrine, and we could spend several hours discussing that topic. It's truly fascinating, but in brief, the Church Autonomy Doctrine is derived from the religion clauses of the First Amendment, and it guarantees religious organizations autonomy in the inherently religious decisions that they make. So, the most well-known species of church autonomy is what's called the ministerial exception, and that exception is that the state has no authority to interfere with the religious organization's choosing of the ministers who carry out its religious mission, so these cases usually arise where a minister is fired and wants to claim that his or her firing was based on age or gender or something, and that it violates the anti-discrimination laws, and the ministerial exception holds that such a plaintiff cannot bring a claim if he or she is a minister, and there's a whole body of doctrine as to what constitutes a minister, but that is what's called the ministerial exception to those laws. So that's that's an example of a church autonomy doctrine application. The cases where we, the Clark Society, has participated as amicus to date involve challenges to decisions by the Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the church's use of funds that were donated as religious offerings, as tithing or you know, tithing-related donations, and both cases involved disaffected members who say that they donated to the church, and with some expectation of how those funds would be used, and that they were used in another way that they were not anticipating, and so they're chat, they're bringing, you know, basically civil fraud claims against the church that you know we thought you were going to use the money in this way and you actually used it in another way. It's more complicated than that, but that's the short version of these cases, and the briefs that we filed have explained how allowing civil fraud challenges to the collection, the management, and the disbursement of religious offerings would interject courts into core religious decisions, core management of the religion in ways that the First Amendment prohibits. So, our briefs have really been sort of nuts and bolts. Here's why these decisions are so religious, and how a fraud claim would intrude into the religious realm that the First Amendment walls off. So, when we file these briefs, you file them, and because you're not a party, you don't usually, although sometimes you can participate in the oral argument. So, sometimes you file these amicus briefs, and you don't know whether they get read, you don't know whether they impact any of the judges. The Huntsman case in the Ninth Circuit was an en banc case, and so there were 11 judges participating, and it was clear from the oral argument that our brief had been read, because many things that we had argued in our brief and that were sort of uniquely argued in our brief prompted questions from the judges, and then in the principal concurrence by Judge Bress, which was the concurrence adopting the church autonomy argument that scrutinizing the way that the church collects, manages, and disperses tithing funds would violate the First Amendment. Judge Bress cited our, our amicus brief, which is, you know, when you're, when you're an amicus, that's like the gold standard, like you, you got cited in the opinion, you made an impact, and so it was, it was gratifying to have that reference there.
So, a common theme in these briefs, which you explained, is that courts should not decide inherently religious questions, but why is that so central to religious liberty across the board?
Yeah, it's a great question. Church autonomy is in some ways the central and most fundamental protection of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Most of the religious liberty litigation over the last 50 years has been about whether a law is neutral and generally applicable, whether religiously motivated conduct should be exempted from anti-discrimination laws. Those are important cases and issues, but church autonomy goes to something that's even more fundamental than those, and says that on matters that are core to the faith, so church doctrine, ordinances, sacraments sacraments, church discipline. Who represents the church, and what they teach on these issues. The civil secular law has no business even touching these things. Church autonomy is a first order question before you get to whether the religious conduct should be exempted from the law. It's a first-order question of whether this is even something that civil courts have any basis adjudicating, and one version of church autonomy, and it was adopted by one of the judges in the Huntsman case, Judge Bumite, in a concurrence, is that there isn't even jurisdiction for civil courts to consider a claim challenging these things, that it's totally walled off from courts considering it, so it's, you know, church autonomy isn't as frequently litigated as some of those other free exercise and establishment clause claims that I mentioned, but it is central, fundamental to religious liberty and the application of the First Amendment.
Now, I'm really interested in what goes into producing one of these amicus briefs. You know, what is the process like from identifying a case to drafting and filing?
Sure, there are many, many worthy cases around the country and around the world, really, that involve religious liberty issues, but we are looking for those cases where we think the Clark Society has something unique to offer some perspective that will be helpful to the court in deciding the case, sort of what I was saying earlier. We don't just want to, you know, file what's called a Me Too brief that, you know, we agree with the with the church. So that's not every case. Once we find a case that we think fits, then we seek and get approval from the J Urban Clark Society International Board, if they approve, then we find a law firm that's willing to draft the brief pro bono. We're looking for attorneys who are very experienced in appellate brief writing and who have a fluency with religious liberty law and the issues in the case, and there's often a short fuse, like sometimes we find out about a case and need to file a brief, you know, a matter of weeks later, and so we really have to hustle, but once a firm gets started, it usually takes, you know, some number of weeks to produce a draft. It goes through several rounds of revisions. The Religious Freedom Committee reviews it, the Clark Society board reviews it, we all provide comments, and the brief gets finalized and filed by the firm that's leading it.
Beyond the amicus briefs, the Religious Freedom Committee also runs programs like the JRCLS Religious Liberty Fellowship and helps promote events like International Religious Freedom Day. Could you briefly share how those efforts complement the legal advocacy work.
Sure, our committee is not an advocacy committee, it's not really an anything committee, other than to promote religious freedom in any way or anywhere that we have a sphere of influence. So, the amicus briefs, we have a sphere of influence in the courts, in the fellowship, we are trying to help raise up a new generation of lawyers who have a fluency and commitment to religious liberty, to educate them in the law, maybe on in a way that they, you know, didn't get a fulsome education in law school, and to mentor them and connect them to academics and practitioners that can help you know further their career with the International Religious Freedom Day that you mentioned, we are trying to encourage chapters around the world to plan at least some sort of event during the month of October. October 27th is International Religious Freedom Day. That date commemorates the signing of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 and our great hope is that every chapter worldwide will do something to commemorate that date every year, and so that's our big picture mission here to promote religious freedom in any way where we have a sphere of influence, and that is in the courts with law students through the chapters at Education Week, really any forum where we think we could add value, we're trying to be a voice and get this message out.
Okay, can you say more about your committee's focus on International Religious Freedom Day?
Yeah, so this is one of our more recent efforts. And as I mentioned, it's on october 27 every year, and our great hope is that every chapter worldwide will do something to commemorate that date every year, so some chapters will go big and have, you know, gatherings with multiple speakers who discuss cutting edge religious liberty issues, other chapters will have a Zoom meeting. Other chapters will get together for a lunch discussion, and others will send out a link to an article and ask over email and ask the members of the chapter to read it and think about how they can share its message with others. So, there's no, there's no standard, no blueprint, no expectation from our committee or from the Clark Society more broadly that these events meet certain requirements. Really, all we want is awareness, and that people have this issue front of mind every October, and so our goal is to help the chapters again worldwide do something to raise awareness of Religious Freedom Day every year.
All right, last question, what advice would you give to law students and attorneys of faith who want to engage in religious freedom work?
So, it's a good question, and I think it really varies for everyone. There are a limited number of jobs that allow one to do pure religious liberty work. There are firms like Beckett, First Liberty, ADF, wonderful organizations that are responsible for nearly all of the headline-grabbing religious liberty cases that you know that get to the Supreme Court and the lower appellate courts. Those are great jobs if you want to do pure religious liberty work. Lots of traditional law firms allow attorneys to devote a portion of their practice to either paid or pro bono religious liberty work. I'm, I'm fortunate that my firm is very supportive of us doing this kind of work, and I know lots of other firms do as well. So, a lot of attorneys who either can't or don't want to be full-time religious liberty lawyers can seek to carve out time to do some of this work, even if it's not their focus, but I would say setting those aside, whatever ability you have to do formal religious liberty litigation, everyone, especially anyone with a legal education can do more to educate themselves on these issues, and to help educate those around us. And this is particularly clear for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nearly every member of the First Presidency, in the Quorum of 12 Apostles, has, in one venue or another, encouraged us to help further the cause of religious liberty, and I would encourage everyone to go back and reread President Oaks's April 2021 General Conference message. It's called Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution, and it is an absolutely wonderful message, not only on religious freedom, but on the inspired principles animating the US Constitution this year. We commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the First Presidency has asked every church unit in the United States to use their second hour on the fifth Sunday of this month, so May 2026 to discuss the 250th anniversary, and that is that is a rare thing. Not very often does the First Presidency say we want every unit in the church, or at least every unit in the United States, to spend their fifth Sunday second hour lesson on this particular topic. So, this is important, and President Christopherson and Elder Cook released a video earlier this week that discusses the significance and importance of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of the Constitution and the inspired principles those doctrines enshrined, and among those inspired principles, maybe foremost among those inspired principles is religious liberty, and so for members of the Church of Jesus Christ, this is not just a fun hobby. Furthering religious liberty is a core mission of the Restored Church, and a major focus of the inspired leaders who direct God's work. And so that's a long-winded answer to your question, but my, you know, humble role as chair of the Clark Society's Religious Freedom Committee, I just encourage anyone listening to devote some portion of their study, some portion of their available time to making whatever impact they can within their sphere of influence, and that does not mean necessarily a job change, it can be educating yourself and educating those around you.
Thank you, Blaine, for providing an overview of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society's religious freedom initiatives, explaining the church autonomy doctrine, and for your advice on getting involved in religious liberty work. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate. And leave a positive review. Also, join us next month to discuss the 2026 month of service, and thanks for listening.