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Let's catch up with the worst of the religious court cases [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2025-09-08

Emboldened by the United States Supreme Court’s eagerness to coddle them, religious conservatives are shoveling their so-called religious freedom cases into the pipeline as fast as they can.

And why wouldn’t they? It’s not just that hard-right Christian plaintiffs can rely on the court’s six conservatives ruling in their favor, though that is indeed a big plus when you’re trying to force everyone to live under your Christofascist worldview. They’ve also got a hard-right Trump administration just as committed to that Christofascist goal, so there’s no danger the Department of Justice will oppose their efforts. So, let’s get familiar with their latest efforts.

In Jones v. Mahaniah, two sets of conservative Christian foster parents have sued for their right to terrorize any transgender children who might have the misfortune to be placed with them.

Because Massachusetts is not in the grip of the transphobia that has a complete lock on the conservative brain, the state requires foster families to agree they will “support, respect, and affirm the foster child's sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.” However, these foster parents refuse to do so, because Jesus. That means they won’t use the child’s pronouns, won’t support their gender identity, and won’t provide them with medical assistance supporting transition. What they do want to do, however, is the right to try to convince any LGBTQ+ kids they foster that their sexual orientation or gender identity is wrong and evil.

These parents have sued to block Massachusetts from enforcing its policy against them. According to them, it violates their free speech rights and entitlement to equal protection under the law if they cannot torment LGBTQ+ foster children. If they prevail, it means these parents and other conservative Christians committed to this level of homo- and transphobia will not have to agree to be even remotely supportive of LGBTQ+ children placed in their care. And if they push this one all the way up to the Supreme Court? Imagine how hyped Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas will be.

Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, left, and Clarence Thomas look on during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in January.

Over in Minnesota, some conservative Christian pharmacists have worked themselves into a lather over how it violates their religious freedom if they have to fill prescriptions for puberty blockers—but only for trans kids, mind you. Yes, the plaintiffs in Scott v. Minnesota Board of Pharmacy magnanimously declare that they will refuse to fill prescriptions for gender-affirming care only if they can tell it was prescribed for that purpose. So, if a cisgender child needs a puberty blocker to, say, stave off early puberty, these pharmacists have decided their god is totes cool with it, but if a trans child needs a puberty blocker to stave off puberty, then their god has zero chill about it.

These folks all want to work as pharmacists while ignoring Minnesota’s laws about the dispensation of medications—because their right to be transphobic outweighs everything.

Just for good measure, one of the plaintiffs in Scott is also an unhinged anti-vaxxer whose religious freedom means they will not perform a truly breathtaking number of vaccinations, including those for rabies. Bro, your god wants people to die from rabies?

Finally, let’s catch up on the latest efforts to make sure that same-sex couples can never buy a cake. Remember back in 2018 how the conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that a conservative Christian baker could not be subjected to the horror of having to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple? In that case, the baker insisted that he would be totally fine selling a pre-made cake to a same-sex couple, but what his version of Jesus couldn’t abide was designing a cake for that same couple.

Well, enter Catharine Miller, a bakery owner in Bakersfield, California. A same-sex couple came into Miller’s bakery, talked with an employee, and ordered a predesigned three-tiered white cake that the bakery sells for any number of occasions, including weddings and birthdays. But when the couple came back to do a tasting, Miller refused to sell them the predesigned cake.

Miller’s refusal is a huge step forward in the conservative battle to drive LGBTQ+ people from public life. Previous cases like this focused on how it would burden the First Amendment rights of Christian wedding photographers, cake bakers, and the like if they were required to use their creative design impulses in service of a same-sex marriage. The argument there is that their design process is a form of speech, and the state can’t compel them to engage in speech that violates their religious convictions.

Miller’s argument, however, goes much further. The argument there is that simply being aware that an item in her bakery will be purchased by a same-sex couple for the nefarious purpose of celebrating their nuptials violates her religious freedom. So she is asking for the explicit right to discriminate based on sexual orientation. She lost in the California courts because of that whole thing where California prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, so she’s running to the Supreme Court to see if it will take the case.

If it does, it’s another chance for the court’s conservatives to keep pushing LGBTQ+ people out of public life, to allow open discrimination and call it religious freedom. The freedom these people demand is no freedom at all. It’s a demand that they get to put a very specific Christian conservative boot on the neck of everyone else in America. It’s the very opposite of real religious freedom, and the most powerful people in the county are totally down with it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/8/2342380/-Let-s-catch-up-with-the-worst-of-the-religious-court-cases?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_3&pm_medium=web

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