Thanksgiving is the most underrated holiday.
If I could only eat one kind of food for the rest of my life, I’d choose barbecue. But my second choice would be Thanksgiving food.
Either way I probably wouldn’t make it very long, but what a wonderful way to go! And in addition to the food, you get family and football. Plus, there are no expectations of gifts and gift giving, just gratitude for what and who we already have – a healthy practice.
Indeed, studies show that prioritizing gratitude makes a big difference for our health – physical and mental. So Thanksgiving is actually a healthy holiday. Remember that when you’re getting thirds of mashed potatoes and gravy tomorrow.
And while 2024 has been yet another tumultuous year, it’s also been filled with a number of significant events and developments that will positively impact our lives and our futures.
So before I start digging into turkey and pie, I wanted to share some things I’m particularly thankful for this year because of their impact on our civil liberties.
Free speech
One of the biggest threats to free speech in our day is the accumulation of government power that can be used to pressure private businesses to censor speech government bureaucrats don’t like.
Because the private businesses aren’t bound by the First Amendment, government would like to co-opt them to do what the Constitution forbids government from doing.
That’s why we should all be thankful for the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in NRA v. Vullo in May.
In this decision, the Court held that New York bureaucrats could not use their power over insurance companies to pressure them to stop providing coverage to 2nd Amendment advocates because of their speech.
But the implications go well beyond gun rights. Justice Sotomayor’s opinion is clear that “a government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf.”
In the years to come this decision may be increasingly important to the preservation of all Americans’ civil liberties.
I talked more about the case here and hosted a post-decision conversation about the case with experts here.
Religious liberty
Two weeks ago, I wrote to you about religious liberty and how it’s a fundamental component of the American Dream – indeed, it might be thought of as the American origin story.
The right to freely practice one’s faith – without fear of government retaliation – is a fundamental human right. That’s why our founding fathers intentionally established religious liberty as a core American value by enshrining it in the First Amendment.
And the winning streak for religious liberty continued this year – including The Becket Fund’s victories for Jewish students at UCLA and Christian high school students in D.C. and Alliance Defending Freedom’s win for Jack Phillips in Colorado.
Religious freedom, like free speech, is not a zero sum. Appropriate to Thanksgiving week, it’s more like an ever-expanding pie.
Whatever one’s beliefs, a victory for religious liberty is always good news for freedom lovers.
Due process
One of the most important guarantees of our liberty is the constitutional requirement that it cannot be taken from us without due process of law. The Constitution protects our right to due process in many ways, including the Seventh Amendment’s right to a trial by jury before the government can impose damaging fines or penalties on us.
But for many decades, executive branch agencies have skipped the courts and instead dragged Americans before the agencies’ own in-house judges.
It won’t surprise you to know that the government almost always wins when its own agency is judge, “jury,” and executioner.
AFP Foundation argued that Americans are entitled to a fair forum in front of an independent judge. And the Supreme Court agreed: In Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the Seventh Amendment prevents the SEC and other government agencies from depriving Americans of their day in court.
Separation of powers
Finally, there’s what may be the most important guarantee of civil liberties of the entire year – or many years. In June of this year, the Supreme Court finally reversed a 40-year-long mistake by overturning Chevron deference in the Loper Bright decision.
Not only was Loper Bright a win for the little guy, but it’s also a critical first step for restoring our constitutional system of checks and balances, to ensure that each government branch is operating in accordance with its constitutional duties.
As I explained in this newsletter back when the Court first decided to hear the case, “[Loper Bright] is ultimately about the constitutional separation of powers, which was the first way that the founding fathers thought we could protect civil liberties.”
And as Justice Scalia observed, our constitutional “structure dictates destiny.” The First Amendment and other promises in the Bill of Rights are of little consequence – as similar protections proved to be in the Soviet Union and elsewhere – if the checks and balances of government are discarded.
So Loper Bright is not just a win for the herring fishermen in that case. It’s a win for every American threatened when unaccountable bureaucrats can give themselves new powers over our civil liberties.
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I expect new opportunities in 2025 to advance civil liberties and restore government to its proper role as guarantor of those liberties. And I’m grateful for the ways each of us get to play our part in that effort.
In a year filled with challenges and division, I am deeply thankful that civil liberties have been protected and expanded in so many ways this year. And for the chance to build on that success in the years to come.
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