Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has recently bad-mouthed the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s criticism of the Auburn University baseball team coach leading players in prayer and the inclusion of crosses and the phrase “Jesus won” on team gear. FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor have released the following statement in response:
Sen. Tuberville’s comments demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of both the Constitution and FFRF’s mission. The First Amendment protects every American’s right to practice their religion — or no religion at all — free from government coercion. It does not permit public university employees to use their official positions to promote Christianity to student-athletes.
FFRF has never objected to private religious expression by Auburn players, coaches or anyone else. What we object to is a public university baseball program using its official authority to organize team prayer and promote sectarian religious messages through university-sponsored athletics. Student-athletes come from a variety of religious backgrounds — and public university officials have a duty to respect that diversity rather than use their positions to advance a particular faith. Student-athletes should never be made to feel that participation on a public university team requires conformity to a coach’s religious beliefs.
Sen. Tuberville is also mistaken when he claims the United States was founded on “freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” The Founders deliberately rejected religious establishments and created a secular Constitution that guarantees freedom of conscience for believers and nonbelievers alike. Religious freedom necessarily includes freedom from government-imposed religion.
As for the accusation that FFRF “hates God and America,” such rhetoric is as tired as it is false. FFRF’s members include patriotic Americans from every walk of life who are dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of church-state separation. We will continue standing up for the rights of all students, including Auburn’s Christian students, to make their own religious choices free from pressure by government officials.
The issue here is not whether Auburn players may pray or otherwise express their faith. They absolutely may. The issue is whether public university employees may use their positions of authority to promote Christianity through official team activities. The Constitution’s answer is: No.
Religious freedom means every student gets to decide for themselves what to believe. It does not mean government officials get to decide for them.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America, is a national nonprofit organization with about 41,000 members nationwide, including hundreds of members in Alabama. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is applauding Major League Baseball for reportedly standing firm against politically motivated accusations of religious discrimination.
Several San Francisco Giants players were warned recently for writing spiteful bible verse citations on their caps during a Pride Night game. In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, FFRF has commended the league for standing by its neutral uniform policies and resisting efforts by politicians and government officials to portray routine workplace rules as anti-Christian discrimination.
“Religious liberty is a fundamental American value, but it does not entitle individuals to disregard neutral workplace rules or demand preferential treatment,” FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker write. “By maintaining that distinction, MLB has demonstrated that it is possible to respect religious freedom while also preserving an inclusive environment for all.”
The controversy stems from the San Francisco Giants’ annual Pride Night game on June 12. During the event, players wore caps featuring a rainbow-colored Giants logo. Several Giants pitchers reportedly wrote bible verse citations on those caps, including references to Genesis 9:12-16, a passage that discusses God’s covenant after the flood and describes the rainbow as a sign of that covenant.
Major League Baseball subsequently warned the players that adding unauthorized messages to league-issued uniforms violated league rules.
That decision drew criticism from several conservative elected officials and political appointees, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.,Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who have characterized MLB’s actions as religious discrimination. Dhillon has reportedly asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate the matter. FFRF says those claims fundamentally misunderstand both religious liberty and anti-discrimination law.
“The issue is not whether the players are Christian or whether they quoted scripture,” FFRF writes. “The question is whether individual players may alter league-issued uniforms to display personal messages in violation of league policy. The answer is plainly no.”
The state/church watchdog notes that employers routinely distinguish between official organizational messaging and unauthorized personal expression. A player would not be entitled to add political slogans, ideological messages or other personal statements to league-issued apparel — and religiously motivated messages are no different.
“Religious belief does not confer a right to disregard neutral workplace rules,” FFRF explains. “An employee does not gain a special exemption from generally applicable policies merely by invoking religion.”
FFRF also rejects the claim that enforcing a neutral uniform policy constitutes religious discrimination.
“Anti-discrimination laws protect employees from adverse treatment because of their religion,” the letter states. “They do not require employers to grant special privileges to religiously motivated expression or exempt religious employees from workplace rules that apply equally to everyone else.”
The organization expressed particular concern over reports that the Department of Justice has asked the EEOC to investigate MLB.
“The Civil Rights Division exists to combat genuine discrimination, not to transform religious liberty into a weapon against organizations that seek to create welcoming environments for historically marginalized communities,” FFRF writes.
FFRF notes that Pride Night events are intended to ensure that LGBTQ+ fans, players and families feel welcome in a sport that has not always been inclusive.
“Such initiatives are not anti-Christian, anti-religious or discriminatory,” the letter states. “They simply reflect the principle that every person deserves equal dignity, respect and inclusion.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
This week, Metro Weekly cited my reporting in a piece about a Christian family’s lawsuit over a transgender wrestler. They said, “As reported by Hemant Mehta in his The Friendly Atheist Substack, multiple wrestlers, coaches, and parents of youth wrestlers who reviewed the video said they saw nothing abnormal.” The work you support is helping change the narrative about controversial issues. Please help me continue doing it via Patreon or the Subscribe button below! You can also make one-time donations through Venmo or PayPal.
The Supreme Court has made it official: Religious freedom only applies if you’re a conservative Christian. The conservative super-majority ruled 6-3 on Tuesday, along partisan lines, that a Rastafarian man whose hair was cut off against his will—violating his religious beliefs—had no legal remedies available to him.
The case centered around Damon Landor, who hadn’t cut his hair in decades because he follows the Nazarite vow—which includes a reference to Numbers 6:5: “… No razor may be used on their head… they must let their hair grow long.”
He continued that vow even after entering two Louisiana jails in 2020, for a five-month sentence over a drug-related charge. When he was transferred to a third facility—the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center—Landor worried they might try to cut his hair to fit in with inmate grooming policies, so he showed officers paperwork that said federal law was on his side: The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) basically says prisons that receive federal funding can’t violate someone’s religious beliefs unless there’s a really good reason for it.
The officers didn’t care. They threw his paperwork in the trash, handcuffed him to a chair, and shaved off his hair.
He later sued, seeking damages from both the prison and the individual officers for violating his rights. The lower courts ruled against him, but the Supreme Court took up his case. Unfortunately, the conservatives have now also dismissed his arguments, leaving him with no more recourse.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the individual officers never consented to following RLUIPA, so they couldn’t be held accountable for what they did… as if it was okay for them to violate the law because they didn’t know any better. Even though the state-run prison received federal funding and essentially agreed to follow federal law as a result, he argued, the same couldn’t be said of the employees.
In this case, Gorsuch continued, the Louisiana Department of Corrections “does not dispute that it is a recipient of federal funds” and “that it has agreed” to be sued by private plaintiffs under RLUIPA “as a condition of accepting those funds.” But Landor does not contend that the prison officials who are the defendants in his lawsuit have “voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer private suits under RLUIPA,” Gorsuch noted, and therefore his lawsuit against them cannot go forward. Gorsuch wrote, for example, that it did not matter that the prison officials received paychecks from the Louisiana Department of Corrections, which in turn received federal funding, so that they “should be deemed to have implicitly consented to RLUIPA liability.”
If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. Alexis Romero and Mark Joseph Stern of Slate couldn’t believe that line of reasoning:
… the state officials in this case arguably did agree to be bound by federal law. After all, they signed an employment contract with a prison that receives federal funding by virtue of RLUIPA. State officials are trained on their inmates’ rights, and prison litigation has been around for centuries, under RLUIPA and other statutes. There’s no serious argument that these state officials were blind to the consequences that might come from violating the rights of the prisoners they’re in charge of.
The liberal justices said as much in their dissent, adding that the majority just gave federal employees permission to ignore RLUIPA whenever they want.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. She argued that, as a result of the majority’s ruling, “[p]risoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons—no matter how blatant—will often be left remediless. And encroachments on prisoners’ statutory rights are likely to happen with fair frequency, as state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law, even if it is handed to them on a piece of paper.”
To get a little more technical, Gorsuch justified his decision by saying his issue was with the way Congress worded RLUIPA, but with a dysfunctional Congress run by Republicans, there’s no quick fix even if the correction is obvious. (Ian Millhiser of Vox notes that this could have a serious effect on women who need emergency abortions in red states.)
What makes this decision all the more infuriating is that everyone seems to agree that Landor’s rights were violated. The conservatives on SCOTUS said it. The state admitted it, too, even saying they had changed their rules to prevent this kind of incident in the future. But the ruling still means Landor can’t receive any sort of compensation for what he went through.
“We condemn the conduct as alleged in this case and have taken steps to prevent this problem from recurring, but we are grateful the court agreed with the state in this matter,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, said in a statement.
She added that religious rights are “deeply important” but that the state has its own laws that protect them.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State had filed an amicus brief in this case on Landor’s behalf, saying RLUIPA permitted lawsuits against individual officers. They even said, “Without the possibility of individual liability, officers (and institutions) can blatantly and/or repeatedly violate RLUIPA with few to no consequences.” They were, of course, disappointed with Tuesday’s decision:
“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision endangers the religious freedom of incarcerated people, like Damon Landor, who are particularly vulnerable to abuse and having unnecessary burdens placed on their religious exercise. Once again, we see a court that will bend over backward for the religious freedom of Christians, but allows the government to trample the religious freedom of non-Christians. We can only hope this faulty decision doesn’t embolden more prison officials to ignore the religious-freedom rights of incarcerated people to observe their faith as long as they don’t harm others.”
That’s really the big takeaway here. The Supreme Court has rewarded Christians who filed religious freedom lawsuits even when the facts were not on their side (like Joe Kennedy) or when they suffered no actual damages (like the wedding website creator). Here’s a Rastafarian whose story is not in dispute and who actually suffered, and the Supreme Court’s conservatives are giving him a pat on the back and nothing of value. Hell, Gorsuch, who went out of his way to give Kennedy a victory by lying about the nature of his case, is the same person now saying there’s nothing he can do for Landor.
This man literally waved the law in front of the officers but the Supreme Court insisted those officers can’t be held accountable for not following the rules. What else could Landor have possibly done?
Even more concerning is how this decision gives a green light to other officers who may want to sidestep the law when it involves a non-Christian inmate, according to Elizabeth Reiner Platt, the director of the Law, Rights & Religion Project.
Without any threat of financial punishment, employees of state jails and prisons can trample inmates’ religious rights with impunity. And while courts may still order prisons to accommodate incarcerated people’s religious beliefs — such as by providing halal meals — this means little in cases like Landor’s, when the damage has already been done.
Landor can still theoretically pursue damages through the state courts, but the bottom line is that the Supreme Court used this case to make it even harder for a non-Christian to receive justice even when there’s no dispute about what happened to him. It’s fair to wonder if the outcome would have been different here if a Christian—specifically a white Christian—prisoner was on the receiving end of a faith-based infraction.
If there are no punishments for violating someone’s rights, they’re not really rights at all.
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With less than two weeks to go before the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re in the home stretch of hearing “America was founded as a Christian nation and the Declaration proves it.” The Religious Liberty Commission report is due any day. So, one more time, I’m going to knock that statement down and then I’ll move on;
The Declaration of Independence was a break-up letter with England, not the establishment of a new country or government. It says the separate colonies are now independent, not that they are a new nation, Christian or otherwise.
The Declaration primarily includes 27 grievances with England. None of them mention religion or even the powerful Church of England.
The Declaration mentions “the Creator” and “Nature’s God” which many cite as proof of the Christian nation claim. But that evidence alone is just too flimsy when you read it.
One year later, in 1777, the states agreed to the Articles of Confederation which set up a government without mentioning Christianity, God, the Bible, and which mentions religion only once briefly in a section on trade. No Christian nation evidence there.
Twelve years later the Articles were replaced by the Constitution which again did not in any way set up a Christian government for a Christian country. The word ‘religion’ is only mentioned one time when it says there will be no religious test for any public office. The Constitution does not mention God or Christianity. It’s really the opposite of saying, “This will be a Christian nation.”
The pro-Christian nation side points out correctly that the Constitution does not include the phrase “separation of church and state.” It also doesn’t mention AR-15s and a thousand other questions that have come up. So for 250 years people have been inferring what the Constitution and Bill of Rights mean based on the text and on outside information from the Founders. That’s where Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state” statement comes in. We infer that 18-year-olds can own AR-15s. We infer that there should be a wall of separation between church and state. (Boosted by the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”.
Finally, how important is this whole argument 250 years later? Yes the nation was founded by Christians who were almost entirely Protestants. There were hardly any Catholics then and even fewer Jews and members of other religions. Today we know that 63 percent of the current population is Christian, six percent other religions, and 28 percent people with no religion. The real question isn’t how we were founded, it’s how religious freedom should be applied to today’s population.
Should tax dollars go to support schools that are mostly Christian? Should churches that get a tax exemption be allowed to support political candidates? Should the Ten Commandments be required to be posted in every public school classroom? Can Christian organizations that receive a federal grant proselytize while helping people in need with that grant money? These are the real-life questions that determine whether America is a nation that respects the rights of people from all religions and no religion at all, or whether it gives preference to Christians based on who is in power now.
We know where Jefferson stood on these issues. Madison said religion and government exist in “greater purity, the less they are mixed together”. John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which explicitly declared that the United States is “not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” I think the Founders would be appalled at where we are on these issues now and they would be on social media explaining that this is far from what they envisioned 250 years ago.
At a June 18 event in Michigan, Kennedy announced a $96 million funding opportunity through the Trump administration’s Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Support (STREETS) program, along with an additional $612 million in behavioral health funding opportunities. Kennedy emphasized that one of the initiative’s goals is to restore federal funding opportunities for faith-based groups.
“One of the features of our STREETS is opening up funding once again for faith-based organizations,” Kennedy said. “The Biden administration actively discouraged funding to faith-based organizations for recovery. We think they’re critical.”
Kennedy also dismissed evidence-based harm reduction strategies, claiming that “harm reduction doesn’t work” and attributing the nation’s addiction crisis to policies such as needle exchange programs and safe consumption sites. However, decades of research have demonstrated that syringe service programs reduce the spread of infectious diseases and connect individuals with treatment services without increasing crime.
Kennedy’s repeated reliance on spiritual and religious narratives to justify federal addiction policy is particularly troubling. During his remarks, Kennedy cited Alcoholics Anonymous and recounted a story involving psychiatrist Carl Jung’s belief that recovery from alcoholism required a “profound spiritual realignment.”
“The federal government should not be steering addiction treatment toward religious approaches,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Substance use disorders are medical conditions that require evidence-based interventions, not government-sponsored spirituality.”
This announcement follows a broader effort by the Trump administration to increase the role of religious organizations in federally funded health programs. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formally encouraged faith-based organizations to apply for federal addiction and behavioral health grants, citing President Trump’s executive order last year directing agencies to facilitate the participation of religious entities in government programs.
FFRF has previously warned that these initiatives risk undermining constitutional safeguards and public health objectives.
“Taxpayer-funded public health programs must be secular, science-based and free from religious coercion,” Gaylor says. “Addiction recovery is a medical and public health issue, not a vehicle for government-sponsored evangelism.”
FFRF notes that while religious organizations may compete for public grants on equal terms, the Constitution prohibits the government from favoring religious providers or funding religious activities. Federal dollars may not be used to support worship, religious instruction or proselytizing.
The concerns are heightened because the Trump administration has already rescinded prior protections that required faith-based providers receiving federal funds to inform clients of secular alternatives. The administration has also affirmed that religious organizations may use religious criteria in hiring, even while operating taxpayer-funded programs.
The new initiative will award eight communities up to $3 million annually for four years to develop treatment systems for individuals experiencing homelessness, substance use disorders, serious mental illness and co-occurring conditions. FFRF stresses that any federally funded services must remain accessible to all beneficiaries regardless of religion and must adhere to established constitutional limits.
“Federal health dollars should expand access to proven, inclusive treatment,” Gaylor adds. “They must not be diverted into programs that impose religious doctrine, exclude qualified staff based on faith, or substitute ideology for science.”
FFRF will continue to monitor HHS implementation of these funding programs and urges Congress and federal agencies to ensure that behavioral health funding remains evidence-based, nondiscriminatory and firmly grounded in the separation of state and church.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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Two months ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sued one of its most prominent critics, podcast host John Dehlin, on grounds of trademark and copyright infringement… as if listeners to his show might be confused between the podcast and the Mormon Church itself.
Dehlin is now fighting back in court.
John Dehlin in a thumbnail from his podcast
A quick recap: Dehlin began the Mormon Stories Podcast in 2005 when he was questioning whether or not to leave the LDS Church. It soon became a haven for other critics and former Mormons—and a landing space for listeners who harbored the same doubts but knew the Mormon Church wasn’t a safe place to get their questions answered in a meaningful way.
In 2015, Dehlin was officially kicked out of the Church for the “crime” of apostasy—he was accused of leading people away from the Church—though Dehlin argued the real reason was because he openly and proudly supported same-sex marriage and the ordination of female priests.
The podcast has become popular enough that it spurred the creation of a non-profit group—the Open Stories Foundation—in 2010 to oversee the show and go beyond it. In 2024, the group generated over $1.12 million in revenue.
That’s nothing, of course, compared to the tens of billions of dollars hoarded by the LDS Church. You would think, given all the very legitimate criticism of Mormons from all over the place, the smart move would be to simply ignore what one podcaster is doing, even if he’s popular, in order to avoid the Streisand effect.
But the Mormon Church took the opposite approach. In April, after months of conversations between the two sides, the Mormon Church sued Dehlin, arguing he had no right to use the word “Mormon” or any of their materials.
As Defendants are well aware, the public associates the term MORMON with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has used the mark MORMON and other names and marks incorporating the term MORMON since its founding nearly 200 years ago. Defendants’ use of Church trademarks and copyrighted materials has caused and will continue to cause individuals to be confused and access Defendants’ content mistakenly believing it comes from or is affiliated with or endorsed by the Church. This is not by accident. Defendants adopted a blue MORMON STORIES logo with a light-rays design prominently used by the Church, showing Defendants’ intent to capitalize on and increase confusion. Defendants’ logo was calculated to imitate the Church’s logos by using confusingly similar color, font, and other design elements, as shown below.
As I said at the time, in absolutely no world was anyone listening to Dehlin’s podcast and confusing it with Official Church Propaganda. Perhaps there was a case where someone searching for information about Mormonism stumbled across the podcast, but even if that happened, that person would quickly realize it’s not advertising for the LDS Church. After all, why would the banner for the show include Dehlin’s picture—an apostate!—instead of Mormon leaders?
Nevertheless, the Mormon Church insisted there was confusion. To make that argument, the lawsuit included examples, cherry-picked from the podcast’s social media pages, of people who came across it because they believed it was pro-Mormon… only to realize that wasn’t the case. Here’s just a sampling:
There were more comments where those came from, but to me, they all seemed to prove the opposite point. People found Mormon Stories because they had questions about Mormonism… and then realized it wasn’t promoting the LDS Church.
At no point in any of the comments included in the lawsuit did those people say they genuinely confused Dehlin’s words (or his guest’s words) for Church policy. The fact that some of those commenters said they stopped listening immediately after their realization were points in Dehlin’s favor!
(Also, for a podcast this popular, it was deeply unfair for the Church to go searching for comments suggesting confusion was afoot because you’re bound to find anything you want. That’s the nature of popular comment threads. Anyone who spends any time on social knows you can’t always blame the owner of an account for what people say under that account, especially when the owner isn’t baiting it.)
To avoid confusion, the LDS Church demanded that Dehlin include a disclaimer everywhere saying that his podcast wasn’t an official product of the religious sect. But that, too, was beyond parody. No one should have to open their show by explaining which groups they’re not affiliated with.
Making matters worse for the Church, there are pro-Mormon podcasts that use the “M” word in their titles, too, yet there was no indication the LDS Church ever went after any of them for trademark violations even though those podcasts were not official products of the Church either.
This past February, the two sides met in person to discuss their positions.
Dehlin agreed to remove any copyrighted images from his website and social media pages. (The LDS Church says he broke that agreement by later using an image of a temple to advertise an episode.) He changed the logo’s color from Mormon blue to non-Mormon orange. He even added the disclaimer to podcast descriptions on every platform.
What Dehlin refused to do was issue a disclaimer at the beginning of every show “acknowledging that Mormon Stories is not affiliated with the Church.”
That’s why the Church decided to go to court. I felt their case was weak.
Just consider the copyright issues. The lawsuit included examples of official photos released by the Church that were later used in the thumbnails for Dehlin’s podcast videos:
Those seemed like perfectly normal cases of “fair use.”
The Church was also mad that Dehlin used the word “Mormon” at all… which was wildly ironic given that the LDS Church itself urged people to stop using the word because they didn’t want to be known that way to the point that even the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir had been renamed the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.) And yet here they were telling the court that it was their word and not anyone else’s… and they had the paperwork from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to back it up.
This is all, they said, deeply damaging to the billion-dollar religious organization:
Unless these acts of Mormon Stories are restrained by this Court, they will continue, and they will continue to cause irreparable injury to Plaintiffs and to the public, for which there is no adequate remedy at law.
May we all strive to have that kind of influence. The Mormon Church was seriously arguing that Dehlin’s perfectly defensible use of their language and imagery might topple the entire damn religion. As if one man could destroy all of Salt Lake City through the power of… a podcast.
The lawsuit asked the court to stop Dehlin from using any logos or imagery that was “confusingly similar” to the LDS Church’s, and they wanted a jury trial.
Dehlin issued some informal responses to all this at the time, saying that he’s “been using the Mormon Stories name for my podcast for more than 20 years without any objection from the Church” and that he made plenty of changes at the request of LDS Church lawyers. But he added that it was “unreasonable” to demand anything beyond that:
… We didn’t feel any disclaimer was required, but in the spirit of cooperation we adopted one in our podcast description. The Church wanted us to make the disclaimer more prominent so it was essentially the primary thing anyone sees in our branding which we believe is unreasonable. We don’t want our primary message to be about what we are NOT. We have operated for a long time promoting who and what we are…
He said he was surprised by the lawsuit “given how cooperative we have been.” (There is a fund for supporters who want to contribute to the podcast’s legal defense.)
The LDS Church insisted it wasn’t going after Dehlin for what he says, only for the way he’s marketing his show, but there’s just no jury on Earth who would buy that excuse. They argued:
People are free to express support for or criticism of the Church and its teachings. This case does not concern the content of the podcast.
Uh-huh. Sure it doesn’t….
There’s a far stronger case that the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” might confuse outsiders who don’t know any better, but the Church didn’t fight that battle in court. If anything, they used it to their advantage. Did the Church sue Hulu over “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”? Not a chance. Even though that suggested a window into, well, the secret lives of Mormon wives.
In my mind, it was truly amazing this is how the LDS Church was wasting its time and money. Pope Leo is fighting fascism while the Mormon Church is fighting a podcaster.
And now, Dehlin’s team has filed its official response in court, calling on the judge to dismiss the entire case. While many of the arguments are ones I’ve written about above, it’s worth noting how Dehlin defends himself.
When it comes to the use of the word “Mormon” and whether it constitutes trademark infringement, the LDS Church has to show there’s no artistic/editorial relevance and that Dehlin is trying to mislead people.
It’s not hard to rebut any of that:
… the word “Mormon” has a strong cultural significance far beyond any alleged source-identifying function claimed by the Church; it is used as a ubiquitous and descriptive reference to Mormonism writ large, including the history, traditions, culture, and people within Mormonism beyond just the Church itself… Indeed, the Church itself has publicly declared that “Mormon” is only a “nickname” for members of the Church and is “correctly used in proper names” or “when used as an adjective.”
…
Defendants’ MORMON STORIES podcast series uses the term “Mormon” in the title to signal the subject matter of the series—stories about Mormonism, Mormon culture, Mormon history, and Mormon experiences. There is nothing in the title of the podcast that is overtly misleading or deceptive—indeed, it accurately and creatively describes the content that the listener can anticipate engaging with.
Dehlin also points out the LDS Church waited 20 years before filing this lawsuit—suggesting they waited until the podcast became incredibly popular to try to silence it rather than go after it the moment they found out about its name. It’s not like they only learned about the podcast this year! In fact, he says, it’s “impossible for the Church to claim it was not aware of Defendants’ use of MORMON STORIES for more than a decade before filing the present action.”
In a separate filing, responding to the LDS Church’s lawsuit line by line, Dehlin goes into more depth about the podcast and his own history with the Mormon Church. My favorite bit there may be the inclusion of a chart from December of 2015 in which the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles—a second-tier group of leaders—held a meeting to discuss why people were leaving the LDS Church… and included Dehlin as a reason for that.
Dehlin says that chart alone is “effectively an admission that his MORMON STORIES podcast did not create confusion about the podcast being affiliated with or sponsored by the Church.”
Not only that, but in 2010, the LDS Church trademarked its own “Book of Mormon Stories” podcast and told the United States Patent & Trademark Office that no other podcasts with similar names “would create a likelihood of confusion with the Church’s podcast name.”
Elsewhere in the response, he argues the LDS Church has no ownership of the blue color or a generic “light rays” design.
Dehlin adds in a press release that he made changes to appease the LDS Church, but they made no compromises for him, and the lawsuit came as a shock:
According to today’s filing, Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories Foundation have included disclaimers indicating its clear independence from The LDS Church since its founding. Mormon Stories’ use of the color blue and “rays” in its branding began well over a decade ago, and did not begin around 2022 as suggested by the Church’s claims. But, to avoid expensive litigation, Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation engaged in months of mediation after first being contacted by The Church in late 2025, and agreed to numerous changes requested by Church representatives, including modifications to branding, disclaimers, logos, and imagery.
“We made substantial changes in good faith because we believed reasonable compromise could resolve this matter,” Dehlin said. “We were surprised to learn that despite accepting most of The Church’s requested changes, litigation would proceed. It feels like we were the only ones making compromises, and The Church took an all-or-nothing, one-sided approach to mediation, which included unreasonable demands. It is also very disappointing that The Church chose to publicly mischaracterize what happened in mediation.”
While the court will eventually have to weigh in, none of this is a good look for the Mormon Church. They’re not really trying to protect their “brand” at all. They’re just trying to put obstacles in the path of someone who has helped countless people leave the Church. Rather than addressing the criticisms people on Dehlin’s show make, they’d rather turn off the microphone by forcing Dehlin to fight an expensive legal battle.
Dehlin is fighting back by making several points:
The Church’s own documents—noting they’ve known about him for a long time—undermine their argument that their only concern is trademark violations.
The 20-year delay suggests there was never really any confusion about what Dehlin was up to.
The idea that the Church needs to protect the word “Mormon” is ridiculous given that Church leaders have openly distanced themselves from the word.
The word “Mormon” is a generic word that’s bigger than just the religious institution. You can’t copyright it any more than a church can copyright “Christian.”
He has a First Amendment right to criticize the Church.
Overall, though, this is how you know his show makes a positive difference in people’s lives. It shows them their lives can be fulfilling and wonderful and guilt-free outside the bubble of Mormonism.
If this is how the LDS Church treats a former insider who asks questions and builds community, imagine what it signals to current members who are quietly doubting. If you become too effective at articulating those doubts, the institution won’t just argue with you; it’ll try to silence you.
By picking this fight, the Mormon Church is only confirming the criticisms they’re so desperate to suppress.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
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