GLENN: Two religious liberty cases have sparked an internal war among conservatives over Judge William H. Pryor. Stu.
PAT: Is Pryor one of the -- is he one of the main considerations?
GLENN: He is the main. He's the leading candidate.
PAT: Is he really?
STU: Yeah, and he's been talked about in Republican circles for a long time for a Supreme Court seat. I've heard problems from Libertarians with him. Although, the problems you're describing here are not really from that angle.
GLENN: Right. Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation put him on the list. Both of them did.
However, there is a problem. And the problem was found by The Federalist Society, and it started to ripple around that community. And they were like, "Oh, crap, we put this guy on the list." And members of the Federalist Society were like, "Yeah, I know you did."
And now the ripples are going through the Heritage Foundation, and no one is willing to say anything about it.
But you need to know about it. Everybody loves him because his judicial record. 2003 Senate confirmation, he said, "Roe vs. Wade is the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law." Big.
PAT: Love that. It's great.
GLENN: Now, let me see.
No one in the conservative movement or the religious movement care to say anything about this, except James Dobson and the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins.
They have now circulated and are persistently open about their concerns with Pryor. One of the cases that concerns them is Keaton versus Anderson-Wiley. It involved a Christian counseling student, whom a state college expelled after she refused to agree to a remediation measure, such as one of her choices, she could attend a gay pride parade intended to change her views on homosexuality.
PAT: Oh, my gosh.
GLENN: When she said no, she was suspended from school. A three-day -- or, I'm sorry, a three-judge panel, including Pryor, ruled the school did not discriminate against the student because the school would treat anyone with her belief the same way.
PAT: Well, then they would discriminate against anyone. Right?
GLENN: Right. They would discriminate against anyone who would believe that.
PAT: That's unbelievable. Wow.
GLENN: More problematic is the majority opinion in Glenn versus Brumby. Brumby. A case involving a biological male fired after he wanted to dress as a woman and begin medical treatments.
Pryor again concurred with the circuit court's liberal former Judge Rosemary Barkett, ruling that the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution protected the employee from discrimination based on sex, which the court interpreted to include gender identity.
So now, he is saying that sex is whatever you decide it to be. Slate -- Slate called the opinion absolutely revolutionary for transgendered employment rights.
PAT: How did this guy get recommended by the Heritage Society?
.
GLENN: Right.
Various Obama administration agencies, including the Departments of Justice, Labor, and Education began citing Glenn as their justification -- as their justification for advancing transgendered litigation and regulations.
So he's the guy who wrote the -- the current law --
PAT: Uh-huh.
GLENN: -- that allows them to say, "Bathrooms."
STU: You know, look, that's -- those are a couple of cases. And, you know -- you know, there's a lot of good with Pryor. He is -- you know, here's -- this is --
PAT: That's what they said about Stephen Breyer too.
STU: But you have hundreds -- hundreds and hundreds of cases, can you find a couple that are going to --
GLENN: Are those pretty big.
STU: But let me give you this: This is from SCOTUS blog, talking about religion.
Pryor has consistently, although not uniformly, ruled in favor of parties raising religious liberty claims.
And so that's -- he's --
GLENN: We cannot afford to have anyone chip away on religious liberty.
PAT: No, we can't. No, we can't.
STU: Exactly.
GLENN: We can't afford it.
STU: Especially when there are people on that list that you probably could say have uniformly --
PAT: Yes. You've got the Lee brothers. So many guys on there who would be consistent.
GLENN: You have 20. There are three that are unacceptable. Pryor is one of them.
STU: You think unacceptable is the right term for Pryor? I feel like that's going too far honestly.
GLENN: I think when you have Scalia -- you're replacing Scalia.
STU: Right.
GLENN: Okay?
PAT: In that context, he is unacceptable, I think.
GLENN: He's unacceptable. You have no one holding the benchmark. It's like, if you're replacing Ginsburg, you would replace Ginsburg -- I mean, I wouldn't, you wouldn't, but they would replace Ginsburg -- and if it was the only one, they would not roll the dice. We have no one --
PAT: And they would replace her with someone more radical than she is.
GLENN: Yes.
PAT: We never do that.
GLENN: We never do it. We never do it.
PAT: We never do it.