Dear Friends,
This year-end season, I am utterly amazed by God’s goodness, your faithful support, and the phenomenal work of our attorneys and staff who have tirelessly defended our freedom this year.
While others stepped back, Pacific Justice Institute stepped forward to confront unprecedented government overreach threatening our rights and livelihoods.
As we enter the final stretch of 2021, we have many victories and advances to remember! And those of you who partner with us in our very special matching grant opportunity (more details later in this email) can help us build on each of our successes to advance freedom even further in 2022!
Our faithful supporters this year are part of each of these successes:
- In the U.S. Supreme Court, we won a monumental victory for churches in Santa Clara County, California, sending shock waves of religious liberty across our nation that effectively reopened church doors!
- We opened new offices in 2021 for Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Illinois. These offices join those we already opened in California, Oregon, Washington State, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, New York, and New Jersey!
- In Oregon, we filed federal lawsuits for a teacher and an administrator who were suspended and then fired for proposing compassionate, common-sense solutions to gender confusion in our schools. After a few months of hard-fought litigation by our attorney, the school board voted to reverse course and reinstate these courageous educators!
- In Florida, we filed suit after a liberal school district refused to turn over public records disclosing whether their school libraries contained pornographic materials. The district finally surrendered, and we opened the doors for greater transparency for parents.
- In Texas, we defeated criminal charges filed against a minister publicly evangelizing.
- In the Pacific Northwest, we went to court and achieved a favorable settlement for a Christian worker who had been fired for seeking a religious accommodation from a COVID-19 vaccine.
- In California, we defeated and neutralized several dangerous pieces of legislation seeking to muzzle Bible-believing law enforcement officers in the name of “police reform.”
- In Oklahoma, we advised legislators and testified in support of fair competition legislation to protect female sports. Several states have now enacted such legislation, due in part to our involvement.
- In Nevada, we helped defeat legislation that would have legalized state-sponsored physician assisted suicide. We also testified against legislation legalizing tri-parent and quad-parent and adult group adoption of children, legislation deleting references to “mother” and “father,” and legislation requiring school curricula to give preferential representation based on sexual identity.
- In Seattle, we defeated a restraining order that singled out an outdoor evangelist from sharing the Gospel in a public place downtown.
- In Nevada and Illinois, we convinced two public schools to reverse course and allow students to form Christian clubs at an elementary school and a middle school after the schools unlawfully banned such clubs simply because they were Christian.
- We secured religious exemptions for numerous students on the verge of being expelled for their deeply held beliefs regarding COVID-19 vaccine mandates. As just a few examples, we helped multiple nursing students in Oregon; a college student in Missouri; a nursing student in Oklahoma; and college students and athletes at multiple campuses of the University of California, California State University, and California community colleges.
- We secured religious accommodations for numerous employees on the verge of losing their jobs due to COVID-19 vaccine mandates, such as a paramedic in North Carolina; a bus driver in Sacramento; a healthcare worker in New Hampshire; public school teachers and administrators in Beverly Hills and Las Vegas; professional musicians in Georgia; hundreds of healthcare workers across California; employees of major defense contractors in Florida and Georgia; a clinical nursing instructor in Nevada; a medical technician in Idaho; a Chicago-based airline employee; a nurse in Las Vegas; an environmental software developer in Northern California; behavioral health personnel in Arizona; property managers in Los Angeles; employees of a major healthcare company in Georgia; nurses in New Jersey; an employee of a Fortune 10 company in Georgia; and professors, staff, and IT workers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and University of Nevada, Reno.
- In Southern California, we even helped an elderly gentleman return to church worship services after being told by his assisted living home that, even though he was fully vaccinated, the care home would not allow him to go to church on Sundays because it was “too dangerous.”
- We assisted hundreds of military members facing possible court-martial, separation, and other disciplinary measures for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine based upon sincerely held religious beliefs. Our attorney guided these military heroes in submitting and appealing their requests for exemptions from the vaccine and exercising their right to religious freedom.
Each of these cases represents dozens of other similar successes. In several of these cases, the employee or student was initially denied their religious exemption before PJI got involved and reversed those denials!
Please give a generous year-end gift now to ensure we can continue to represent many more people like this in the new year!
We also initiated these additional new cases to advance freedom:
- In Southern California, we filed suit on behalf of a manager who had worked for over 25 years at Trader Joe’s. The company fired him because he requested a reasonable accommodation—which they initially granted—and because he sought legal help from PJI.
- In Florida, we filed suit on behalf of parents against mask mandates for their children.
- In Los Angeles, we filed suit on behalf of Christian police officers subjected to a vaccine mandate and nightmarish bureaucratic hurdles.
- In Wisconsin, we filed suit on behalf of anesthesiologists in residency who were denied opportunities because the residency board disputed their Catholic beliefs!
- In Indiana, we filed suit on behalf of multiple doctors and nurses who received boilerplate denials of their sincere religious accommodation requests.
- On the international front, we represent a persecuted Christian from Pakistan who was severely beaten by Muslims in his community and driven from his home and now seeks religious asylum in the U.S.
At the same time, we continued battling in court for many clients whose cases began before 2021:
- We argued at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of a pastor and journalist from Spokane, Washington. Police threatened the pastor with arrest outside a Drag Queen Story Hour being held at a public library and directed him not to mention the Bible when he engaged with supporters of DQSH.
- We argued at the Ninth Circuit on behalf of a church in Salinas, California, treated differently than similar land uses like theaters and denied the opportunity to grow and expand.
- We are defending pastors and churches that were criminally prosecuted for holding church services during the pandemic.
- In Oregon, we defeated more attempts to dismiss a federal lawsuit on behalf of a small church and bi-vocational pastor who simply seeks to renovate living quarters for his family in the church.
- We represent a nurse practitioner in California who was denied employment because she objected to performing abortions.
- We represent believers from Bangladesh, Ukraine, and around the world who have experienced horrific persecution for their faith and seek religious asylum in the U.S.
- We are defending a church in Washington State being sued by Planned Parenthood.
- We are defending a female federal law enforcement agent who was forced to share shower facilities with a male co-worker who claims to be female.
- We filed suit against Clackamas County, Oregon, for preventing a church from using its education wing to host a small Christian school.
- We filed suit in Iowa on behalf of a jail guard who was fired because of his faith.
- We filed suit on behalf of a pro-life organization, which has been discriminatorily threatened with arrest and excluded from fairgrounds because of their message.
- We await a final appellate decision for a sociology professor at a community college who was unlawfully fired for his Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality.
- We filed a major summary judgment motion for an evangelist in Northern California who was ordered to leave state fairgrounds for sharing his faith in a one-on-one, conversational style.
- We filed an appeal in a Florida court battling for an evangelist who was prosecuted under an unconstitutional ordinance for sharing his faith in a public place.
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Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, PJI . . .
- Created some of the nation’s leading legal resources to answer questions about the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
- Created brand-new sections of our website to guide individuals on how to request religious accommodations and pursue administrative remedies if denied. Our resources have benefitted tens of thousands of Americans!
- Hosted dozens of Zoom calls where our attorneys updated church and community leaders on the latest government mandates and our responses to them. One of our Zoom calls had more than 5,000 people register!
- Helped churches launch homeschool co-ops and helped church leaders welcome the mass exodus of parents and families who are fed up with public education—or the lack thereof!
- Launched the Dacus Connection, where I have honest conversations with an atheist, a Muslim, and a transgender activist leader.
- Released the “Transformed” documentary which tackles the difficult topic of transgender ideology and influence.
Friend, this year-end report only scratches the surface of all the clients we’ve helped and all the pastors we’ve encouraged and uplifted in these dark days. And if you’ve been supporting PJI for a long time, you have been part of victories year after year!
Now we have unparalleled opportunities to go even further. I have never seen a Supreme Court so ready to stand with us, or so many new places where PJI is on the ground with new resources to help! But it is up to us to seize this moment.
Thanks to some of our incredibly generous friends, we have a year-end matching grant of $300,000. That means, when you give $100, it’s like giving $200. If you’re able to give $500, it becomes $1,000.
If you’ve felt discouraged by all that happened in 2021, the great news is that not only has PJI been able to turn 2021 into an amazing year of victory and advancement, but you can be part of it! Together, we can push back against all the negative, hard things that have been thrown at us this year.
Will you give your most generous gift to help us encourage so many more in the year to come? Will you let us know that the work we are doing truly matters to you?
To help more people, we had to take a giant leap of faith to serve believers coast to coast by opening new offices and adding staff. We are counting on you to come alongside us so we can make sure no cries for help go unanswered.
Click this link to give online now, before the end of the year.
I am praying for God’s richest blessings on your family!
Running the Race,
Brad Dacus, Esq.
Founder and President
Pacific Justice Institute
P.S. Please remember that 2022 will be a great opportunity to preserve our freedoms for our children’s future! Your support can make a difference.
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