Welcome to the Napa Legal Podcast, where we discuss religious liberty from the perspective of faith-based nonprofits.

In this week’s episode, Frank DeVito and Kyle Nazareth cover three stories.

First, a Vermont law that allegedly shuts every religious school out of the state’s public tuition assistance program without ever mentioning religion. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Carson v. Makin barred states from excluding religious schools from generally available programs, Vermont rewrote its rules with new requirements on location, class size, and prior public funding. All 15 religious schools that had been eligible lost eligibility, while 45 secular private schools kept it. Second, Roger Lopez, a retired grandfather and longtime pro-life sidewalk counselor, is challenging a San Diego ordinance that creates eight-foot “bubble zones” around people near every health care facility, school, and place of worship in the city, while exempting clinic staff and escorts. Third, the Iowa Supreme Court’s rejection of a Dordt University nursing student’s religious exemption from a COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

Chapter markers

0:00 Intro

0:21 Welcome to the Napa Legal Podcast

1:00 This week’s stories

1:26 Vermont’s tuition assistance program

1:49 Carson v. Makin: religious schools can’t be excluded from generally available programs

2:41 Vermont’s new rules keep religious schools out without naming religion

3:08 The Bishop family sues

3:50 15 religious schools before the rewrite, zero after

4:22 The nondiscrimination workaround in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy and Crosspoint Church v. Makin

5:27 What makes Vermont different: a “religious gerrymander”

5:58 The three requirements: location, prior public funding, and class size

7:15 Evidence of intent beyond the numbers

8:31 A state senator’s warning about “religious schools over the border”

9:21 ADF’s First and Fourteenth Amendment claims

10:41 Kyle: Vatican II, parents as primary educators, and distributive justice

12:07 San Diego’s sidewalk ordinance, a Thomas More Society case

13:05 What is a floating bubble zone?

13:25 The exemption for clinic staff and escorts

13:57 Roger Lopez and his decades of sidewalk counseling

14:54 The trial court dismisses the case under Hill v. Colorado

15:28 Argument one: “indicated” and “offensive noise” are too vague

16:54 Argument two: the ordinance is content-based even under Hill

17:39 Alleged hostility to pro-life views in the legislative history

18:14 Argument three: Hill v. Colorado as a “zombie precedent”

19:13 The Dobbs footnote and Justice Thomas in Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale

20:49 Scalia vs. Thomas on stare decisis

22:02 Frank: when overruling precedent is worth the disruption

23:15 Frank: why the Supreme Court should explicitly overrule Hill

23:26 Buffer zones and the First Amendment on public sidewalks

24:04 Laws against harassment already exist

24:35 Is the ordinance being selectively enforced against pro-life speech?

25:57 An Iowa nursing student’s COVID-19 vaccine exemption

27:19 “My body is a temple of God”

27:47 The Iowa Supreme Court affirms: the belief wasn’t sincere

29:12 Should vaping and binge drinking undermine a religious claim?

31:36 The twist: “I personally do not have a problem with the vaccine”

33:01 Smart lawyering: why the fetal cell line objection was stronger

35:28 Kyle: what the Vatican’s 2020 vaccine note actually said

36:37 Frank: you don’t need your church’s approval for a protected religious belief

38:03 Wrap-up

Lawyers: applications for the Good Counselor Project, Napa Legal’s fellowship for Christian attorneys, are open until December 1. Learn more at:

https://www.napalegalinstitute.org/

The Napa Legal Podcast, November 3, 2026

#religiousliberty #freespeech #freedomofreligion #prolife #firstamendment