Defending Religious Liberty
The President's Religious Liberty Commission draft report, which cites my testimony, is available for public comment until July 13. Here's why public comments actually matter.
I’ve written a lot here at Human Flourishing in the last few years about freedom of speech, given my involvement in cases challenging government censorship or efforts to control the speech of physicians in the consulting room. It’s worth recalling, however, that the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment (and therefore, the first freedom mentioned in the Constitution) is not freedom of speech but freedom of religion. The earliest settlers on our shores landed here precisely to find a place where they would not be persecuted for their publicly expressed religious convictions.
Often when American’s think about religion and the American constitution, the phrase that comes to their mind is not the free exercise of religion (which actually appears in the Constitution) but the separation of church and state (a phrase which does not appear in the constitution but in a private letter penned by Thomas Jefferson). Furthermore, many people mistakenly interpret the notion of “separation of church and state” to mean the banishment of religion from public life—also not a constitutionally defensible position, and certainly not what Jefferson meant when he penned that phrase. The non-establishment clause of the First Amendment—that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” exists precisely to serve “the free exercise thereof.”
Because there is so much confusion about the freedom of religion in America, I was pleased to receive an invitation back in March to testify at the President’s Religious Liberty Commission, which held a series of hearings to assist them in preparing their report, delivered to the White House this week. (My boss at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Ryan Anderson, and my friend Bishop Robert Barron, both serve as members of the Commission.) You can find a video and the text of my testimony here:
The Commission has published a draft of their report along with a two-page summary for those who don’t want to dig into all 200-plus pages. Also, and importantly, you can submit public comments on the report between now and July 13, as explained here:
Draft Report of the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission, June 2026
This draft of the Religious Liberty Commission Report, based on public hearings held and public comments received, is available here and open to public comment for fifteen (15) days, with comment period closing on Monday, July 13, 2026. Comments may be emailed to RLC@usdoj.gov.To aid the Religious Liberty Commission in processing your comments, please format the subject line using the following:
PUBLIC COMMENT – [TOPIC OR CHAPTER NUMBER] – [NAME].
Please be aware that public comments are open to public inspection, not confidential. Please do not include personally identifiable information, such as personal addresses, in your comments.
After the fifteen (15) day comment period, Commission will hold a virtual public meeting to review comments reviewed, discuss the draft, and finalize the report. Attendance information will be posted on the “Upcoming Events” page and in the Federal Register at least seven (7) days prior to the meeting.
The comment can be as simple as “thank you for addressing this issue; I applaud the work of the Commission” to detailed suggestions and policy proposals that may not have been included in the Report’s recommendations. Now, you might be asking, is it worth my time and trouble to submit a public comment as an ordinary citizen? The answer, as I have learned over the last few years from my colleagues at EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project, is emphatically YES. (For more on this, see their helpful document, How to Submit a Public Comment on Agency Rulemaking.) The executive branch and its various agencies are required by law to carefully review and respond to all comments submitted during the comment period.
As I have come to appreciate, public comments can slow or stop bad rulemaking and expedite good rulemaking in ways I did not fully appreciate until I started doing more work in this area (I have submitted detailed comments this year with colleagues at EPPC on a variety of federal policies). If agencies fail to respond adequately to comments, this can also set up future litigation to challenge bad rulemaking. There has been much talk in recent years on the runaway and bloated administrative state with all its 434 unaccountable three-letter agencies—a hugely important issue in American public life and governance. But many Americans are unaware of simple things we can do to nudge this apparatus in positive directions. All this is to say, consider looking at the Report’s recommendations and submitting a comment, whether brief or detailed. The support of the American people matters when folks in government are trying to advance good policies in the face of opposition from some quarters.
Even though I already testified at the Commission, and they cited my testimony in several chapters of the report, I plan to submit a detailed comment myself. These simple actions can make a difference.
I was pleased to see my testimony described in some detail in Chapter 10 (pp. 145 - 150) of the report, and cited in several other chapters as well as the appendix. Here’s the relevant section from Chapter 10, on the topic of Conscience and Coercion in Vaccine Policy:
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
For Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, concerns about conscience rights in medicine did not begin during the COVID-19 pandemic. They began years earlier, in a hospital operating room, when he was forced to decide whether he could take part in a procedure that violated both his medical judgment and his religious beliefs.
As a medical student assisting on a labor and delivery rotation, Dr. Kheriaty was asked to participate in a procedure that conflicted with both his medical judgment and his religious beliefs. After a patient, in the midst of labor, agreed to an additional sterilization procedure, he raised concerns—not about the patient’s decision, but about his own role in carrying it out. “I informed [the resident physician] that while I was willing to assist on the cesarean section, I would need to step out of the operating room and not help with the tubal ligation as a matter of conscience,” he told the Commission onMarch 16, 2026.
The response that followed was harsh and direct.“ The resident became irate, asking: ‘How dare you impose your views on the patient?’” he recalled. “I replied that I was imposing nothing on anyone,” but “merely telling her what I was willing and not willing to assist on.”
That decision carried consequences. Dr. Kheriaty was removed from the case, faced retaliation during his rotation, and received negative evaluations that followed him into his residency applications. At the time, he was unaware that federal law protected his right to decline participation in procedures that violated his conscience. “These laws were actually in place when I went to medical school, but I had no understanding of them,” he said. “Through that whole process, I was never advised of my rights even after they were violated.”
Years later, those same questions of conscience resurfaced in a different context. As director of the Medical Ethics program at the University of California, Dr. Kheriaty became concerned about proposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates. “Troubled by the draft policy that was about to go into effect, I published a piece in The Wall Street Journal […] arguing that university vaccine mandates were unethical,” he explained.
When the university moved forward with the policy, he challenged it in court. “I made the fateful decision to try to challenge the university’s vaccine mandate in federal court,” he said. But his challenges did not end there. “They placed me on first what they called investigatory leave, then a month later on unpaid suspension. Then a month after that, they fired me,” he told the Commission.
At the time, Dr. Kheriaty had spent more than a decade at the university and had received multiple teaching awards. His dismissal, he argued, reflected a broader failure to protect conscience rights in healthcare and academic institutions. “When it comes to vaccines, laws in many states failed to protect conscience rights and religious liberty,” he said, pointing specifically to states that offer no religious exemptions for childhood vaccination requirements. “Many people have religious or moral objections, for example, to the use of cell lines derived from aborted fetuses or derived from embryos created and destroyed in the laboratory, which are very frequently used in the development and testing of many of the vaccines on the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule,”Dr. Kheriaty explained.
For Dr. Kheriaty, the issue extends beyond any single policy, but as a question of the moral foundations of medicine itself: “Medicine should always and only be aimed at health and healing,” he said. “Doctors should not force treatment on patients that patients decline for medical, moral, or religious reasons.”
He concluded by urging stronger protections and clearer enforcement, emphasizing that without them, individuals will continue to face the same choice he did:between their profession and their conscience.
As I have said many times here, unless we defend our constitutionally protected rights and help educate fellow citizens on what those rights actually entail, then the Constitution will remain merely words on a piece of paper. The American experiment in ordered liberty requires constant vigilance and the work of all citizens to maintain.
Wishing all of you readers a very happy Independence Day as we celebrate our Nation’s 250th birthday.
Respect for your stance, Dr. Kheriaty.
Fantastic Dr. Kheriaty