Philip Jauregui, a longtime religious-right judicial activist, spoke at the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand activist conference on Saturday, where he promoted the Center for Judicial Renewal’s unconstitutional “biblical worldview” test for future Supreme Court justices, which Right Wing Watch first exposed in 2023. The Center for Judicial Renewal is a project of AFA Action, the political arm of the American Family Association. It has urged President Donald Trump to fill any future Supreme Court vacancies with judges who pass Jauregui’s “faith and worldview” test.
The Supreme Court, said Jauregui at Pray Vote Stand, was “the vanguard in breaching our national relationship with God” with decisions removing official prayer, Bible readings, and the Ten Commandments from public schools, leading God to cut off his blessings on America. God is “not just a topic,” said Jauregui, “He is God almighty.”
Jauregui mapped the curses he said were afflicting America onto a section of the biblical book of Romans, denouncing the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and 70s, the mainstreaming of “the LGBT Agenda” in the late 80s and 90s, and the “depravity” of gender ideology and new “ways of doing evil” in the 21st Century.
With the current right-wing majority on the Court, Jauregui said, SCOTUS is “on their way” home, like the prodigal son of the Bible story. But even this Court does not have “five faithful justices doing what we think they ought to every time,” he said. The Senate is important he said, because there could be as many as four vacancies in the next six years, and it is important that those vacancies be filled with people more likely to do what the AFA wants. “We can’t just hold ground,” he said to applause. “We have to take ground.”
According to a slide displayed by Jauregui, his researchers have logged 10,000 hours of research on federal judicial prospects. The first of the 10 principles the group weighs is “biblical worldview.” Jauregui said, “I would say it's one of the most important things that we look at because it's one of the most indicative that they’re going to truly be faithful to their role.“
A flyer distributed during his talk said his group has researched over 35 Supreme Court prospects and identified six that meet the group’s standards: Right-wing judges James Ho, Kyle Duncan, and Lawrence VanDyke; Solicitor General D. John Sauer; FBI Co-Deputy Director Andrew Bailey; and Kristen Waggoner, president of the religious-right legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has led legal efforts to ban abortion, resist and reverse progress on LGBTQ+ equality, and undermine separation of church and state. Jauregui also has a “red list” of conservative justices who fail to meet his standard.
Jauregui also displayed a slide of religious-right leaders who have endorsed his Christian nationalist test for SCOTUS, including FRC President Tony Perkins and FRC board chair Michele Bachmann.
Jauregi said the 10 Commandments case that justices are currently considering taking up would give the Court the opportunity to “heal” the national breach with God, adding, “I think it could be the most important case in 65 years.”
In that case, a narrow majority of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled absurdly that a Texas law requiring all public school classrooms to post a state-approved edited version of the King James Version of the Ten Commandments does not violate the Establishment Clause or the rights of public school parents to direct their children’s religious upbringing. The ruling was written by Jauregui-endorsed Kyle Duncan and joined by James Ho.
