Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver stated:

[Idaho] Gov. Brad Little must ensure that the Idaho Army National Guard upholds federal and state law and protects the free speech of enlisted personnel. This discrimination against an officer based on a frivolous complaint must be addressed and his record cleared and career restored.

To provide further detail, Liberty Counsel’s Associate Vice President of Legal Affairs Daniel Schmid joined Wednesday’s episode of “Washington Watch.” According to Schmid, “[I]mmediately upon receiving the complaint, some of the superiors in [the officer’s] chain of command brought him in and said, ‘You will resign, or we’ll make this ugly.’ Those were the words to him. They forced him to resign without counsel, without the presence of counsel, and without advice of counsel.”

Schmid went on to explain how “the complaint was not based on anything he did as a commanding officer.” It was about “a speech that he made outside of the military context, in the context of a political campaign. … He was making statements on various issues in the culture today, from a religious perspective, [and] the First Amendment affords him that right.” And yet, his statements are now “the subject of an investigation that’s ongoing even to this day.”

According to Schmid, this case is about making “sure that the individuals who sign up to defend our liberties, our constitutional rights, are [also] entitled to those same rights”—specifically, he clarified, the First Amendment. “You don’t surrender your constitutional rights or your statutory rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and others just because you sign up for military service.”

In the case of this officer, Schmid contended that he “was entitled to political speech.”