 Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Derry Runlet show. We're doing gay rights, part two. We part one with my daughter Nicole Runlet, the co-author of my book Full Circle, our book Full Circle, a father's journey with a transgender child, and also with Sarah McDaniel Esquire, an attorney in Portland who was the president of PFLAG, which is the support group for gays, lesbians, and trans folks in the Portland area, and in fact statewide. I'm going to begin today's show stating to you folks that we had 10 minutes into part two with these folks, but that we've decided instead to do a full hour with my guest David Webber, who I'm going to introduce right now. So please, to hook us, one of the foremost workers rights, civil rights attorneys in the state of Maine, who has won many verdicts both for workers rights and civil rights, sexual harassment, discrimination, all of those kinds of cases. He is pretty much considered to be pretty much the go-to person on those cases, and his firm also Johnson and Webber through those kind of cases. David, welcome aboard. Thank you so much for taking your time to join us today. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be on your show. Well, David, I'm going to start off with right out of the blocks with what happened yesterday. We are taping in this show, ladies and gentlemen, on January 7th. And David, right out of the blocks, are you just absolutely mind blown by what happened yesterday? Well, it's a weird thing. It was totally foreseeable. You'd have to be, you know, having your head in the sand for the last five years, not just see this coming. But we've been frozen somehow. And so it's shocking and totally unsurprising at the same time. It's a devastating indictment of our democracy. We didn't stay vigilant. We took it for granted. We treated it like a spectator sport. We treated it more like a game show or reality TV show. And it's the American people. We're in charge of the democracy. And this we need to raise our game and get our act together. And really, the lawyers should have been there. In other countries, you see that the lawyers are the first ones standing up to this kind of thing. And I can't say that I'm really proud of the lawyers. We could have done worse, but some of the worst people are the lawyers. Although I see the Attorney General today did condemn what the President did. The retired Attorney General stepped down on Christmas. So there is, you know, there's some residual of the rule of law, but it sure does. It sure does fall apart quickly if you're not being vigilant. David, you just made a comment that was actually going to be my second question to you. And that question to you is, when Rudolph Giuliani appeared on camera to say, we must. I remember the Supreme Court of our state got very upset with the TV ads with lawyers showing baseball bats because it looked like it was a violent kind, even though it was in cheek. And my friend Bill Hardy, they did that. And I have no qualms about the fact that they thought it was okay at the time. But should Rudolph Giuliani be despised or suspended or brought before the Board of Ethics of New York for that comment? Yes. There we go. A simple yes. Yeah, I mean, lawyers are held off a higher standard. We're not supposed to advocate people breaking the law. We're supposed to help people comply with the law. We're also not supposed to interfere with the administration of justice. And suggesting the violent overthrow of a democracy is interfering with the administration of justice. So I would say it's a clear, it's a, that person should not be a lawyer. It's a privilege to be a lawyer. I have to say, David, my concern was that his potential defense is, well, I didn't really mean they should go down, but he knew that was a crowd just by looking at them, that they were ready for some violence. They just, just the way they would address some of them, whatever some, I have to say, look very normal, very, you know, peaceful. And I bet many of them would have continued to be peaceful. So, so we agree that Rudy Giuliani should face some disciplinary proceedings. And before we get into gay rights, how about the president? Should the 25th amendment be invoked where we turn the country over to Pence? Yes. I don't think it's a close call. The President of the United States led an insurrection against Congress in an effort to steal an election that everybody agreed. He went to 60 courts with lots of judges that were appointed by him or his party, no reason to think that they're not impartial to begin with, but especially under the circumstances of 60 different courts. And he incited violence against the people's house, against the Capitol, the Congress. The Congress is supposed to be the most powerful branch, the closest to the people. It's Article 1. So he's unfit to discharge his duties, which is to protect the Capitol, not, you know, not destroy the Capitol. Article 25 is perfect for that, because it says if you're unfit to discharge your duties, the Vice President, you know, the Cabinet, if they vote to that effect, you're automatically, instantly removed from being President. Then he has, if he challenges it, he's still not President, but for four days, if the Vice President and the Cabinet say, no, we still think you're unfit, then he remains not President, but Congress has to act within, I think, 21 days. That would take us through the rest of his presidency. So Article 25 was well written to deal with this current situation, although it should have been invoked a long time ago. And, you know, I don't think he learned his lesson when he was impeached. I don't think any reasonable person could have thought he learned his lesson, but he committed, I don't know, 50 to 100 impeachable offenses. I'll give you one example. Right before the midterms, he excoriated his Attorney General for allowing criminal prosecutions of two Republican members of Congress, because it was going to hurt the Republican Party. That is an offense for which he should have been impeached and convicted, you know, it was in the news for two days, and then it was forgotten. That is crazy. That no president should be allowed to say that, making the politics a crime is what China is doing in Hong Kong right now, you know, to vote in a project. So we've just lost, you know, we've just been frozen or somehow lost our sense of proportion here. You know, there's politics, hard, sharp politics. You make nasty allegations. You don't, you don't sick, you know, the cops or the prosecutors on the other side. You don't threaten jail. That is crossing constitutional lines. And we just let him cross line after line and not standing up to a bully just encourages them. So, you know, this, you know, he doesn't mean it. He's just trumping Trump. I think our lesson is we got to stand up to this immediately and not wait for it to blow over. David, I greatly appreciate talking about this. I will tell you, I've said this to the, my audience before, I have friends and family who are very strong supporters of the president. What has disturbed me recently on the last day or so is asking them, but do you condone what happened yesterday? Hoping they'd say, well, no, I didn't know. When they say yes, they had to do it. It was okay to storm that capital and put senators and congressmen and innocent people in fear of their lives, even if they didn't, even if they didn't. So if you put somebody in fear of their life, you yell fire in a crowded theater, whatever, and then say, well, I didn't mean it. I didn't really hurt anybody. The lack of intent is still, you've still done it. You've still put people in danger. You're throwing a Molotov cocktail and they went to the crowd. So, Dave, I think we agreed we're going to see this play out. But now I wish to move into our topic of today, part two of this new decision that came down from the Supreme Court by none other than a Trump pointy Neil Gorsuch. And the first thing I want to ask you, right out of the blocks, were you surprised when you saw that decision come out in favor of gay rights? I was hopeful because the argument for civil rights in that case was based on the plain meaning of the statute. And Justice Gorsuch had kind of made up his brand, being a word guy and just paying homage to the words. And so it was a good, we had shown some history of doing that. So I was mildly hopeful that he would display that, putting the language of the text above all else. That is judicial restraint. He's paying respect to what Congress passed into law and the people, that's their expression of will. So I was hopeful, but I was probably being overly hopeful. But I wasn't shocked that he was in the majority. And Chief Justice Roberts is, you know, a lot of times, I think, law and logic. He's a very logical guy. He's very smart. And sometimes you're pride about not saying something foolish makes you do the right thing when you're intellectual. So, you know, it was the best result possible, but it was, it did seem in the realm of possible. I think the other votes were inconceivable. And maybe Kavanaugh was a little bit up in the air, but the rest were, you knew, you knew we were going to lose those. So it was a welcome, you know, it was a little ray of sun. David, I have to say that my daughter being transgender and me having many, not dozens, but well into the dozens, many scores of friends, family, relatives of friends who were gay, transgender, whatever, different, that I read that decision with such delight. I have friends who are gay. I asked them one day, how are you going to feel about these appointees or trumpet, if he comes out with a decision that is against you, allows people to discriminate against you. And one of them said, well, I'm going to put my faith in Gorsuch. And I go, well, okay. And sure enough, he comes through for them, but he put the caveat in there about religion. So I'm going to ask you this question. Will a potential employer have a defense? I want to give you an example, the best I can think of. A woman goes to apply for a job as administrative secretary for a very, for a church. We'll call it the Old Testament church, whatever. And they look at her resume and they go, oh my God, this is incredible. Look who you've worked for. I mean, when can you start? She goes, I can start anytime. I need a job, corporate. And they go, believe us. You're going to, we just need to do the formality of getting you in tonight. And then as she leaves, she says, well, my spouse, my friend, my wife, Mary will enjoy this. They go, what, excuse me? Well, I'm married to a same sex marriage. And she gets a letter the next day going, oh, well, sorry, we, we changed our mind on this. We found somebody else. Is that the kind of case that you think is winnable? No, I'm sad to report that the Supreme Court issued a terrible decision on the right of the Catholic church, which is very sad and disappointing since I grew up in the Catholic church and was a, you know, a leader in my church, can discriminate on the basis of disability or age with no accountability, even when they promised they wouldn't do that because the first, the first amendment got, you know, weaponized in favor of religious discrimination and an opinion that came at the end of the term and kind of got lost in the shuffle, but it was, you know, heartbreaking. You know, I think it was a woman who needed, one was age discrimination and one was like needing treatment for cancer. And, you know, the defense was, we're a church and we can do it with one of the first amendment. And they were teachers that didn't really, you know, they didn't teach religion. That wasn't their primary activity. They weren't holding a religious position or a clerical position. They weren't a minister. And basically, the logic of the court ruling was they can do whatever they want because they're a religious school. So that, I had a case for a principal who got fired at a Catholic school and I thought it was a great case. And then that decision came down. I had to make a very difficult phone call and say, your case is worth zero now. You had a case going and you hear your work, tons of work. You had to call the plaintiff and say, just what? We just lost our case without even setting foot in the courtroom, correct? Yeah. And it's even worse. I mean, in Justice Gorsuch did leave plenty of ammunition to discriminate in favor of religious discrimination because he said there's also federal law that was well-intentioned, but it's now been turned into, he's called it a super statute basically that can override Title VII, which is the civil rights statute when it comes to basically getting in the way of any religion or its principles or beliefs, which is, you know, opening the door to a religious veto of all our laws. And Justice Scalia, when he was, he actually issued a very good decision saying that makes, you know, each person a law unto themselves because we can't question your sincerely held religious beliefs. So I'm very concerned about the current Supreme Court going, you know, haywire with religious freedom. I'm all for religious freedom. I've actually filed cases for that and I believe strongly in that, but it can't trump, you know, basic, you know, the way they're doing it. You could do race discrimination, gender discrimination, and you can do any kind of discrimination if you say, my religion made me do it. That is not how a democracy works and we're not a religious country as far as our government is not religious. We're religious, but our government is for the, the religion is we're all equal and we all have civil rights. And then each of us gets to decide on our own, you know, spiritual religion. So when you mix the two, it's, you know, that was the genius of our setup. And that's very troubling. But David, I need to ask this question. Despite the fact that religion could possibly allow discrimination by against gays, trans, whatever, it cannot be used, however, to discriminate against race. So a person, he goes into some, some establishment and he's black or yellow, whatever. And they go, we, we, we have a firm belief that blacks are Satan or whatever. And you cannot, it doesn't work there. Does it, does it work with black discrimination? Well, they're, they're, if the defense is that you're a religious institution, that recent decision, the logic of it would extend to race discrimination, which the dissenters pointed out. And it was, that was one of their best arguments. And the majority, the majority is starting to refer to religion as sort of a super constitutional right. It's like, and even Gorsuch put in there, it's like the bedrock of our, and you know, I, I disagree in that our constitution was totally remodeled after we had this civil war. And it's the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that are really our constitution, because they're more recent. And they're up, and they're what say we're all equal. We have equal privileges and immunities. We have equal rights. And that's really the American constitution. They say the first amendment, freedom of religion, Trump's equality is to rewrite our history and his extreme judicial activism. Those amendments were passed by Congress and the States in a proper manner. And they should, they, for some reason, they ignore the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments quite a bit. They're, they're in love with, you know, the older amendments, which makes no sense. The newer amendments, Trump, the older amendments, to the extent as a convoy. It's funny, Dave, how many times you use the word Trump, which we mean in, in card playing, this is this beat. One of the things that we, I dealt with them in part one was the fact that our vice president, who by the way, and those who were watching, I felt that he did a fairly admirable job yesterday. He stepped to the plate and said that, you know, he did not say I'm the vice president. I overruled everything. I appreciate that he did that. But when his wife went on TV to say she was proud to teach at a school that would not allow gays, either with students or as faculty, does not the gay, the Gorsuch decision, now allow a gay person to go apply for a job at that school, even if it's a private school. And, and they say, no, we're not going to, you're openly gay. We're not going to let you, does, does a person have a case against her school if it was a private academy? Yeah, if it's not religious and it has over 15 employees, it's covered by title seven, which prohibits sexual orientation, discrimination, you know, discrimination against transgender. So it's a very good, it would be a good claim. And of course, Maine has a law that goes to any employer. So David, I'm saying this tongue in cheek, but I would like to, if I were a younger lawyer or whatever, I would love to have somebody go to that school, apply for the job as a teacher, some great teacher from Maine, we all know is great, get denied, turn the case over to you, bring the suit. People may think that's a facetious kind of thing for me to say, but I have to say, that school may possibly be tested. One of the things that I asked, how do you enforce a rule like that if two guys are walking down the hall, they put their arms around each other or girls are holding hands to something just because they're friends? Do they get kicked out of that school or they get brought? And what if a boy goes and says to his counselor, look, I think I'm having some thoughts. I think I'm attracted to my friend, whatever. What? You're done. So enough of comment on that. I now want to ask you, David. So if somebody comes to your office today with a case, they've applied for a job. It's by the way, happened to my daughter a number of times, she would go apply for a job. They would go, Oh my God, look at this resume. Oh geez, we just need one final thing and you're in. You might as well start packing your bags. Then they'd Google her up and they'd find out she was transgender and wrote a book, whatever. And she'd get the letter the next day. Oh gee, we changed. So one of those people comes into your office and would say, my daughter, quite, quite credible. How do you begin to take the case? Well, we basically get the basic facts. So a hiring case is tough because they have so much discretion. If they fire somebody, it's a little easier because then we have a right to the personnel file and the reason for termination. And the law is pretty good in that if the reasons are fishy, if they're implausible, then the case law says that the jury's allowed to infer discrimination, even though there's not a direct smoking gun. So now unfortunately, the judges sometimes throw those cases out, I think unfairly and don't trust the juries. But if you look at the facts and the reason they give doesn't square with common sense and the way things work, then that would be a good case. And you also look at damages. If she found another job the next day to pay twice as much and she liked it better, life is short. And so I always tell my clients, you don't want to bring a lawsuit. It's a last resort. It's a precious privilege and we don't want to abuse or overuse it. I think actually lawyers who represent claimants spend more time talking to people out of lawsuits. That's part of our function and people don't appreciate that. But this kind of discrimination is so evil and it degrades people so much and violates our basic rule of law. The most important principle is that we're all equal under the law. So those kinds of cases, I would take, even if there's no money at stake, so way back in the 90s, there was a woman who wanted to get her cavity fixed and there was a homophobic dentist in Bangor, Maine for religious reasons. He just was homophobic and he didn't want any, he assumed everybody with HIV was gay and one of them all had to go to the hospital to get their cavities looked at. And so I took that case. There was no damages. We didn't seek damages. And I'm not embarrassed about that. I got interviewed by the BBC and they said, aren't you picking on this guy or targeting him? And I said, he's targeting and picking on people that are gay and lesbian and he's breaking the law openly. No, that's he's inviting to be held accountable. That's my job. So yeah, those are kind of cases where it affects everybody because we're all, you know, all of us, you know, your freedom in mind cannot be separated. So if transgender people aren't free, none of us are free. And that's we're all in this together. We're team human. So that's my approach to discrimination. David, one of the things that I appreciate as an attorney, I do a lot of personal injury, people who have been injured. And we do know that juries are very, very particular about people losing their jobs because this is the heart of their life. So when you go to court and you prove what you've done, David, it's not dozens of times, it's hundreds of times, your firm has won these cases. And you prove that this employer, this large employer, small employer, whatever, just treated this employee with such disrespect, sexual harassment, did nothing about it, whatever, discrimination, you find juries are very willing to award both compensatory and punitive damages. And you've won some, some bigger cases like that. Have you not? Yes. And in Maine, you know, juries are not known for being, you know, real generous. We, you know, a dollar goes a long way in Maine, we're pretty frugal and efficient, and we don't, we don't really, you know, like to, like to throw money around. But your job is, you know, I tell a jury, it's, it's your way of taking your God given talents and abilities and making the world a better place, which is, you know, the calling of human beings, basically, that's how we find meaning in life. And when you get fired unfairly, not only does it take you away from that job, but it demoralizes you and makes you feel, you know, like you're not worthy of being a contributor. I know President-Elect Biden often says, you know, a job is much more than a paycheck and main juries get that. It's part of your place in society, your ability to contribute. So when you're unfairly fired, it's, it's devastating to your whole life. And, you know, you're standing with your family and your friends, you've held your head down. So our reputation and our enjoyment of life, we really value, I mean, that's why we live here. And so main juries are very fair about that. David, by the way, we're already 24 minutes into this interview. I feel like it's been five. I knew that you would be incredible to talk with. One of the things that's going to say in the paper, when I put the ad in, I'll say a new era for, for LBGTQ rights. And because Biden, right after his election, before even taking office, the first thing I'm going to do, I'm coming after enhancing gay rights, does, does a statute need to be enacted to, for you to take those cases, or does Gorsuch's and Robert's decision let you file a suit tomorrow if you have to? Yeah, I mean, Maine had a statute, which, you know, we worked hard to get here, but not the whole country didn't have that in some parts of the country, didn't at all. So in Maine, it's not as dramatic a change as it would be in other parts of the country, but it's very helpful for me. I sued the government a lot in Maine. I'm an equal opportunity. I've sued Democratic governors. I've seen Republican governors. I don't care if you abuse power, you know, I'm going to come after you. This is very important because the word sex is also in our constitutional protections against the government. So by saying that sex includes sexual orientation, discrimination, transgender discrimination. Now, when we bring a constitutional claim against, you know, a local town that finds out that code enforcement officer is gay or transgender and fires them, you know, you can bring a constitutional claim as well as a statutory claim, which has, you know, it should be the government should be held accountable in different ways for violating the Constitution. So it's very helpful under the Constitution. I do worry about this religious exception, but, you know, hopefully, so there might be need to pass a statute to the extent we can pushing back on that. And Congress might need to do that because Gorsuch was relying on a statute in addition to the Constitution. So at least we could take the statute away from him. So that might need to be done to make sure that the Religious Restoration Act is not intended to allow sexual orientation, discrimination under Title 7, for example, on the federal level. Under Maine law, you know, I don't know if we need that or not. It couldn't hurt. But I think we have a pretty good statute right now. Okay, David, before I close, I want to indicate to the audience an article in today's paper where homophobic letters, nasty letters with this symbol were sent to these people in South Portland. This is a satanic thing against gay rights. And we have lost David, a member of our station, Matthew Francis, who did a show on gay rights, a transgender person who lost his life tragically this week. His name was Matthew Francis. I want to commend to him the moment of silence as we close for this wonderful man that basically had issues like you are today. David, I did not get a chance for you to outline to this audience the number of incredible verdicts that you have gotten against some fairly big employers. Dairy was one of them. I told our director, it was decided over karma, I think it was. And you won that case. People said, well, you went after the great Dairy of Maine, but let's face it, your job was to represent these workers. I want to commend you, David, for what you've done for the Maine trial lawyers, what your firm has done, Phil Johnson, former officer on our board. I want to wish you the best of luck. I want to commend to this audience if you've got a case you think is, then contact this man. His name is David Webber. He's one of the best lawyers in our state. David, thank you for joining us. And I look forward to seeing you again. That's it for the Dairy Runlet Show, folks. And we'll see you next month.