A life protecting religious liberty | Montse Alvarado & Mark Rienzi | Constitutional Conversations

0:00 how did you end up here at Becket I came to the Becket fund as a graduate student and I was studying politics I thought that the way that I would change the world is by going on the hill and working with senators and then I realized the power of the law I realized that case by case the Becket fund for religious liberty was building something

0:21 that would transform the way that Americans got to live their religious liberty and I wanted to be a part of that I became a US citizen ten years ago and that wasn’t a decision that I took lightly and it’s precisely for the reasons that Mark described that I wanted to be an American citizen because I understood the value and the freedom and the responsibility that comes with

0:42 being an American and that is why people come to this country in search of true freedom in search of true equality exactly why I wanted to be a US citizen because of that freedom and the responsibility that comes with our Constitution and our shared values and that’s it’s the most wonderful thing and

1:03 the most wonderful decision to make to know that you’re coming somewhere that is different because it’s free from when I was very very young I have always wanted to argue and fight about protecting people’s rights and protecting people who needed it and I honestly felt like you know God God kind of gave me a skill set that it was my

1:25 job to not just take to go you know make myself a lot of money or something like that but to take that skill set and try to use it to advance good causes and protect people and so when I had the opportunity eight or nine years ago to come to the Becket fund to work with the best team of religious liberty lawyers really in the world to be honest with you and to fight to protect people who

1:46 can’t protect themselves and to fight to protect something that I think is really an important part of of our American legacy and of our human dignity is just as human people I you know leapt at the opportunity and have been delighted ever since that I get to wake up in the morning and represent the kind of people I get to represent and do my part to protect religious liberty knowing that

2:08 when I go when I go argue and fight against somebody I’m not fighting against somebody who’s who’s a bad per whose evil or who you know is an enemy they’re just there are other Americans who have different ideas and and and who I think are getting something wrong and the chance to go defend rights and defend liberties to try to get the court to have a broad protection for everybody even if people who don’t share my

2:29 beliefs is really important to me