On July 30th, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) hosted a religious liberty summit, “Religious Liberty: Our First Freedom and Why it Matters.” The summit included opening remarks by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and two panel discussions on protecting religious freedoms. Sessions announced the formation of the Religious Liberty Task Force, a group charged with defending faith groups. Sessions outlined, “the task force will help the department fully implement our religious liberty guidance by ensuring that all Justice Department components…are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations.” In the first panel discussion, panelists shared personal stories of religious discrimination and discussed the need to protect religious freedom. Rabbi Ruvi New, the Rabbi of the Chabad of East Boca, described his experience trying to build a new synagogue for his congregation. He was met with hostile opposition and neighbors put up signs reading, “Save our neighborhood,” implying the need to save their neighborhood from Rabbi New’s building efforts. Another panelist, Harpreet Singh, the National Program Manager for the Community Relations Service in the DOJ, discussed discrimination faced by Sikhs in the U.S. Sikh faith dictates that men cannot cut their hair, but Singh noted that many Sikh men, including himself, felt pressure to cut their hair and beards in order to gain employment. Singh also highlighted two stories of school bullying against Sikhs, one in which a bully forcibly cut off a Sikh boy’s hair, and another in which a bully set fire to a Sikh boy’s religious head covering. The first panel also included Jack Phillips, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The case revolved around the question of whether Phillips, a bakery owner, was allowed to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his religious beliefs. The Supreme Court found in Phillips’ favor in a 7-2 decision announced in June. Phillips expressed his dismay at criticism he faced for his decision to not violate his religious beliefs in making this cake, including death threats and a comparison to the Holocaust. A second panel featured experts discussing legal and policy perspectives on religious freedom. One panelist, Shay Dvoretzky, a partner at Jones Day, spoke about a case in which he represented certain Orthodox groups in challenging a New York regulation that would prevent those groups from performing a component of religious circumcision. Dvoretzky argued that the regulation specifically targeted this religious practice and violated the group’s free exercise of religion. He ultimately won the case. Another panelist, Michael W. McConnell, a professor at Stanford Law School and the Director of Stanford’s Constitutional Law Center, noted his prediction that cases challenging religious accommodations would become much more common. The summit concluded with remarks by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Senator James Lankford (R-OK), who each emphasized the importance of protecting religious freedoms.