You Can’t Preach Jesus Here | Interview: Judge Rebecca Taibleson

March 24, 2026·1 hr 9 min·3 clips

Judge Rebecca Tableson met her future husband when his dad spotted her in a Kathmandu passport line and declared 'you're going to marry my son.'

The opening question is speech doctrine. Olivier versus Brandon gives Sarah and David a clean First Amendment puzzle: preaching outside an amphitheater, an arrest, and a challenge aimed at the free speech zone itself. Then comes the strange case everyone apparently wanted. Afro Man shows up with burger-kidnapping swagger and a trial exit Sarah treats as civic glue. The bit works because the law underneath it still matters. From there, the conversation moves back to doctrine with the Pentagon's Department of Defense press policy and the revoked hard passes. The New York Times suit gets real attention in the transcript excerpt. Sarah walks through the interim injunction posture and the judge's concern that the policy was vague and ran into First Amendment trouble. David gets the comparison case he wants. The AP fight over White House access matters because the disputed access was pool designation, not the ordinary briefing-room pass. That distinction does most of the work. The D.C. Circuit treated Oval Office sprays and Air Force One travel slots as outside any opened First Amendment forum. Sarah keeps testing the categories in real time. The point is not that press access always wins. It is that the category attached to the access can change the whole case. The episode ends by setting up the interview with Judge Rebecca Tableson, described as newly commissioned to the Seventh Circuit. The show wants to know what starting the job feels like. Robes make the cut. So do clerk interviews, feeder-judge expectations, and the odd reality of becoming a new circuit judge. The voice stays lawyerly, but it has a pulse. Even with Afro Man and Dispatch flagship jokes, the episode keeps circling institutional power, speech rights, and the way legal categories do their work.

As heard by us

A brisk First Amendment roundup with a grounded turn into life as a new circuit judge.

Advisory Opinions spends this episode on a cluster of First Amendment disputes, starting with Olivier v. Brandon, where a street preacher challenges an amphitheater's free speech zone after being arrested outside it.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

First Amendment fights, a Pentagon press-policy split, and a fresh circuit judge.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Advisory Opinions