Lecture: Thomas Scott-Railton – “Religion and Immigration”
**Events may have been canceled or postponed. Please contact the venue to confirm the event.
Date & Time
Mon, Jan 12 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Address (map)
Humanities and Social Sciences Building, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Venue (website)
McCune Conference Room
The Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life will present “A Legal Sanctuary: Religious Freedom Laws and Immigration Enforcement,” a lecture by Thomas Scott-Railton, on January 12, 2026, at 5:00pm at UCSB’s McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020). This event is free and open to the public.
This talk will discuss how organizations and individuals have relied on religious freedom protections to assist immigrants. The landscape around legal protections for religious exercise has changed significantly since the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s. This talk examines recent and ongoing litigation at the intersection of religious freedom, humanitarian assistance, immigration raids, and protests.
Thomas Scott-Railton is an attorney at Gupta Wessler LLP and was previously a fellow with the Impact Litigation Practice of The Bronx Defenders. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then-Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson, and Judge Alison Nathan.
This event is presented by the UCSB Legal Humanities Initiative, co-sponsored by the Legal Humanities Research Focus Group and Walter H. Capps Center, and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
https://www.cappscenter.ucsb.edu/news/legal-sanctuary-religious-freedom-laws-and-immigration-enforcement-thomas-scott-railton
