From city councils to the U.S. Supreme Court, free speech and religious liberty advocates continue to keep a watchful eye—and a hopeful attitude—on the conflicts spilling over into 2018. As the new year begins, I asked advocates in the areas of law, education, and public policy to forecast the challenges and anticipated triumphs for 2018. The respondents were Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute; Gregory Seltz, executive director of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty; Matt Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel; Zach Greenberg, the Justice Robert H.

Legal challenges to Christians’ public expression of faith at work, home, school, and in ministry continued throughout 2017. And as the year drew to a close, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could affect them all.

Held captive by a determination to keep religion confined to churches and homes, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is demanding the Wisconsin Department of Corrections sever ties with an educational ministry that offers inmates a degree in Biblical studies.

Ben Shapiro, 33, is an Orthodox Jew, a father, and a UCLA and Harvard Law grad. Shapiro was a Breitbart editor and is now editor in chief of The Daily Wire, a website that includes his own podcast. Shapiro’s young conservative fans enjoy his skepticism toward the Republican Party and Donald Trump (he was an early Never Trumper), his irreverent yet intelligent tone, his references to both pop culture and philosophical books, and his lawyerly, facts-only dissection of current issues.

The headquarters of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) is a mile and a half, or a brisk 20-minute walk, west of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washigton, D.C. Despite its geographic proximity, the release last week of a report calling for a federal LGBT nondiscrimination law indicates the commissioners are far removed from what was heard at the high court Tuesday.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) is no Berkeley-on-the-Hudson: Nothing burned during a student protest outside an October black-tie fundraiser hosted by school President Shirley Ann Jackson. But the protest and the ensuing disciplinary charges against two students at the Troy, N.Y., school highlights the lack of constitutional accountability at private institutions, including Christian colleges.

A liberal advocacy group in Wisconsin is asking a federal court to declare the Twitter accounts of three state representatives “designated public forums.” As such, blocking access to the accounts is unconstitutional, the group argues. The lawsuit is the second such case filed this year demanding unfettered access to the virtual conversations on elected officials’ Twitter accounts.