The IRS, Non-Profit Organizations, and Freedom of Speech: Neutrally Enforcing the Law or Targeting the Tea Party?
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Partner (retd.), Foley & Lardner LLP
Cleta Mitchell was a partner and political law attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Foley & Lardner LLP and a member of the firm’s Political Law Practice. With more than 40 years of experience in law, politics and public policy, Ms. Mitchell advised nonprofit and issue organizations, corporations, candidates, campaigns, and individuals on state and federal campaign finance law, election law, and compliance issues related to lobbying, ethics and financial disclosure. Ms. Mitchell practiced before the Federal Election Commission, the ethics committees of the US House and Senate and similar state and local enforcement bodies and agencies.
Ms. Mitchell has extensive experience on the federal lobbying and ethics law enacted by Congress in 2007, having taught dozens of seminars on the subject since its passage. In 2008, Ms. Mitchell authored The Lobbying Compliance Handbook, published by Columbia Books, Inc.
Ms. Mitchell represented numerous candidates, campaigns and members of Congress, as well as state and national political party committees. She has served as legal counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Ms. Mitchell served as co-counsel for the National Rifle Association in the Supreme Court case involving the 2002 federal campaign finance law.
Ms. Mitchell has testified before Congress on numerous occasions related to election law, campaign finance and lobbying and ethics laws, and is a frequent speaker and guest commentator on political law. In 1999, she authored "The Rise of America’s Two National Pastimes: Baseball and the Law," published by the University of Michigan Law Review, and in 2012, Ms. Mitchell authored “Donor Disclosure: Undermining The First Amendment,” published by the Minnesota Law Review. In 2013, she was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, “How to Investigate the IRS.”
Ms. Mitchell served on the advisory council to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law and as an advisor on the American Law Institute's Election Law Project entitled, “Principles of Election Law: Dispute Resolution.” She serves on the board of directors of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, is chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation, and has served as the president of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Ms. Mitchell was a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976-1984 where she chaired the House Appropriations and Budget Committee. She served on the executive committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Ms. Mitchell was in private law practice in Oklahoma City in litigation and administrative law until 1991 when she became director and general counsel of the Term Limits Legal Institute in Washington, D.C. She litigated cases in state and federal courts nationwide on congressional term limits and served as co-counsel with former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell in the Supreme Court of the United States case on term limits for members of Congress.
Ms. Mitchell earned both her B.A., magna cum laude, and J.D. from the University of Oklahoma.
Professor of Law, High Point School of Law
Scott Gaylord directs High Point Law’s Appellate Litigation Clinic and serves as a Professor of Law, teaching Constitutional Law and related upper-level elective courses. The Appellate Clinic works with students to write and file briefs in significant court cases, including appeals before the United States Supreme Court.
Professor Gaylord is a prominent Constitutional Law scholar with an impressive background in both academia and legal practice. He has authored or co-authored 18 substantial law review articles, co-authored a Constitutional Law casebook, and has written more than 35 amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and federal circuit courts on prominent national cases involving religious liberty and free speech. He is a frequent speaker on constitutional law and First Amendment topics at law schools across the country and has regularly provided commentary on ongoing constitutional issues to national media outlets, including th eNew York Times, USA Today, the Diane Rehm Show, NPR, The National Constitution Center, and Bloomberg Law.
Professor Gaylord also started an appellate advocacy clinic at his former law school and currently serves on the North Carolina Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, along with holding many other service and leadership roles. Prior to joining the academy in 2007, he practiced complex civil and commercial litigation with the Charlotte firm of Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson, and he clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Professor Gaylord earned his B.A. in philosophy and English, summa cum laude, from Colgate University, his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his J.D. from Notre Dame Law School, where he also graduated summa cum laude.
President and Founder, JKC Consulting LLC
John Kneuer is the President and Founder of JKC Consulting LLC. He sits on multiple public and private company boards.
Prior to starting Kneuer LLC, Mr. Kneuer served as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information. In this capacity Mr. Kneuer was the principal advisor to the President of the United States on telecommunications policy and the Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration ("NTIA").In addition to representing the Executive Branch in domestic and international telecommunications and information policy activities, NTIA also manages the federal use of spectrum; performs cutting edge telecommunications research and engineering, including resolving technical telecommunications issues for the federal government and private sector; and administers infrastructure and public telecommunications facilities grants.
Prior to his service at NTIA, Mr. Kneuer served as a Senior Associate at the law firm of Piper Rudnick in Washington, D.C., providing regulatory and legislative representation to corporate clients in the telecommunications, defense, and transportation industries. Earlier in his career, Mr. Kneuer served as the Executive Director for Government Relations at the Industrial Telecommunications Association, and prior to that served as an Attorney-Advisor in the Commercial Wireless Division of the Federal Communications Commission's Wireless Bureau. Mr. Kneuer received B.A. and J.D. degrees from the Catholic University of America.
Partner, HWG LLP
Patricia Paoletta is a partner with the law firm of HWG LLP, where she specializes in telecommunications, trade and technology policy. Ms. Paoletta provides advice on regulatory, trade and legislative policy to clients before the FCC, Congress and the Administration. Her clients include providers of content, cloud, mobile broadband, VoIP, international telecommunications, small cells, cognitive radio, public safety and homeland security solutions. She serves on Advisory Boards for several entities engaged in information services, communications and technology.
Ms. Paoletta has accrued considerable experience with telecommunications trade and policy in the public sector. From 1990 to 1995, she was senior advisor to the International Bureau Chief and Office Director at the Federal Communications Commission. In the mid 1990s, Ms. Paoletta served as Director of Telecommunications Trade Policy in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President, where she worked on the WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA) and the Basic Telecommunications Agreement. After USTR, Ms. Paoletta served as Majority Counsel to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. She then moved to Level 3 Communications, as Vice President, Government Relations.
Ms. Paoletta is on the Steering Committee of the Transatlantic Roundtable on Telecommunications and Information Technology of the European Institute. She is a member of the USTR Alumni Association, Washington International Trade Association, the Federal Communications Bar Association (FCBA), and Women in Technology. Ms. Paoletta has served on the Board of Advisors for the Inter-American Dialogue's Latin America Telecom Advisor, Co-Chairman of the American Bar Association International Communications Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Technology Policy Committee.
Ms. Paoletta served as a delegate in 2012 to the ITU-R's Study Group 6 Working Party 6A Meeting and in 2009 and 2010 to the ITU-R's Study Group I Working Party IB Meetings; the 2009 meetings of CITEL (the Committee on International Telecommunications at the Organization of American States) PCC-II; the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Telecommunications Standards Assembly (2000); the ITU Internet Protocol Telephony Experts Group and the ITU World Telecommunications Policy Forum in 2001; as Chairman of the National Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC) Steering Committee (2000-2001); as Board Member for the Voice on the Net Coalition (2001); as Co-Chairman of the FCBA's Annual Seminar Committee (2009-2011); as a member of the FCBA's Ad Hoc Speakers Committee (2006-2007); as Co-Chairman for the FCBA International Practice Committee (2001-2002 and 2005-2006); and as a Co-Chairman of the FCBA Legislative Practice Committee (1999-2000).
Professor of Law and Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Center, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Stinneford teaches and writes about legal ethics, criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. His work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court, several state supreme courts and federal courts of appeal, and numerous scholars. It has published in numerous scholarly journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the William & Mary Law Review. The Stanford-Yale Junior faculty forum selected one of his articles as the best paper in the category of Constitutional History, and the AALS Criminal Justice Section named another article as the best paper in its Junior Scholars Paper Competition. In the fall of 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Georgetown Law Center, Center for the Constitution.
Before joining the Florida faculty in 2009, Stinneford clerked for the Hon. James Moran of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, served as an Assistant United States Attorney, and practiced law with Winston & Strawn in Chicago. Stinneford teaches first-year courses in Criminal Law and Constitutional Law, and upper-level courses in Professional Responsibility, Criminal Procedure, Federal Criminal Law, Law & Literature, and White Collar Crime.
Professor at Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville
Professor Russell L. Weaver graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri School of Law in 1978. He was a member of the Missouri Law Review, was elected to the Order of the Coif, and won the Judge Roy Harper Prize. After law school, Professor Weaver was associated with Watson, Ess, Marshall & Enggas in Kansas City, Missouri, and worked for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of General Counsel in Washington, D.C.
Professor Weaver began teaching at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law in 1982, and holds the rank of Professor of Law and Distinguished University Scholar. He teaches Constitutional Law, Advanced Constitutional Law, Remedies, Administrative Law, Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure. He has received the Brandeis School of Law's awards for teaching, scholarship, and service, including the Brown Todd & Heyburn Fellowship. He has been awarded the President's Award (University of Louisville) for Outstanding Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in the Field of Social Science, the President's Award for Outstanding Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity in the Career Achievement Category, and the President's Award for Distinguished Service. He is the Executive Director and past president of the Southeastern Conference of the Association of American Law Schools. He is an Honorary Associate of Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia).
Professor Weaver is a prolific author who has written dozens of books and articles over the last twenty-five years. He was named the Judge Spurgeon Bell Distinguished Visiting Professor at South Texas College of Law (affiliated with Texas A & M University) during the 1998-99 academic year, and he held the Herbert Herff Chair of Excellence at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, University of Memphis, during 1992-93. In addition, he has been asked to speak at law schools and conferences around the world, and has been a visiting professor at law schools in France, England, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada.
Professor Weaver is particularly noted for his work in the constitutional law area. He has served as a consultant to the constitutional drafting commissions of Belarus and Kyrghyzstan and as a commentator on the Russian Constitution. His constitutional law writings have focused on free speech issues, particularly those relating to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, and include a constitutional law case-book and two anthologies (The First Amendment Anthology and The Constitutional Law Anthology). He has a First Amendment casebook in progress.
Professor Weaver is also noted for his writings on legal education and his work in the administrative law area. In 1992 and 1993, he served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States. His writings have focused on agency interpretations of statutes and regulations, and he is co-author of one of the leading administrative law casebooks.
Professor Weaver has served on many community and professional committees. He served on the Louisville Bar Association's (LBA) Professional Responsibility Committee, and as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools' (AALS) Criminal Justice Section and serves on the AALS Planning Committee for the New Law Teacher's Workshop. He has also served on the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky's Legal Panel and Board of Directors.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Senior Counsel, Schaerr Jaffe LLP
Ken Klukowski is senior counsel at the law firm Schaerr Jaffe, focusing on constitutional, administrative, and election law, and the federal courts. He has served in politically appointed positions in the U.S. government, including senior counsel in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and prior to that in the White House as special counsel in the Office of Management and Budget. He was also the constitutional rights advisor on the Presidential Transition Team of President Donald J. Trump. In the private sector, he has worked as a senior fellow of the American Constitutional Rights Union, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, and a legal journalist. He litigates constitutional cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and contributes to media coverage of the nation’s highest court and legal issues. Earlier in his career, Klukowski served as special deputy attorney general of Indiana, and worked on faculty at Liberty University School of Law. His academic works have been published by journals such as the Federalist Society’s Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and his columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and other national publications. His amicus briefs and nine law review articles have been cited by various federal courts and top legal journals. He has participated in numerous Supreme Court cases, and lectured and debated at 100 law school events nationwide. Klukowski received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame, studied history at Arizona State University, earned his law degree from Scalia Law School at George Mason University, and served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Alice Batchelder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.