Brett Dwight Baber, a 1985 graduate of the University of Maine School of Law, has been practicing law in Maine for 39 years. Currently, Mr. Baber serves in an “of counsel” capacity in the litigation section of Russell Johnson Beaupain. Previously, Mr. Baber was a partner at Rudman Winchell, the Law Office of Brett Baber, and most recently at Lanham Blackwell & Baber, where he served as its managing partner. The focus of Mr. Baber’s practice has been in civil trial practice, including personal injury, wrongful death, product liability, commercial litigation, and real estate disputes. He is admitted to practice in all courts in the State of Maine, the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and the United States District Court for the District of Maine.
Having served on the Board of Governors of the Maine State Bar Association for over a decade, Mr. Baber was selected to serve as the organization’s President in 2008. Mr. Baber has served on the Board of Directors of the Penobscot County Bar Association and as its treasurer from 2022-23. Mr. Baber has also been a member of the American Bar Association and the American Association for Justice, and he is currently a member of the Maine Trial Lawyers. Mr. Baber has written numerous articles on litigation topics that have appeared in the Maine Bar Journal and in the March 2021 edition of Trial magazine, a publication of the American Association of Justice. For over the past decade, Mr. Baber has been a regular legal commentator on WVOM radio, a station heard over much of Maine.
Mr. Baber is married to Gayle E. Baber, his wife of 44 years, and they live in Dedham, Maine. The Babers have four children and one grandson. Outside the practice of law, Brett’s interests include travel with his wife and family (having visited all 50 states), downhill and Nordic skiing, golf, and reading non-fiction and novels. In the last few years, Brett has taken up the guitar and enjoys playing blues, soft rock, and country rock. Mr. Baber is a member of St. Paul the Apostle, where he sings in the choir and, as a cantor, serves as a reader. Mr. Baber is a current member of the Pine Cone Council of the Knights of Columbus, having served in various offices.
Professor of Law, University of Cincinnatti College of Law
Biography
Anne Marie Lofaso is a Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, where she teaches labor law, employment law, employment discrimination law, and constitutional law. Before arriving at U.C., she was the Arthur B. Hodges Professor of Law at the West Virginia University College of Law, where she taught for over 18 years. Professor Lofaso is a labor law expert. She has authored over seventy law review articles, primarily on labor and employment law, as well as over a dozen scholarly blogs, primarily in the area of human rights, with a focus on socio-economic rights. She has co-authored two casebooks, Modern Labor Law in the Public and Private Sectors and Public Sector Employment, in addition to one textbook, Mastering Labor Law (2d ed. Forthcoming 2025).
She is the author and editor of two labor law treaties, NLRA: Law and Practice and Drafting the Union Contract, and the editor of several other books, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act After 50 Years: Proceedings of the New York University 67th Annual Conference on Labor.
Professor Lofaso is an active public intellectual who has presented nearly two hundred lectures throughout the world and the United States, has testified before Congress on labor law issues, and has appeared in numerous news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, PBS, Bloomberg Radio, the Daily Labor Report, and Law360 to discuss labor law and constitutional law topics. She has also lectured throughout West Virginia on issues related to professionalism and ethics in the practice of law. Professor Lofaso is a former Special Government Employee who served as Vice President of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and as a Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission for the City of Morgantown.
She is a member of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and affiliated with the Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog. Professor Lofaso earned her A.B. from Harvard University, magna cum laude, J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and D.Phil. from Oxford University, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation comparing the law and underlying jurisprudence of mass economic dismissals in the U.S., Great Britain, and the European Union.
Former Deputy Secretary of Labor; Mayor, Pinehurst, NC
Biography
Patrick Pizzella’s professional career includes 28 years in the Federal government and 13 years in the non-profit and private sector. In 2021 he was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Leadership Institute.
In November 2021 Pizzella was elected to the Pinehurst Village Council in North Carolina. In November 2023 Pizzella was elected to a four-year term as Mayor of Pinehurst.
Pizzella recently served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in Washington, DC from 2018—2021. President Donald J. Trump nominated him to serve as Deputy Secretary and the U.S. Senate confirmed Pizzella on April 12, 2018. Pizzella served as Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor from July 20, 2019, until September 27, 2019. DOL's mission is to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights. DOL administers and enforces more than 180 federal laws and thousands of federal regulations. These mandates and the regulations that implement them cover many workplace activities for over 10 million employers and over 150 million workers. DOL has almost 14,000 employees and a budget of about $12 billion.
Pizzella previously served as a Member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) after being nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate in 2013. On January 23, 2017, President Trump designated Pizzella as Acting FLRA Chairman, a position he held until December 8, 2017.
Prior to joining the FLRA, Pizzella was Principal at Patrick Pizzella LLC. He was confirmed by the Senate and served as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Administration and Management DOL from 2001 to 2009. Pizzella was designated by President George W. Bush to serve as a member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation from January 2004 to April 2005.
Previously, he worked at Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP as a Government Affairs Counselor from 1998 to 2001 and Director of Coalitions from 1996 to 1997. From 1990 to 1995, Pizzella was Director of the Office of Administration at the Federal Housing Finance Board, and from 1988 to 1989, Deputy Under Secretary for Management at the U.S. Department of Education.
He has previously held positions at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the U.S. General Services Administration.
Pizzella received a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the University of South Carolina and he is a graduate of Iona Preparatory School. He is a native of New Rochelle, New York.
Aaron Solem is a staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, where he represents both private and public sector employees in state and federal courts, as well as before administrative agencies.
Aaron was co-counsel in Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018), a major Supreme Court case establishing that it violates the First Amendment to force public sector employees to pay compulsory fees. Additionally, Aaron’s track record in federal court includes being co-counsel in Stewart v. NLRB, 851 F.3d 21 (D.C. Cir. 2017); Tamosiunas v. NLRB, 892 F.3d 422 (D.C. Cir. 2018); and UNAP v. NLRB, 975 F.3d 34 (1st Cir. 2020). He was also lead counsel in Sands v. NLRB, 825 F.3d 778 (D.C. Cir. 2016), where he successfully vacated an unfavorable NLRB decision.
Aaron is also experienced in representing employees before the National Labor Relations Board. Aaron won a major victory in NABET, Local 51, 371 NLRB No. 15 (2021), establishing the unlawfulness of threatening evidence preservation letters under the National Labor Relations Act. He also frequently represents and advises decertification petitioners, including the decertification petitioners in Americold Logistics, 362 NLRB 493 (2015); Pinnacle Foods Grp., 368 NLRB No. 97 (2019); and Geodis Logistics, 371 NLRB No. 102 (2022).
Aaron earned his law degree with honors from the University of Notre Dame Law School and currently resides in Bethesda, Maryland.
Jordan Lorence is Senior Counsel in FLI’s Washington, D.C. office, where he represents First Liberty in strategic efforts promoting religious liberty, and works on important First Amendment projects and litigation, including those at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Lorence has a long career of litigating religious liberty cases since 1984. He has worked for many public interest law firms, including Alliance Defending Freedom, Home School Legal Defense Association, the North Star Legal Center and Concerned Women for America.
He has worked on important religious liberty cases. Lorence worked on school choice cases at the Supreme Court, such as Witters v. Washington Department of Services for the Blind (1986), and Trinity Lutheran (2016), which laid the foundation for First Liberty’s crucial win in Carson v. Makin (2022), requiring Maine to include religious schools in its school choice program.
Lorence argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Regents of the University of Wisconsin v. Southworth (2000). He represented prolife Christian law students from the University of Wisconsin Law School who objected to the University’s requirement that they pay a mandatory student fee that funded the advocacy of student pro-abortion groups. Other Supreme Court cases Lorence has worked on include NIFLA v. Becerra (2018), protecting prolife pregnancy centers from a California statute requiring them to post signs explaining how pregnant women could obtain state-funded abortions; Masterpiece Cakeshop (2017), involving a Christian cake artist sued by the State of Colorado for declining to design a case celebrating the wedding of a same-sex couple and other cases such as Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2012), Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995), Hurley v. GLIB (1995) and Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Center Moriches School District (1993).
Churches and other religious groups in New York City obtained the right to rent vacant public schools on weekends to conduct worship services after Lorence’s tenacious 20 years of litigation in Bronx Household of Faith. Lorence won protection for churches facing eviction from discriminatory zoning ordinances in Minnesota in Cornerstone Bible Church v. City of Hastings, Minnesota (1991). He also argued at the New Mexico Supreme Court one of the first cases in the nation defending a Christian wedding photographer charged by the State of New Mexico with discrimination for declining to create photos celebrating the commitment ceremony of a lesbian couple in Elane Photography v. Willock (2013).
Lorence defended home schooling families from intrusive school officials during his time working at Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in the 1980s and 1990s. HSLDA also tasked Lorence with establishing a sister organization in Canada to protect home schooling families there. He traveled extensively in Canada from British Columbia to Prince Edward Island speaking to families how they could protect their right to home school under relevant Canadian law.
Lorence earned his undergraduate degree in journalism from Stanford University and his law degree from the University of Minnesota, his home state. Lorence was born and raised in Minnesota, where he worked one summer building Mighty Dump trucks at Tonka Toys in Mound, Minnesota. For two years immediately after he graduated from law school, Lorence served as the head administrator for a Minnesota Senate committee.
He speaks extensively on First Amendment and other legal issues. Lorence has spoken at least 75 law schools and many legal conferences. Prominent publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and others have printed his opinion pieces on key legal issues involving religious liberty and freedom of speech. He has appeared on such media outlets as Fox News, CNN, National Public Radio, NBC’s Today Show, BBC radio and many others.
Lorence and his wife Marilyn have been married 40 years. They live in the Washington, D.C. area where they raised their seven children.
Misha leads Troutman Peppers' national appellate and Supreme Court practice. Most recently, he successfully obtained orders from the Supreme Court blocking an unconstitutional restriction on places of worship, as well as overturning a lower court order that had blocked several state election laws. He has also argued and prevailed before the Supreme Court in Gill v. Whitford, one of the most significant redistricting cases in decades, as well as Murr v. Wisconsin, a high-stakes regulatory taking case.
Before joining Troutman, Misha served as Solicitor General of the State of Wisconsin. Misha previously served as a law clerk for the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court, Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit, and Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit. He graduated from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was President of the Federalist Society Chapter.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Biography
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Steve Klein, a partner at Barr & Klein PLLC, is an experienced free speech attorney who has successfully fought for the First Amendment rights of his clients against local, state and federal regulators. As a lobbyist, Steve’s advocacy has led to the successful amendment of state laws to respect political engagement and prevented the enactment of laws that burden it. Steve has published articles in several legal journals, and his commentary has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Detroit News, and other outlets. Steve earned a bachelors degree in politics at Hillsdale College and a law degree from Ave Maria School of Law, where he served as Managing Editor of the Ave Maria Law Review. He is licensed to practice law in the District of Columbia, Illinois and Michigan.
Charles “Chip” Miller joined the Institute for Free Speech as a Senior Attorney in May 2023, where he has handled cases in the 1st, 5th, and 10th Circuits, District Courts in Maine, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, Texas and Utah, and State Supreme Courts in Alaska and Connecticut, as well as amicus briefs in SCOTUS and the First Circuit. At IFS, Miller's work focuses on Campaign Finance, Donor Privacy, Political Speech and Freedom of the Press. Miller previously served as Ohio’s Deputy Attorney General, where he directed major litigation. Before joining the state AG’s office as General Counsel, he served as a judge for the First Appellate District of Ohio and had also served as a “visiting judge” on the Ohio Supreme Court. Prior to entering public service, Miller spent over 10 years at Keating, Muething & Klekamp, PLL as a litigation partner arguing cases before the Sixth Circuit and the Ohio Supreme Court.
Miller has extensive litigation and appellate experience and has spearheaded important regulatory matters. His previous work includes advancing innovative protections of free expression and competition in the digital sphere.
Miller is a graduate of Boston University College of Law and clerked for Justice Maureen O’Connor at the Ohio Supreme Court. Among other honors, Miller was selected to represent Boston University at the National First Amendment Moot Court.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Biography
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 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.