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Religious Liberties Practice Group

How Does the First Amendment Protect Churches in Court?

May 11 2026

Monday 1:00 p.m. EDT

How Does the First Amendment Protect Churches in Court?

Speakers:

Michael W. McConnell • Branton J. Nestor • Lael Weinberger

Sponsors:

Religious Liberties Practice Group

Webinar

Courthouse Steps Decision: First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Davenport

May 1 2026

Friday 11:00 a.m. EDT

Courthouse Steps Decision: First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Davenport

Speakers:

Teresa Stanton Collett • Casey Mattox

Sponsors:

Religious Liberties Practice Group • Free Speech Practice Group

Webinar

Litigation Update: Ten Commandments in Public Schools

Apr 24 2026

Friday 2:30 p.m. EDT

Litigation Update: Ten Commandments in Public Schools

Speakers:

Stephanie Barclay • Joseph Davis • Andrew Koppelman

Sponsors:

Religious Liberties Practice Group • Education Practice Group

Live Stream
Webinar

Commentary

Aug 17 2016 Podcast

Church Playgrounds & Blaine Amendments - Podcast

Thomas C. Berg, Christopher C. Lund, Martin S. Lederman

Religious Liberties Practice Group Podcast

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Pauley....

Sponsors: Religious Liberties Practice Group

Aug 10 2016 Publication

Federalist Society Review, Volume 17, Issue 2

Katie McClendon

Civil Rights Evenwel v. Abbott: The Court Shanks Its Punt on "One Person, One Vote"...

Sponsors: Civil Rights Practice Group · Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group · Free Speech Practice Group · Litigation Practice Group · Religious Liberties Practice Group · Communications & Technology Practice Group

Jul 29 2016 Video

Zubik v. Burwell: Post-Decision

Michael W. McConnell

Short video featuring Michael W. McConnell

Prof. Michael W. McConnell, Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center and Senior Fellow at...

Sponsors: Religious Liberties Practice Group

Jul 5 2016 Blog Post

Data Breach Damage Claims Puzzle Judges

Michael P. Moreland, Jonathan Keim

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (paywall) points out a legal issue that judges are...

Topics: Civil Rights · Litigation

Sponsors: Religious Liberties Practice Group

Jul 5 2016 Blog Post

The first BBCJ Congress was hosted by the Constitutional Court of Moldova

Timothy Courtney

On June 30, Jim Kelly, Director of International Affairs for the Federalist Society, attended the...

Sponsors: Religious Liberties Practice Group

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Speaker Information

Michael W. McConnell

Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School

Biography

Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.

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Speaker Information

Branton J. Nestor

Associate Attorney, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP

Biography

Branton Nestor is an associate in the Orange County office of Gibson Dunn. He practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and is a member of the firm’s Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group.

Branton has represented clients in appellate, regulatory, and complex litigation matters across various industries. His experience spans a wide range of subject matters, including constitutional law and administrative law.

He clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Julius N. Richardson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2019, and Westmont College in 2016. His scholarship has been cited at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Branton is a member of the California bar.

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Speaker Information

Lael Weinberger

Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

Biography

Lael Weinberger is an assistant professor of law at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School. Previously, Lael clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch on the United States Supreme Court, Judge Frank Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and Chief Justice Daniel Eismann on the Idaho Supreme Court. Lael also practiced law at the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson Dunn and held fellowships at Stanford and Harvard law schools. Lael earned a law degree and a Ph.D. in history, both from the University of Chicago. Lael's academic work has appeared in journals such as the University of Chicago Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Constitutional Commentary, among others. He has also written widely for broader public audiences, with his writings and reviews appearing in publications including Newsweek, National Review, Claremont Review, First Things, Christianity Today, LA Review of Books, World, and the New Rambler Review.

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Speaker Information

Teresa Stanton Collett

Professor and Director, Prolife Center, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Biography

Teresa Collett, J.D., is professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, where she serves as director of the school's Prolife Center. Collett received her doctorate at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. As a well-known advocate for the protection of human life and the family, Collett specializes in the subjects of marriage, religion and bioethics in her research.

Collett has published numerous legal articles and is the co-author of a law casebook on professional responsibility and co-editor of a collection of essays exploring “catholic” and “Catholic” perspectives on American law. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and has testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as before legislative committees in several states.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collett to a five-year term on the Pontifical Council for the Family. Her appointment was renewed by His Holiness Pope Francis until 2016 when the responsibilities of the Council were assumed by the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life. In 2013, she served as a delegate to the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) for the Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.

She represented Congressman Ron Paul and various medical groups in the defense of the U.S. federal ban of partial-birth abortion, and the governors of Minnesota and North Dakota defending the N.H. requirement of state parental involvement prior to performance of an abortion on a minor before the U.S. Supreme Court. Collett is often asked to represent the interests of government officials before federal appellate courts. She has served as special attorney general for the states of Oklahoma and Kansas, as well as assisting other state attorneys general in defending laws protecting human life and marriage. Prior to joining St. Thomas in 2003, Collett taught at the South Texas College of Law, where she established the nation's first annual symposium on legal ethics.

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Speaker Information

Casey Mattox

Vice President for Legal Strategy, Stand Together

Biography

Casey Mattox is Vice President for Legal Strategy at Stand Together and Senior Advisor at
Americans for Prosperity. In these roles he advocates for and creates strategies and
partnerships to ensure a constitutionally limited government that protects the civil liberties of all
Americans. Prior to joining Stand Together and AFP Casey’s legal career focused on defending
the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, healthcare workers and religious organizations.
Casey has a J.D. from Boston College School of Law and an undergraduate degree from the
University of Virginia. You can find him on Twitter at @CaseyMattox_ and on LinkedIn at
@Casey-Mattox-ST.

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Speaker Information

Stephanie Barclay

Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, Georgetown University Law Center

Biography

Stephanie Barclay is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School, and the Faculty Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. Her research focuses on the role our different democratic institutions play in protecting minority rights, particularly at the intersection of free speech and religious exercise. Barclay‘s work is published or is forthcoming in leading journals such as the Harvard Law Review, the Chicago Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. One of her articles was also selected for the 2020 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. Her work has been featured in many media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg BNA, The Hill, and Law 360. And her work has also been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Prior to joining Georgetown, Barclay was twice voted Professor of the Year. Barclay has also litigated constitutional cases at both the trial and appellate level, including before the U.S. Supreme Court. Barclay served as a law clerk to Judge N. Randy Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Barclay is a Faculty Affiliate at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School; and she is a Nootbaar Fellow at the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics at Pepperdine University. She currently serves as the Chair for the AALS Law and Religion Section and as a Member of the Executive Committee for the AALS Constitutional Law Section. She graduated summa cum laude from BYU Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. She is completing a Ph.D. in Law at Oxford University as a Clarendon Scholar and a Tang Scholar.

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Speaker Information

Joseph Davis

Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

Biography

Joe Davis joined Becket in 2017 as Legal Counsel. His work at Becket has included appellate litigation in both federal and state courts, including representing religious entities and governments sued because of their openness to religious expression in precedent-setting victories before the Third, Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits. Joe has appeared in national media to discuss religious liberty issues, including on Fox News and numerous radio and print outlets, and his academic work on topics related to religious liberty has been published at venues including the Yale Law Journal Forum and the Notre Dame Law Review Online.

Before joining Becket, Joe worked as a litigator at Jones Walker LLP in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he worked on a variety of matters from commercial and criminal litigation to bankruptcy. From 2014 to 2015, he clerked for the Honorable E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Joe graduated summa cum laude from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2014, where he served on the Virginia Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. While in law school, Joe studied religious liberty law with one of the top religious liberty scholars and litigators in the nation. He also worked as a researcher for the law school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. Before going to law school, Joe received his B.A. in Economics with a minor in Religion, summa cum laude, from Mississippi State University.

Joe is married to his high school sweetheart. When he’s not helping her corral their four young children, he tends to be reading the classics, watching college football, or listening to his vinyl collection.

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Speaker Information

Andrew Koppelman

John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law

Biography

Andrew Koppelman is John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and Philosophy Department Affiliated Faculty at Northwestern University. He received the Walder Award for Research Excellence from Northwestern, the Hart-Dworkin award in legal philosophy from the Association of American Law Schools, and the Edward S. Corwin Prize from the American Political Science Association. His scholarship focuses on issues at the intersection of law and political philosophy. He has written more than 100 scholarly articles and eight books, most recently Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed, (St. Martin’s Press). His column appears regularly at The Hill. You can find his recent work at andrewkoppelman.com.

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Contributor Information

Thomas C. Berg

James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Biography

Thomas C. Berg is the James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota), where he teaches religious liberty, constitutional law, intellectual property, and the religious liberty appellate clinic. He is the author or co-author of five books, including The State and Religion in a Nutshell (West); Religion and the Constitution (Wolters Kluwer, with McConnell and Lund); Patents on Life (Cambridge U. Press, with Cholij and Ravenscroft);. and a forthcoming book, Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age (under contract, Eerdmans). He has written or co-written more than 150 book chapters and scholarly and popular articles, and approximately 70 briefs in the Supreme Court and lower courts on freedom of religion and expression. He contributes regularly to SCOTUS Blog, Christianity Today, Mirror of Justice, and other venues. He has degrees from the University of Chicago (law, religious studies), Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Northwestern University (journalism). He practiced law in Chicago and was a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

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Contributor Information

Christopher C. Lund

Associate Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School

Biography

Christopher C. Lund is an associate professor of law at Wayne State University Law School, where he teaches a variety of courses, including Torts, Contracts, Constitutional Law, Religious Liberty in the United States and Evidence. Excited to teach students, he has been voted Professor of the Year five times.

Prof. Lund's scholarly interests vary, but his principal focus has been in the field of religious liberty. His academic work has been (or shortly will be) published in student-edited law reviews, such as the Northwestern University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, and the Minnesota Law Review; peer-reviewed legal journals, such as the Journal of Law and Religion; and peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journals, such as History of Religions. He recently joined Michael McConnell and Thomas Berg as the new co-author on their leading casebook, Religion and the Constitution, the fourth edition of which was published by Aspen in 2016.

Prof. Lund's academic work has been cited in articles, books and judicial opinions. He is regularly called on for his expertise by media outlets, civil rights organizations and religious groups. Two of his amicus briefs have been quoted in opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Stephen Breyer calling one of them "very excellent" at oral argument. He is a past chair of the Law and Religion Section of the Association of American Law Schools, as well as past chair of the Section on New Law Professors. He sits on the lawyers' committee of the ACLU of Michigan.

Prof. Lund joined Wayne University Law School in 2009 from the Mississippi College School of Law. Before teaching, he clerked for the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, served as the Madison Fellow at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and practiced law at Dechert LLP in Philadelphia. Prof. Lund earned his law degree with high honors from the University of Texas School of Law and his bachelor of arts from Rice University, summa cum laude, with majors in mathematics and psychology.

During fall semester 2013, Lund was on leave from Wayne Law, teaching at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

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Contributor Information

Martin S. Lederman

Professor from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center

Biography

Professor Lederman has taught at the Georgetown University Law Center since 2005, with an emphasis on constitutional law; separation of powers; the law of religion; national security topics; and executive branch lawyering. He is the Senior Fellow of the Supreme Court Institute at the Law Center. He has published articles on, inter alia, Congress’s authority to regulate the Commander in Chief’s conduct of war; the constitutionality of wartime military courts; and the law of religion. He also contributes regularly to Just Security, Balkinization and other blogs and periodicals, writing principally on issues relating to constitutional law, the Supreme Court, war powers, and religion and the law. Professor Lederman was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010 and again from 2021 to 2023. He served as law clerk to Chief Judge Jack B. Weinstein on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and to Judge Frank M. Coffin on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

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Contributor Information

Katie McClendon

Director, Faculty Relations, The Federalist Society

Biography

Katie McClendon is the Director of Faculty Relations at the Federalist Society, where she has worked since 2015.

Katie holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from Biola University, where she was a member of the Torrey Honors Institute. She is a fellow of the John Jay Institute and the Blackstone Legal Fellowship. Katie is originally from Los Angeles, and she now lives with her husband and four children in Atlanta.

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Contributor Information

Michael W. McConnell

Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School

Biography

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Contributor Information

Michael P. Moreland

University Professor of Law and Religion and Director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law

Biography

Michael P. Moreland was appointed University Professor of Law and Religion and Director of the Eleanor H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy at Villanova University in 2017. Professor Moreland joined the Villanova faculty in 2006 and served as Vice Dean from 2012 to 2015. His research is primarily in the areas of torts, law and religion, constitutional law, and Catholic social thought, and he regularly teaches Torts, First Amendment, seminars in law and religion, and undergraduate courses in ethics.

Professor Moreland is the co-editor of Christianity and Private Law (Routledge, 2021), and his most recent publications include: “The Authority of Tradition: John Henry Newman and Legal Theory” in Christianity and the Making of Irish Law (Routledge, 2025); “Christianity and Torts” in The Oxford Handbook on Christianity and Law, (Oxford University Press, 2023); “Germaneness and Religious Liberty” in the Notre Dame Law Review (2023); “Contingency and Contestation in Christianity and Liberalism” in the Notre Dame Law Review (2023); “Friendship as the Primary Purpose of Law” in The American Journal of Jurisprudence 279 (2022); and “The Moral of Torts” (with Jeffrey Pojanowski) in Christianity and Private Law (Routledge, 2021).

Professor Moreland was a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and the Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture from 2015 to 2017. He was the Forbes Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in the James Madison Program during academic year 2010-11. He has served as the project leader for grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation. He serves as the Chair of the Federalist Society’s Religious Liberties Practice Group Executive Committee and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California.

Professor Moreland received his BA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, his MA and PhD in theological ethics from Boston College, and his JD from the University of Michigan Law School. Following law school, Professor Moreland clerked for the Honorable Paul J. Kelly Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and was an associate at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, DC, where he represented clients in First Amendment, professional liability, and products liability matters. Before coming to Villanova, he served as Associate Director for Domestic Policy at the White House under President George W. Bush, where he worked on a range of legal policy issues, including criminal justice, immigration, civil rights, and liability reform.

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Contributor Information

Jonathan Keim

Contributor Information

Timothy Courtney

Assistant Director, Practice Groups, The Federalist Society

Biography

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