Dave Roland is the Director of Litigation and co-founder of the Freedom Center of Missouri; he also serves as the Secretary for the Freedom Center’s Board of Directors. Dave earned undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University before studying law and religion at Vanderbilt University, where he received his law degree and a Master’s in Theology in 2004. While at Vanderbilt, Dave wrote a series of essays for the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center about the First Amendment and public education, and he clerked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, DC. Following law school, Dave spent more than three years in the nation’s capital as an attorney with the Institute for Justice, where he litigated school choice, economic liberty, and property rights cases in state and federal courts. His work has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USAToday, the Huffington Post, on Fox News and MSNBC, and other major media outlets nationwide. Since moving to Missouri in 2007, Dave has become a familiar presence on television news broadcasts, radio shows, and in newspapers across the state. He travels widely throughout the state, speaking to elected officials, student groups at colleges and law schools, Federalist Society chapters, and community groups about education, property rights, health care reform, constitutional protections for liberty, and the American Founders’ conception of virtue. Dave has also established himself as one of the preeminent election attorneys in Missouri, having won groundbreaking, precedent-setting victories in Wright-Jones v. Nasheed, Vowell v. Kander, and Franks v. Hubbard. Prior to founding the Freedom Center, he spent three years working as an attorney and policy analyst for the Show-Me Institute. Dave also previously served as the Director of the Theodore L. Stiles Center for Liberty at the Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington. He has been admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Washington, as well as before the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Missouri, the Western District of Missouri, the Western District of Washington, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He lives in Mexico, Missouri, with his wife, Jenifer, and their three children. Dave can be reached at dave@mofreedom.org.
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Goldwater Institute
Eminent Domain in Missouri