Bilby Law PLLC
Joe Bilby is a proud veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. A graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Kentucky College of Law, Joe began his legal career working in at a large law firm in Louisville and focusing on workplace law, business litigation, and trust/estate litigation.
Having spent seven years serving as general counsel to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, Joe has extensive experience serving Kentucky’s farmers and agribusinesses.
Joe especially enjoys working with churches and religious organizations.
Joe provides affordable estate planning services for individuals and families across Kentucky.
He also has a specialty practice that serves employers across the nation who rely on the H-2A and H-2B temporary visa programs to meet their workforce needs.
Joe lives in central Kentucky with his wife and two children.
Associate Attorney, Cooper & Kirk PLLC
Athie Livas rejoined Cooper & Kirk in 2022. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Livas clerked for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh on the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Livas also previously clerked for Judge Amul R. Thapar on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Dabney L. Friedrich on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Ms. Livas graduated from Yale Law School, where she served as President of the Yale Federalist Society, co-President of the Barristers’ Union trial competition, Student Director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and Editor on the Yale Law Journal. Ms. Livas is admitted to the bar of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Partner, Dinsmore & Shohl LLP
Eric has more than two decades of experience providing strategic counsel to a broad range of industries, organizations, candidates and public officials on law and public policy, including campaign and issue advocacy, government ethics and regulatory compliance. He advises clients how to make their voices heard by policymakers, through engagement in the policymaking process and through direct and grassroots advocacy in support of issues and candidates.
He has extensive experience with complex litigation business disputes and appellate matters. He brought a case on behalf of the Commonwealth that resulted in the largest judgment in Kentucky history, in the amount of $870 million against an unregulated offshore Internet gambling operation. Eric also advises clients in industries such distilled spirits, breweries and energy industry clients on corporate and transactional matters, and before regulatory agencies on licensing, enforcement and compliance matters.
Eric was counsel for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s 2014 reelection effort. He is currently general counsel to the Republican Party of Kentucky and the Kentucky House Republican Leadership. He has advised gubernatorial campaigns in Kentucky, Ohio, and other states, and legislative caucuses across the nation, including Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Eric serves as counsel to multiple campaigns, super PACs, trade associations and non-profit organizations, including one spending over $10 million in support of Senator Ted Cruz in the 2016 Presidential primary.
With his experience and knowledge of how policy is made and regulators make decisions, Eric is effective at counseling businesses and industries how to cut through the red tape and obtain a positive result for their operations.
Chairman and Founder, Institute for Free Speech; Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
Of Counsel, Holtzman Vogel
Lauren LaRue Topping is Of Counsel with Holtzman Vogel and focuses her practice on election law, campaign finance, compliance and ethics.
Prior to joining the firm, Lauren served as General Counsel for the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance, where she provided legal advice and analysis to the Bureau's Executive Director and the members of both the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance and the Tennessee Ethics Commission, as well as Tennessee's General Assembly, other state and local public officeholders, and other stakeholders. As General Counsel, Lauren also worked closely with the Tennessee General Assembly regarding various campaign finance and ethics legislation and other matters, took an active role in conducting campaign finance and lobbyist audits, managed contested case proceedings, and assisted the Office of the Attorney General with ongoing chancery court and appellate proceedings involving the Bureau.
Previously, Lauren served as Assistant General Counsel for the Office of Secretary of State Tre Hargett and as a Litigation Attorney (Eligibility Appeals) for the Tennessee Department of Health Care Finance and Administration, Division of TennCare.
Lauren regularly presents at various CLE programs and conferences regarding campaign finance and ethics matters. She is also deeply interested in policy matters surrounding adoption law and serves as a member of The Adoption Project's Policy Committee.
Senior Counsel, First Liberty Institute
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.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Free Speech
Brett Nolan is a Senior Attorney at the Institute for Free Speech, a public interest law firm that defends the First Amendment rights of those engaged in political speech and advocacy around the country.
Before joining the Institute, Brett served as the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of Kentucky, where he represented the Commonwealth in a wide variety of high-stakes litigation at every level of state and federal court. In that role, Brett led a successful challenge against the Department of Treasury over the constitutionality of a federal law limiting the ability of states to modify their tax codes, and he helped secure a U.S. Supreme Court victory that upheld a state’s constitutional right to defend its interests in federal court.
Prior to that, Brett served as the Deputy General Counsel to the former Governor of Kentucky, where he advised the governor and other executive branch officials on legal and policy issues and represented them in litigation. Brett clerked for Judge John Nalbandian of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Karen K. Caldwell of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Between clerkships, he worked in private practice. Brett received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated with High Honors and was an editor of The University of Chicago Law Review.
Solicitor General, Ohio
Mathura Sridharan serves as the 12th Solicitor General of Ohio. She previously served as Deputy Solicitor General and as Director of Ohio’s Tenth Amendment Center, where she initiated and directed suits to defend Ohioans against unlawful federal policies and to preserve the separation of powers between the federal and state governments. Across these roles, she has briefed and argued numerous appeals before the Ohio Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and other Circuits. In 2024, Mathura argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Ohio v. EPA, representing several States in a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Good Neighbor Rule regulating the interstate transport of air pollution.
Before joining the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, Mathura clerked for Judge Steven J. Menashi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Deborah A. Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She holds a Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Bachelor of Science degrees in Economics and in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Free Speech
Brett Nolan is a Senior Attorney at the Institute for Free Speech, a public interest law firm that defends the First Amendment rights of those engaged in political speech and advocacy around the country.
Before joining the Institute, Brett served as the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of Kentucky, where he represented the Commonwealth in a wide variety of high-stakes litigation at every level of state and federal court. In that role, Brett led a successful challenge against the Department of Treasury over the constitutionality of a federal law limiting the ability of states to modify their tax codes, and he helped secure a U.S. Supreme Court victory that upheld a state’s constitutional right to defend its interests in federal court.
Prior to that, Brett served as the Deputy General Counsel to the former Governor of Kentucky, where he advised the governor and other executive branch officials on legal and policy issues and represented them in litigation. Brett clerked for Judge John Nalbandian of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Karen K. Caldwell of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Between clerkships, he worked in private practice. Brett received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated with High Honors and was an editor of The University of Chicago Law Review.
Solicitor General, Ohio
Mathura Sridharan serves as the 12th Solicitor General of Ohio. She previously served as Deputy Solicitor General and as Director of Ohio’s Tenth Amendment Center, where she initiated and directed suits to defend Ohioans against unlawful federal policies and to preserve the separation of powers between the federal and state governments. Across these roles, she has briefed and argued numerous appeals before the Ohio Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and other Circuits. In 2024, Mathura argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Ohio v. EPA, representing several States in a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Good Neighbor Rule regulating the interstate transport of air pollution.
Before joining the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, Mathura clerked for Judge Steven J. Menashi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Deborah A. Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She holds a Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Bachelor of Science degrees in Economics and in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Senior Attorney, Institute for Free Speech
Brett Nolan is a Senior Attorney at the Institute for Free Speech, a public interest law firm that defends the First Amendment rights of those engaged in political speech and advocacy around the country.
Before joining the Institute, Brett served as the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of Kentucky, where he represented the Commonwealth in a wide variety of high-stakes litigation at every level of state and federal court. In that role, Brett led a successful challenge against the Department of Treasury over the constitutionality of a federal law limiting the ability of states to modify their tax codes, and he helped secure a U.S. Supreme Court victory that upheld a state’s constitutional right to defend its interests in federal court.
Prior to that, Brett served as the Deputy General Counsel to the former Governor of Kentucky, where he advised the governor and other executive branch officials on legal and policy issues and represented them in litigation. Brett clerked for Judge John Nalbandian of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Karen K. Caldwell of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Between clerkships, he worked in private practice. Brett received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated with High Honors and was an editor of The University of Chicago Law Review.
Solicitor General, Ohio
Mathura Sridharan serves as the 12th Solicitor General of Ohio. She previously served as Deputy Solicitor General and as Director of Ohio’s Tenth Amendment Center, where she initiated and directed suits to defend Ohioans against unlawful federal policies and to preserve the separation of powers between the federal and state governments. Across these roles, she has briefed and argued numerous appeals before the Ohio Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and other Circuits. In 2024, Mathura argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Ohio v. EPA, representing several States in a challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Good Neighbor Rule regulating the interstate transport of air pollution.
Before joining the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, Mathura clerked for Judge Steven J. Menashi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Deborah A. Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She holds a Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Bachelor of Science degrees in Economics and in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Managing Attorney of the Washington Office, Institute for Justice
William R. Maurer is the Managing Attorney of the Washington state office of the Institute for Justice, which engages in litigation in the areas of economic liberty, private property rights, educational choice, & freedom of speech.
Maurer is an advocate against the criminalization of poverty and the governmental use of the criminal and civil enforcement systems to raise revenue. He was lead counsel in a class action challenging the use of tickets to raise revenue in the city of Pagedale, Missouri. The suit resulted in a federal consent decree that reformed the city’s ticketing and municipal court system. He regularly speaks, teaches, and writes about the abuse of fines and fees in the criminal justice system. He was a participant in summits on taxation by citation put on by the White House and Department of Justice during the Obama Administration. His work on the issue includes serving as an advisory board member of the Fines and Fees Justice Center.
In addition to his work on criminal and civil justice reform, Maurer is a First Amendment litigator. In 2011, he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Arizona’s punitive campaign financing regime was unconstitutional. Before the Washington Supreme Court, he successfully argued against efforts to classify radio commentary as a contribution under the state’s campaign finance law.
His cases and advocacy have been covered in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and other major media outlets.
Maurer was named a “Washington Superlawyer” by Washington Law & Politics Magazine for several years. He is a chapter author in numerous legal reference works and has written several articles for law reviews and legal publications across the country.
Prior to joining IJ-WA, Maurer clerked for Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders and then practiced law at Perkins Coie LLP. Maurer received his law degree in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he was an editor of the Wisconsin Law Review. He received his BA from Bard College in 1989.
Panel II: Election Law in the Courts: Voting, Redistricting, and Election Administration
2026 Kentucky Chapters Conference
Lexington, KYSecond Annual Alaska Federalist Society Summer Social and SCOTUS Roundup
Alaska Lawyer Chapter
Anchorage, AKFrom the Courthouse Steps: National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission
Brett Nolan, Mathura Sridharan
In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court held 6-3 that...
From the Courthouse Steps: National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission
Brett Nolan, Mathura Sridharan
In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court held 6-3 that...
From the Courthouse Steps: National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission
Book Review: Dark Money and Plutocrats United
William R. Maurer
Note from the Editor: This book review takes a critical look at two recent books that...