Founder and Managing Attorney, Baughman Law PC
Krista is a trial lawyer specializing in First Amendment, defamation, and civil liberties work. She is the founder and managing attorney of Baughman Law PC. Krista’s cases have extended fair procedure rights to students wrongly expelled for their lawful speech, eradicated unconstitutional policies that stifled citizens at city council meetings, obtained multi-million-dollar verdicts for victims of online defamation, and achieved a landmark settlement to ensure the First Amendment rights of students at UC Berkeley.
Outside the courtroom, Krista is a frequent speaker, writer, and advisor in free speech and civil liberties matters. She is honored to serve on the Executive Committees of The Federalist Society’s Free Speech section and the San Francisco Bar Association’s Litigation section, and as the Membership Chairperson of the First Amendment Lawyers Association.
Krista is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States; the California, New York, and District of Columbia bars; the United States Courts of Appeal for the Ninth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits; as well as numerous federal trial courts.
Legal Counsel, Appellate Advocacy Team, Alliance Defending Freedom
Mathew Hoffmann serves as legal counsel on the Appellate Advocacy Team at Alliance Defending Freedom, where he represents ADF clients before state and federal appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Previously, he served in ADF’s Center for Free Speech and Center for Academic Freedom. He has represented clients in free expression cases across the country and has argued before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Ninth Circuits and the Alabama Supreme Court.
Before joining ADF, Hoffmann clerked for the Honorable Robert J. Luck of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and served as an associate at a large law firm.
Hoffmann earned his J.D. from the University of Notre Dame Law School in 2018. He graduated summa cum laude and served as an editor for the Notre Dame Law Review. He is a 2016 Blackstone Fellow. Before law school, Hoffmann graduated from Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Science with honors in chemistry and a double major in government.
Hoffmann is admitted to practice before the District of Columbia and Virginia bars, as well as numerous federal appellate and trial courts.
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School; Former President, American Civil Liberties Union
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. An internationally acclaimed free speech scholar and advocate, who regularly addresses diverse audiences and provides media commentary around the world, Strossen is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series distributed on public television in 2023. Her books about free speech include: Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Oxford University Press 2023); HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018); and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights (Scribner 1995), which was republished with a new Preface in 2024 as part of the NYU Classics Series. Her many honors and awards include the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech. She serves on the Advisory Boards of several organizations that do free speech work, including: ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin.
Litigation Update: Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School District Board of Education
Krista Lee Baughman, Mathew Walter Hoffmann
In Defending Education v. Olentangy Local School District Board of Education, Defending Education brought a...
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier [SCOTUSbrief]
Nadine Strossen
When school principal Robert Reynolds censored two articles from the student newspaper at Hazelwood East...