President, Harned Strategies LLC
Karen Harned is President at Harned Strategies LLC. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, a post she held from 2002-2022. Prior to joining the Legal Center, Ms. Harned was an attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm specializing in food and drug law, where she represented several small and large businesses and their respective trade associations before Congress and federal agencies. She also served as Assistant Press Secretary to U.S. Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma from August of 1989 to March of 1993. Ms. Harned received her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma in 1989 and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center in 1995. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
As Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, Ms. Harned commented regularly on small business cases before federal and state courts, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, as well as National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and radio outlets across the country. Her opinion editorials and articles regarding healthcare, lawsuit abuse, regulation, and other issues important to small business have been published in newspapers and other publications nationwide.
Ms. Harned has testified before Congress on the small business impact of regulation and the civil justice system. Additionally, she has conducted numerous webinars and legal compliance seminars for small business owners across the country on issues relating to employment law, including unionization and immigration.
Aeron Van Scoyk is a Law Clerk with the NFIB Small Business Legal Center and a student at U.C. Davis School of Law.
VP and Senior Counsel, Becket Fund
Eric Baxter joined The Becket Fund as Senior Counsel in 2011. Since then he has represented religious organizations and individuals in a wide array of religious liberty disputes at both the trial and appellate level. Recent victories including a Ninth Circuit ruling upholding the “Big Mountain Jesus” statue that has stood on Forest Service land near Kalispell, Montana, for more than sixty years, and a rare Pentagon decision allowing a Sikh soldier to maintain his full beard and turban while serving in the Army. Mr. Baxter has extensive experience fighting efforts under state Blaine amendments to exclude religious organizations and individuals from participating on equal terms in the public square. He also regularly advises religious institutions of higher education in defending their religious missions against government encroachment.
Mr. Baxter has frequently appeared in the national media to discuss religious liberty issues, including appearances on Fox News (Kelly File, Fox & Friends), WSJ Live, CBS New York, Christian Broadcasting Network, Newsmax TV, and Al Jazeera. He has also written op-eds and been quoted in many major newspapers and other print media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Fox News, New York Post, Washington Times, and New Boston Post.
Before joining the Becket Fund, Mr. Baxter was a partner at Arent Fox LLP in Washington, DC, where he maintained a commercial complex litigation practice representing clients primarily in employment, intellectual property, and biotechnology disputes. He also served for many years as outside counsel to a DC church and its affiliated school. In 2007, he was awarded the Albert E. Arent Pro Bono Award for his work representing several parents adopting a total of seven children from foster care.
From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Baxter clerked for the Honorable Robert H. Cleland in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit). Mr. Baxter received a B.A. in Russian Literature and Linguistics from Brigham Young University and graduated magna cum laude from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU, where he served as Executive Editor of the Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Eric speaks Russian and some Spanish. He and his wife have seven children and an amateur family bluegrass band.
Mr. Baxter has been featured on the Kelly File, Al Jazeera, WSJ Video, and NewsmaxTV.
Vice President, Practice Groups, The Federalist Society
Assistant Attorney General & Senior Trial Counsel to the Criminal Bureau, Massachusetts Attorney General
Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Rachel N. Morrison is an attorney and Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she directs EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project. Her legal and policy work focuses on religious liberty, health care rights of conscience, the right to life, nondiscrimination, and civil rights.
Before joining EPPC, Ms. Morrison served as an Attorney Advisor and Special Assistant to General Counsel Sharon Fast Gustafson at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where she focused on religious discrimination issues and was a member of the General Counsel’s Religious Discrimination Work Group. Before that, she served as Litigation Counsel for Americans United for Life and as a Constitutional Law Fellow at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, defending the right to life and religious freedom for all. She also clerked on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Ms. Morrison’s legal analysis has been published in the Seton Hall Law Review, the Pepperdine Law Review, and the Ave Maria Law Review, as well as various other print media outlets.
Ms. Morrison earned her J.D., magna cum laude, from the Pepperdine University School of Law, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor for the Pepperdine Law Review and the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She received her B.A. in Mathematics and Speech Communication, summa cum laude, from Whitworth University (Spokane, WA). She is a member of the District of Columbia and the Washington State bars.
Ms. Morrison lives with her husband and daughter in Virginia.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge O’Scannlain was appointed United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit by President Reagan on September 26, 1986. He received a J.D. degree in 1963 from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in 1957 from St. John’s University. He also earned the LL.M. (Judicial Process) degree at University of Virginia Law School in 1992. He was awarded the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by the University of Notre Dame in 2002, the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by Lewis & Clark College in 2003 and the LL.D. (honoris causa) degree by the University of Portland in 2011.
As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Judge O’Scannlain has participated in over 6,000 federal cases and has written hundreds of published opinions on a broad range of subjects including constitutional law, international law, securities law, administrative law, and criminal law. He hears appeals in San Francisco (court headquarters), as well as in Los Angeles (Pasadena), Portland, Seattle, Anchorage and Honolulu. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Judge O'Scannlain to the Federal Judicial Center's Advisory Committee on Appellate Judge Education. In 2009, Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge O’Scannlain to the International Judicial Relations Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference and subsequently appointed him Chairman in 2010.
President George W. Bush appointed Judge O’Scannlain to the Board of Trustees of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation in 2004. Pope Benedict XVI conferred the Order of Saint Gregory the Great on Judge and Mrs. O’Scannlain in 2007.
Judge O’Scannlain’s professional interests also include judicial administration and reform, and continuing legal education. Judge O’Scannlain is former Chair of the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association and has previously chaired the ABA’s Appellate Judges Conference, its Committee on Appellate Practice, and its 9th Appellate Practice Institute. He has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on several occasions, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, and the Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals on the subject of court reorganization. In addition to serving as a faculty member at numerous federal appellate practice seminars for judges and attorneys, including New York University Law School’s Institute for Judicial Administration, Judge O’Scannlain is an Adjunct Professor at Lewis & Clark Law School where he teaches a seminar on the Supreme Court. He has served as a Moot Court Judge at distinguished law schools across the United States including Harvard, Yale Stanford, Boalt Hall (Berkeley Law), Virginia, Cornell, Notre Dame, Fordham, Alabama, University of Southern California, King Hall (U.C. Davis) and Loyola Marymount University and in China at Xiamen and Renmin Universities.
Between graduation from Harvard and investiture as a federal judge, Judge O’Scannlain was primarily engaged in private law practice. Between 1969 and 1974, he was consecutively the Deputy Attorney General of Oregon, the Public Utility Commissioner of Oregon, and Director of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. He retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in 1978 as a Major after 23 years Reserve and National Guard service, including four years as an enlisted man.
A first generation Irish-American son of immigrant parents from Sligo and Derry, Judge O’Scannlain is married to the former Maura Nolan and has eight children: Sean, Jane, Brendan, Kevin, Megan, Christopher, Anne, and Kate, and nineteen grandchildren. His chambers are in the Pioneer Courthouse in Portland, Oregon.
VP and Senior Counsel, Becket Fund
Eric Baxter joined The Becket Fund as Senior Counsel in 2011. Since then he has represented religious organizations and individuals in a wide array of religious liberty disputes at both the trial and appellate level. Recent victories including a Ninth Circuit ruling upholding the “Big Mountain Jesus” statue that has stood on Forest Service land near Kalispell, Montana, for more than sixty years, and a rare Pentagon decision allowing a Sikh soldier to maintain his full beard and turban while serving in the Army. Mr. Baxter has extensive experience fighting efforts under state Blaine amendments to exclude religious organizations and individuals from participating on equal terms in the public square. He also regularly advises religious institutions of higher education in defending their religious missions against government encroachment.
Mr. Baxter has frequently appeared in the national media to discuss religious liberty issues, including appearances on Fox News (Kelly File, Fox & Friends), WSJ Live, CBS New York, Christian Broadcasting Network, Newsmax TV, and Al Jazeera. He has also written op-eds and been quoted in many major newspapers and other print media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Fox News, New York Post, Washington Times, and New Boston Post.
Before joining the Becket Fund, Mr. Baxter was a partner at Arent Fox LLP in Washington, DC, where he maintained a commercial complex litigation practice representing clients primarily in employment, intellectual property, and biotechnology disputes. He also served for many years as outside counsel to a DC church and its affiliated school. In 2007, he was awarded the Albert E. Arent Pro Bono Award for his work representing several parents adopting a total of seven children from foster care.
From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Baxter clerked for the Honorable Robert H. Cleland in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit). Mr. Baxter received a B.A. in Russian Literature and Linguistics from Brigham Young University and graduated magna cum laude from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU, where he served as Executive Editor of the Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Eric speaks Russian and some Spanish. He and his wife have seven children and an amateur family bluegrass band.
Mr. Baxter has been featured on the Kelly File, Al Jazeera, WSJ Video, and NewsmaxTV.
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice, was born in Denver, Colorado, August 29, 1967. He and his wife Louise have two daughters. He received a B.A. from Columbia University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University. He served as a law clerk to Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and as a law clerk to Justice Byron White and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States. From 1995–2005, he was in private practice, and from 2005–2006 he was Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2006. He served on the Standing Committee on Rules for Practice and Procedure of the U.S. Judicial Conference, and as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Rules of Appellate Procedure. He taught at the University of Colorado Law School. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on April 10, 2017.
Associate, Jones Day
David Feder focuses on appeals and motions practice. He has drafted numerous briefs and motions in federal and state courts on behalf of a wide variety of clients ranging from professional sports teams to telecommunication, entertainment, and transportation companies. He also has argued multiple cases, including in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (on behalf of a religious refugee from China) and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (on behalf of a severely injured prison inmate).
David is a coauthor of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch's New York Times best seller, A Republic, If You Can Keep It. His scholarly works have been cited in the Supreme Court (Sveen v. Melin, 584 U.S. ___ (2018)), Harvard Law Review (130 Harv. L. Rev. 1496 (2017)), Stanford Law Review Online (69 Stan. L. Rev. Online 171 & 185 (2017)), and in other publications.
David received his law degree from Harvard in 2014, winning the Fay Diploma for graduating first in his class as well as the Project on the Foundations of Private Law Paper and the Irving Oberman Family Law Award for best papers in their respective fields. David received his undergraduate degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2011, where he received a Department Community Service Award, a Certificate of Recognition for Contributions to the Image of the Major, an Exceptional Academic Achievement Award, and was named an Outstanding Student in Organizational Communication.
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice, was born in Denver, Colorado, August 29, 1967. He and his wife Louise have two daughters. He received a B.A. from Columbia University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University. He served as a law clerk to Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and as a law clerk to Justice Byron White and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States. From 1995–2005, he was in private practice, and from 2005–2006 he was Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2006. He served on the Standing Committee on Rules for Practice and Procedure of the U.S. Judicial Conference, and as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Rules of Appellate Procedure. He taught at the University of Colorado Law School. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on April 10, 2017.
Co-Chairman, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Leonard is Co-Chairman and former Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, joining the organization over 25 years ago. Since that time he has been instrumental in helping the organization top 70,000, focusing on the growth of lawyers membership, operations and activities advancing limited, constitutional government. In addition to his work at the Society, Leonard has advised President Trump on judicial selection, assisted with the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh Supreme Court selection and confirmation process, and served as a member of the transition team. He also organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito U.S. Supreme Court confirmations. Leonard was appointed by President George W. Bush to three terms to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom as chairman. He was also a U.S. Delegate to the UN Council and UN Commission on Human Rights during the Bush Administration. Leonard was the recipient of the 2009 Bradley Prize, along with the other founders and directors of the Federalist Society, for his work in advancing freedom and the rule of law. He is the coeditor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, as well as the author of opinion editorials in the New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Leonard holds degrees from Cornell University and Cornell Law School. He presently resides in Northern Virginia, where he and his wife Sally have raised their seven children.
New York Times Bestselling Author
Janie Nitze has written two New York Times bestsellers with Justice Gorsuch: Over Ruled and A Republic If You Can Keep It. She has also worked as a Senate-confirmed board member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, and a law clerk for Justices Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor. Janie received her B.A. in physics and her M.A. in statistics from Harvard University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She’s the mother of three young children and a co-founder of a preschool.
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