Senior Counsel, Miller Johnson
Brett Swearingen is a Senior Counsel in Miller Johnson’s Employment and Labor practice. A native of Southwest Michigan, Brett’s practice focuses on employment and ERISA litigation, as well as counseling clients on employment matters and dealing with the government.
Mr. Swearingen litigates on behalf of clients in complex matters of employment and ERISA law, including FLSA collective actions, multiemployer pension withdrawal liability disputes, and government investigations. In addition, Brett regularly advises clients—especially state and federal contractors and grantees—on compliance with civil rights laws, as well as religious non-profits on matters regarding employment law and religious liberty. Brett is also experienced in the statistical analysis of workplace issues, such as using “disparate impact analysis” to help employers test for (and root out) potential discriminatory effects of workplace policies and practices.
Brett previously served as Counselor to the Deputy Secretary at the United States Department of Labor. At the DOL, he advised the Deputy Secretary and Secretary on employee benefits and civil rights matters and was a key advisor on several important rulemakings within the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), including regulations concerning ESG investing, proxy voting, and fiduciary investment advice, and reforms to OFCCP’s enforcement procedures and religious exemption.
Prior to his time at DOL, Brett was a litigator in the employee benefits practice of a global law firm, where he defended clients in several multi-million dollar ERISA withdrawal liability cases against multiemployer pension funds concerning alleged evade or avoid liability, successor liability, and employer challenges to pension funds’ discount rates.
Mr. Swearingen is currently licensed in Michigan and Washington, D.C.
Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity
Linda Chavez is Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has published opinions and columns in newspapers across the country and appears regularly on cable news. Chavez is the author of the three books: Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. She has been honored by the Library of Congress as a "Living Legend" and as nominee for Secretary of Labor by President George W. Bush.
Chavez has held many appointed positions and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Among her appointed positions has been Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986 and was elected by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Chavez earned her BA from the University of Colorado.
Associate Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court (ret.)
Former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Barry Anderson is a 1976 graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota and a 1979 graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School. He was a member of the Minnesota Court of Appeals from August 1998 until his appointment to the Supreme Court. He was sworn in and joined the court on October 13, 2004, and served through to his retirement on May 10, 2024.
He previously was a partner in the Minneapolis and Hutchinson law firm of Arnold, Anderson & Dove, PLLP, and also served the City of Hutchinson as City Attorney from 1987 to 1998. He is certified by the Minnesota State Bar Association as a civil trial specialist.
Justice Anderson’s background includes substantial public service including as a board member and chair of variety of community organizations including service clubs, task forces and a local public access channel as well as a wide variety of other community activities.
Justice Anderson also served on the Minnesota Judicial Council, the managing body for the Minnesota Judicial Branch. He is also a frequent contributor to continuing legal education efforts on both appellate advocacy issues as well as general trial practice.
Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona
Clint Bolick was appointed by Governor Doug Ducey in January 2016 to serve on the Arizona Supreme Court and was retained by the voters in 2018 and 2024.
Prior to joining the Court, Justice Bolick litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts from coast to coast, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Among other positions, he served as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute and as Co-founder and Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Justice. He has litigated in support of school choice, freedom of enterprise, private property rights, freedom of speech, and federalism, and against racial classifications and government subsidies.
Justice Bolick received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, where he has been recognized as a distinguished alumnus, and his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from Drew University. He serves as a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. Among other honors, he was named one of the 90 Greatest DC Lawyers in the Last 30 Years by Legal Times in 2008, received a Bradley Prize in 2006, and was recognized as one of the nation’s three lawyers of the year by American Lawyer in 2002 for his successful defense of school vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris.
Justice Bolick is a prolific author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Among his most recent books are Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, co-authored with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and David’s Hammer: The Case for an Activist Judiciary. Bolick serves as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law and has served as a lecturer at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Justice, Texas Supreme Court
Brett Busby was appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas in 2019, confirmed unanimously by the Texas Senate, and elected to a full term in 2020. He previously practiced as an appellate litigator in Houston, served on the Fourteenth Court of Appeals and the Texas Multi-District Litigation Panel, and taught at U.T. Law School as an adjunct professor.
Brett is a seventh-generation Texan, third-generation Eagle Scout, and life-long violinist who grew up in Amarillo and Austin. After graduating with high honors from Duke University and Columbia Law School, he served as a law clerk to Justices Byron R. White (Ret.) and John Paul Stevens, U.S. Supreme Court, and to Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat, U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
In private practice, Brett presented oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court and handled dozens of appeals in that Court, the Supreme Court of Texas, and federal and state appellate courts. He is board-certified in civil appellate law, and his fellow Texas appellate lawyers elected him as Chair of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section in 2018. He has also served as Chair of the Texas Bar Committee on Pattern Jury Charges (Business, Consumer, Insurance, and Employment) and as a Director of the Texas Young Lawyers Association.
Brett serves as the Court’s liaison to the Texas Access to Justice Commission and Foundation, which help assure that Texans with limited means have access to basic civil legal services. He received the 2022 Judicial Civic Education Award from the American Lawyers Alliance for his work on the Teach Texas judicial civics program, a partnership with the Houston Bar Association and the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society that sends lawyers and judges to teach seventh graders about our court system and Texas legal history. The Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists named him Appellate Judge of the Year in 2018.
Former Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court
Justice Daniel Kelly was appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Scott Walker in 2016 to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David T. Prosser, Jr.
A native of Santa Barbara, California, Kelly grew up in Arvada, Colorado. He came to Waukesha, Wisconsin to study at Carroll College (now Carroll University), where he earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Spanish in 1986. He earned his law degree from Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia in 1991.
Before joining the Court, Kelly had 19 years' experience as a private practice attorney in Wisconsin and represented clients in cases before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Kelly spent most of his private practice career at one of the largest and oldest law firms in Wisconsin. Subsequently, he served as vice president and general counsel for a philanthropic foundation, and then practiced law at a firm he owned and founded in Waukesha.
Early in his legal career, Kelly was a law clerk and then staff attorney for the Office of Special Masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, from 1992 to 1996. He worked as a law clerk for the late Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Ralph Adam Fine from 1991 to 1992.
Kelly is a member of the board of advisors and past president of the Milwaukee Lawyer's Chapter of the Federalist Society. He serves on the Carroll University President's Advisory Council and is a former member of the Wisconsin Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Kelly is married and has five children. He lives in North Prairie, Wisconsin.
Founder, Libertas-West Project
Karen Lugo is a constitutional law consultant and national security analyst. She was Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment at Texas Public Policy Foundation from 2013 to 2015. When living in California, she was Co-Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence Center. From 2005 – 2012, she was a clinical visiting and adjunct professor at Chapman University School of Law where she co-taught the advanced Constitutional Law Clinic. Karen has co-authored and written circuit-level and Supreme Court amicus briefs on such issues as FISA Surveillance, Healthcare Reform, Arizona’s Border Security, Gay Marriage, The Ten Commandments, Eminent Domain, Christian Clubs on University Campuses, and Material Support for Terrorists.
Karen is the founder of the Libertas-West Project, a center for study Islamic integration and radicalization issues. In this capacity, she consulted with the Center for Security Policy to write a book on local over-watch of mosque construction and community engagement called: Mosques in America: A Guide to Accountable Permit Hearings and Continuing Citizen Oversight.
Karen writes and speaks for European and American groups on the importance of basing assimilation efforts on principles of Western exceptionalism. She presented a policy brief to the French Conseil d’Etat analyzing the legal implications of banning the burqa. Ms. Lugo has written one of the most comprehensive overviews of sharia law in American courts, American Family Law and Sharia-Compliant Marriages, for the Federalist Society law journal, Engage. She has written several white papers on the American Law for American Courts legislation and sharia tribunals in America.
Ms. Lugo was an appointee to the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also taught a Human Rights law course on the contrast between French and English Enlightenment theories in Strasbourg, France.
Until moving from California, Ms. Lugo was a member of the David Horowitz Freedom Center Board of Directors. She was also a regular guest on the Orange County PBS local issues debate program, Inside OC, and she is a contributor to Pajamas Media, National Review Online, City Journal, American Spectator, American Greatness, Townhall.com, American Thinker, Daily Caller, and Family Security Matters. She has been interviewed by dozens of radio hosts and has spoken for civic groups on constitutional and cultural concerns.
Former Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court
Justice Daniel Kelly was appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Scott Walker in 2016 to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David T. Prosser, Jr.
A native of Santa Barbara, California, Kelly grew up in Arvada, Colorado. He came to Waukesha, Wisconsin to study at Carroll College (now Carroll University), where he earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Spanish in 1986. He earned his law degree from Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia in 1991.
Before joining the Court, Kelly had 19 years' experience as a private practice attorney in Wisconsin and represented clients in cases before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Kelly spent most of his private practice career at one of the largest and oldest law firms in Wisconsin. Subsequently, he served as vice president and general counsel for a philanthropic foundation, and then practiced law at a firm he owned and founded in Waukesha.
Early in his legal career, Kelly was a law clerk and then staff attorney for the Office of Special Masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, from 1992 to 1996. He worked as a law clerk for the late Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Ralph Adam Fine from 1991 to 1992.
Kelly is a member of the board of advisors and past president of the Milwaukee Lawyer's Chapter of the Federalist Society. He serves on the Carroll University President's Advisory Council and is a former member of the Wisconsin Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Kelly is married and has five children. He lives in North Prairie, Wisconsin.
Explainer Episode 91 - OFCCP's Proposed Regulatory Changes
Brett Swearingen, Linda L. Chavez
On July 1st, 2025, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) released three proposed...
Judicial Elections and Free Speech
Barry Anderson, Clint Bolick, Brett Busby, Daniel Kelly
Judicial selection in the states is not uniform, but most states have some form of...
2023 Judge Rudolph T. Randa Lecture and Award
Milwaukee Lawyers Chapter
Milwaukee, WIGiving Credit for Shaping the Constitution
Karen J. Lugo
A review of: The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds That Shaped America’s Supreme Law,...
Topics
Two Members of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Criticize Racially Themed Housing on College Campuses
Should colleges and universities be in the business of operating racially separate “theme housing?” Two...