Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
David Deerson is an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation where he specializes in property rights and constitutional litigation. David has been involved in multiple high-profile cases at PLF. Most notably, he served as a member of the litigation team for Tyler v. Hennepin County, in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that home equity theft violates the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. He earned his J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School and his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Legal Fellow and Manager, Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program, The Heritage Foundation
Zack is a Legal Fellow and Manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
He previously served for several years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Florida. Prior to that, he spent two years as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, which he joined after clerking for the Hon. Emmett R. Cox on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Smith received his undergraduate, master’s, and law degrees from the University of Florida. During law school, Smith served as the Editor in Chief of the Florida Law Review and served on the executive boards of several student organizations, including the UF Chapter of the Federalist Society.
Attorney, Institute for Justice
Josh Windham is an attorney at the Institute for Justice.
Originally from Charlotte, Josh joined the Institute’s headquarters office in 2016. He received his law degree in 2016 from the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he served as president of the Federalist Society and as judicial extern to the Honorable Robert Numbers in the Eastern District of North Carolina. Josh graduated summa cum laude from North Carolina State University in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts in History. He is an avid sports fan and dessert lover.
Josh is licensed in North Carolina.
Shareholder & Co-Chair of the Workplace Policy Institute, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Alexander T. MacDonald advises employers on all aspects of the employment and labor landscape, focusing on emerging legislation and regulation. He has extensive experience advising businesses on worker classification, arbitration, the administrative and regulatory process, and the future of work. He frequently writes, publishes, and speaks on these subjects. His work has been cited by scholars and appellate courts. He is a recognized voice for the management perspective.
Alexander is a co-chair of the Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) team. With WPI, he advises employers on legislative, administrative, and regulatory developments at the state and federal level. He advocates for employers in the regulatory and administrative process. He also helps employers protect their businesses by understanding and anticipating cutting-edge legal developments.
Alexander also has extensive experience in traditional labor law. He represents management in all aspects of labor-management relations, including unfair labor practice charges, grievance arbitrations, representation elections, contract negotiations, and related litigation, including litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals.
Before joining Littler, Alexander served as the director, future of work, for a major technology company. He also worked in a national labor and employment law firm and a major public-sector general counsel’s office. He was a law clerk to the senior judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In law school, he graduated first in his class
Constitutional Scholarship Director and Senior Legal Analyst, Pacific Legal Foundation
Anastasia Boden is Director of Constitutional Scholarship at Pacific Legal Foundation, where she leads the organization’s Supreme Court commentary and directs scholarly analysis in support of the firm’s litigation. She has represented entrepreneurs and small businesses nationwide in challenges to onerous licensing regimes, anti-competitive titling restrictions, Certificate of Need (“competitor’s veto”) laws, and other forms of unnecessary red tape that block economic opportunity.
Prior to this role, Anastasia developed nearly a dozen constitutional challenges to Certificate of Need laws across the country, helping spur legislative reform in Montana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Her victories include a ruling invalidating Houston’s busking restrictions, multiple appellate decisions expanding access to the courts for civil rights plaintiffs, and the legislative repeal of Virginia’s happy-hour advertising ban.
Her writings on law and liberty have been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more, and she has appeared on Headline News, CBS News, Fox News, ReasonTV, Newsmax, and John Stossel. In 2020, she was featured on Libertarian Party presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen’s Supreme Court shortlist.
Anastasia earned her BA with dean’s honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was research assistant to Professor Randy E. Barnett—the “intellectual godfather” of the constitutional challenge to Obamacare. She is the co-creator of the podcast Dissed, about infamous Supreme Court dissents. She authors the biweekly newsletter SCOTUS Scoop and the column, “In Dissent” for SCOTUSblog.
Shareholder & Co-Chair of the Workplace Policy Institute, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Alexander T. MacDonald advises employers on all aspects of the employment and labor landscape, focusing on emerging legislation and regulation. He has extensive experience advising businesses on worker classification, arbitration, the administrative and regulatory process, and the future of work. He frequently writes, publishes, and speaks on these subjects. His work has been cited by scholars and appellate courts. He is a recognized voice for the management perspective.
Alexander is a co-chair of the Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) team. With WPI, he advises employers on legislative, administrative, and regulatory developments at the state and federal level. He advocates for employers in the regulatory and administrative process. He also helps employers protect their businesses by understanding and anticipating cutting-edge legal developments.
Alexander also has extensive experience in traditional labor law. He represents management in all aspects of labor-management relations, including unfair labor practice charges, grievance arbitrations, representation elections, contract negotiations, and related litigation, including litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals.
Before joining Littler, Alexander served as the director, future of work, for a major technology company. He also worked in a national labor and employment law firm and a major public-sector general counsel’s office. He was a law clerk to the senior judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In law school, he graduated first in his class
Senior Policy Analyst for Technology and Innovation, Americans for Prosperity
Billy Easley is Americans for Prosperity’s Senior Policy Analyst for technology and innovation. In this role, he reviews state and federal policy on digital free speech, privacy, government surveillance, autonomous vehicles and related policies. Previously he served as a legislative specialist for the United States Sentencing Commission where he authored a paper on the relationship between age and recidivism among federal prisoners. Billy started his career working for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and as Senator Rand Paul’s legal counsel for technology and criminal justice policy.
New Jersey Supreme Court: Private Investors Liable as State Actors for Tax-Foreclosure Takings Under Tyler v. Hennepin County
David Deerson
In its 2023 decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held...
New Jersey Supreme Court Rules Police Need Wiretap Order to Access Nearly Real-Time Facebook Activity
Zack Smith
New Jersey police officers sought to “compel Facebook to provide the contents of two users’...
State Constitution’s Enhanced Vehicle Search Protections Reaffirmed by New Jersey Supreme Court
Josh Windham
In March, the New Jersey Supreme Court reaffirmed that the New Jersey Constitution provides more...
Bargaining Rights Gone Wrong: How State Courts Invented a Constitutional Duty to Bargain and How It Harms Individual Workers
Alexander T. MacDonald
Constitutions often give you the right to do things. They give you the right to...
State Court Docket Watch: In re Petition for Expungement of the Criminal Records Belonging to T.O.
Anastasia P. Boden
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
Religious Schools, Collective Bargaining, & the Constitutional Legacy of NLRB v. Catholic Bishop
Alexander T. MacDonald
It would be difficult to find a corner of American labor law more anomalous than...
Topics
SCOTUS Asked If 5th Amendment Bars Compelling Defendants to Unlock Electronic Devices
Last month, a New Jersey police officer who was under investigation for leaking information about...
State Court Docket Watch: State of New Jersey v. Robert Andrews
Billy Easley
Can law enforcement compel you to unlock your smartphone to access your texts, phone logs,...
State Court Docket Watch News Clips: 6/17/2016
The New Jersey Civil Justice Institute has posted its critical take on two recent New...
State Court Docket Watch News Clips: 3/15/2016
Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice Michael Eakin has resigned after a public scandal over judicial ethics...