First Liberty Institute: Origins, Supreme Court Cases, and Criticism

The First Liberty Institute is a nonprofit law firm based in Plano, Texas, that provides free legal representation in religious liberty disputes across all 50 states. Founded in 1997 by attorney Kelly Shackelford, it is one of the largest firms in the country working exclusively on religious freedom cases, representing individuals, churches, schools, and military service members. As of 2026, the organization reports a win rate above 90 percent in federal and state courts and claims nine victories at the U.S. Supreme Court since 2018.¹

How the Organization Started

Shackelford, a Baylor Law School graduate, launched the firm in 1997 as Liberty Legal Institute, a division of the Free Market Foundation, a Texas public policy group affiliated with Focus on the Family. Its early work was confined to Texas. It rebranded as Liberty Institute in 2009, expanded into a nationwide operation by 2012, and adopted its current name in February 2016.²

Leadership and Funding

Shackelford still runs the organization as president, CEO, and chief counsel. He has argued at the Supreme Court, testified before Congress, and sits on the Board of Trustees of the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society. In 2025, President Donald Trump appointed him to the White House Religious Liberty Commission, chaired by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick; First Liberty is the only nonprofit religious liberty legal organization represented on that panel.³⁴

Jeff Mateer serves as executive vice president, chief operating officer, and chief legal officer. He led the legal team for six years, then served as First Assistant Attorney General of Texas under Ken Paxton from 2016 to 2020, before returning in late 2020.⁵ The staff is organized into practice groups covering religious institutions, the military, schools, the marketplace, and the public arena.⁶ House Speaker Mike Johnson is a former First Liberty attorney who spent nearly two decades litigating religious liberty and free speech cases before his 2016 election to Congress.⁷

First Liberty is a 501(c)(3) corporation funded almost entirely by private donations, which supply more than 90 percent of annual revenue. For the fiscal year ending June 2025, it reported roughly $29.3 million in revenue, $26.4 million in expenses, and about $21.8 million in net assets.⁸ The 2024 annual report cited a 12 percent year-over-year rise in total giving and more than 6,300 new donors.⁹

Supreme Court Record

The organization’s public reputation is built on its Supreme Court work. Three cases stand out.

Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022)

Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach in Bremerton, Washington, was fired after kneeling for a brief, personal prayer at midfield after games. First Liberty, working with Kirkland & Ellis and advocate Paul Clement, represented Kennedy through nearly seven years of litigation. On June 27, 2022, the Court ruled 6-3 in Kennedy’s favor, holding that the district violated the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses by punishing a coach for quiet, personal religious observance, and that the government cannot suppress religious expression while permitting comparable secular speech. Kennedy returned to the field to pray after a game on September 1, 2023.¹⁰¹¹

Groff v. DeJoy (2023)

Gerald Groff, an Evangelical Christian postal carrier, lost his job after refusing to work Sundays. For decades, lower courts had read the 1977 Trans World Airlines v. Hardison decision to mean that any cost above a trivial burden justified denying a religious accommodation under Title VII. On June 29, 2023, a unanimous Court rejected that reading. Justice Alito wrote that an employer must show an accommodation would impose “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business,” and that coworker hostility toward religion cannot count as a legitimate cost.¹² Aaron Streett of Baker Botts argued the case for Groff. After remand, the parties settled in May 2025.¹³

American Legion v. American Humanist Association (2019)

First Liberty defended the Bladensburg Peace Cross, a 40-foot cross-shaped World War I memorial erected in 1925 on public land in Maryland to honor 49 fallen soldiers. On June 20, 2019, the Court ruled 7-2 to uphold the monument, moving away from the “Lemon test” and toward a standard grounded in history and tradition. The ruling established that longstanding public religious displays are presumptively constitutional.¹⁴¹⁵

Other Rulings

The firm has been involved, as counsel or amicus, in several other Supreme Court decisions:

Carson v. Makin (2022): 6-3 ruling that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a tuition assistance program available to secular private schools.¹⁶
Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin (2024): unanimous ruling protecting tax exemptions for religious nonprofits.¹⁷
Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025): a 6-3 decision holding that parents may opt their children out of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum materials that conflict with their religious beliefs.¹⁸
Gabriel Olivier (2026): a unanimous 9-0 ruling allowing an evangelist to challenge a Brandon, Mississippi ordinance that prevented him from sharing his faith in a city park.¹⁶
Chiles v. Salazar (2026): on March 31, 2026, the Court ruled 8-1 that a Colorado law limiting counselors to a gender-affirming perspective in talk therapy with minors engaged in viewpoint discrimination, and remanded for the state to show a compelling interest and narrow tailoring. First Liberty filed as amicus.¹⁹
COVID-19 vaccine mandate: the Court blocked the Biden administration’s mandate for employers with more than 100 employees, in consolidated cases involving First Liberty clients Daystar Television Network, Answers in Genesis, and the American Family Association.¹⁶
Mary Anne Sause: a unanimous summary reversal upholding a woman’s right to pray in her own home after police ordered her to stop.¹⁶

Military and School Cases

Beyond the Supreme Court, First Liberty’s Military Affairs practice group handled Navy SEALs 1-26 v. Biden, a class action for special warfare personnel and other service members denied religious accommodations from the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. A federal district court in Fort Worth issued a preliminary injunction in January 2022, which the Fifth Circuit upheld after finding that the Navy had not granted a single religious vaccine exemption in seven years.²⁰ The July 2024 settlement required the Navy to remove adverse records related to vaccine refusal, bar promotion boards from considering such refusals, provide additional training on religious accommodation requests, and pay $1.5 million in attorneys’ fees.²¹

On the education side, First Liberty represents students and school staff in disputes over Bible reading, classroom assignments, and graduation speeches with religious content.²² It represented Cambridge Christian School in a decade-long fight with the Florida High School Athletic Association over a stadium loudspeaker prayer before a 2015 state championship football game. The Eleventh Circuit classified the prayer as “government speech,” and the Supreme Court declined review in late 2025. The litigation did prompt the Florida Legislature to pass a statute giving participating schools two minutes of opening remarks, including prayer, before high school sporting events.²³

Criticism and Political Ties

First Liberty draws steady opposition from church-state separation advocates. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has called the firm a “Christian Nationalist legal outfit” that seeks “supremacy for its version of fundamentalist Christianity,” and alleged that the organization “engineers” cases for the Supreme Court and uses “Christian persecution” narratives to drive fundraising. The group points to a revenue rise from about $8 million annually before 2015 to nearly $15 million by 2020. During the Kennedy litigation, a federal appeals court accused First Liberty of presenting a “deceitful narrative” about the facts of the case. Critics have also noted that Shackelford served on the Council for National Policy Action board alongside Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.²⁴

Shackelford’s seat on the Trump Religious Liberty Commission has heightened the political scrutiny. At an April 2026 commission meeting, he advocated requiring governments to pay all legal fees when they lose a religious liberty case, calling it “a huge shifting of power in favor of citizens.” The commission has been developing recommendations to expand religious exemptions in labor, education, and healthcare, and to widen faith-based organizations’ access to public funding. A progressive interreligious coalition has sued the commission, alleging it violates federal requirements for diverse membership.²⁵

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The Federalist Society. Kelly Shackelford
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First Amendment Encyclopedia – Middle Tennessee State University. First Liberty Institute
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The White House. President Trump Announces Religious Liberty Commission Members
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First Liberty Institute. Kelly Shackelford
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First Liberty Institute. Jeff Mateer
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First Liberty Institute. Team
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First Liberty Institute. Newly Elected House Speaker Mike Johnson Is a Former First Liberty Attorney
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ProPublica. First Liberty Institute – Nonprofit Explorer
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First Liberty Institute. 2024 Annual Report
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First Liberty Institute. Coach Kennedy
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First Liberty Institute. Coach Joe Kennedy
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Supreme Court of the United States. Groff v. DeJoy, No. 22-174
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First Liberty Institute. Gerald Groff
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First Liberty Institute. Bladensburg Peace Cross
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First Liberty Institute. Remembering the Bladensburg Supreme Court Victory
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First Liberty Institute. Supreme Court Cases
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First Liberty Institute. The Supreme Court’s Next Term Will Be Monumental for Religious Freedom
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Supreme Court of the United States. Mahmoud v. Taylor, No. 24-297
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First Liberty Institute. U.S. Supreme Court Protects Religious Counseling Rights
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First Liberty Institute. Fifth Circuit Upholds Injunction for Navy SEALs
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First Liberty Institute. Navy SEALs Personnel Denied Religious Accommodation Reach Settlement With Navy
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First Liberty Institute. Religious Liberty Protection Kit for Students
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First Liberty Institute. U.S. Supreme Court Declines Review of Cambridge Christian School
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Americans United for Separation of Church and State. First Liberty
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Chicago Tribune. Trump Church and State