Meet the Arizona-based Christian law firm working to ban abortion nationwide

The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom is arguably one of the most significant legal and political powerhouses working in the United States.

The group, which was behind the push to overturn Roe v. Wade, worked to defend and enact Arizona’s 1864 territorial-era abortion ban and expanded efforts to limit access to contraceptives nationwide.

Yet, it has proven successful at maintaining a relatively under-the-radar status to average Americans.

The conservative Christian group, founded in 1994 in Scottsdale, has 15 Supreme Court victories, a win rate of about 80%, and more than 4,500 network attorneys.

“We are the world’s largest legal ministry committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, parental rights and marriage in the family,” ADF Senior Counsel Jake Warner told the Arizona Daily Star.

Besides working to outlaw abortion, the group also opposes LGBT+ rights (including arguing cases that businesses can refuse to serve gay customers) and supports religious activity in public schools.

The ADF is mentioned heavily in a new book written by New York Times reporters Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer. Based on interviews with sources, including those within the ADF, they posture that the group will not rest until abortion is banned in all 50 states.

The group, which used to employ now-House Speaker Mike Johnson, has sought to become the “mainstream Christian rival” to the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote Dias and Lerer in “The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America.”

In order to push their case to the Supreme Court, the ADF drafted conservative legislation essentially banning abortion access in three conservative states: Arkansas, Mississippi and Utah. The case that ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court and overturned Roe v. Wade, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, originated from the ADF-backed law and legal strategy in Mississippi.

“A lot of these conservative Christian groups have been playing the long game for decades,” said Karen Seat, a University of Arizona professor whose research currently focuses on U.S. religious history, American evangelicalism and gender studies.

Seat told the Star that part of the success of the ADF, and groups like it, is because “they have gotten their messaging down to a fine tune.” The ADF often recruits from Christian law schools like Regent University in Virginia. Conservative churches, as well, are another good way to network and practice messaging.

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That messaging, Seat said, is the “whole worldview around gender, sexuality and family reproduction.”

One of those cases surrounding family reproduction was the case to uphold Arizona’s 1864 territorial-era law banning abortion, which was upheld by the state Supreme Court before it was repealed by the state Legislature and Gov. Katie Hobbs.

ADF Senior Counsel Warner was one of the lawyers who argued before the court on that case.

“It’s been a joy to do that,” Warner told the Star about working and litigating in Arizona and on that specific case. “ADF opened its first office here in Arizona because our founder lived here, and the office has grown over time. It’s a joy for us to be rooted here in our community.”

Despite the ADF’s commitment to working in Arizona, not a lot of locals have heard of the group. UA Professor Seat said the groups aren’t hiding; instead, people just haven’t been paying attention, she said.

“I think they’ve been very active and pretty public about what they’re doing for a very long time,” she said. “I think what happened is just most Americans outside of those circles just didn’t take them seriously or didn’t think they would actually be successful in achieving what they’ve achieved.”

As for what’s next, ADF Senior Counsel Warner couldn’t speak to future litigation, the firm’s media relations manager Bernadette Tasy told the Star in an email before the interview. She did say, however, that the group was involved with “analyzing the language and taking opportunities to educate the public” about the citizens’ initiative on Arizona’s November ballot to enshrine abortion rights into the state Constitution.

Seat said that, in the future, she believes conservative Christian groups like the ADF will push policies and litigation about the issue of transgender children in sports and spaces like school bathrooms, as well as general concerns about religious freedom. She expects the group, and others like it, to be very active through the 2024 general election season in Arizona.

“It’s always abortion, it’s always anti-LGBT,” she said. For such groups, “there is also this sense, though, that religious freedom is under assault in the country.”