WASHINGTON – Alliance Defending Freedom and its sister organization ADF Action announced a national legislative agenda Wednesday that advances core God-given freedoms at the federal and state levels. Along with crafting and providing legal guidance on laws that curb radical gender ideology, end institutional censorship, and help secure parental rights, ADF attorneys are poised to testify on key legislation while collaborating with state and national allies to secure concrete and lasting victories.
Over the past three decades, ADF has worked with lawmakers and policy allies to enact hundreds of bills. Many of ADF’s past legislative wins have set the groundwork for nationwide impact after surviving legal challenges, including at the U.S. Supreme Court, which last week heard oral arguments in State of West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, cases challenging laws that ADF helped draft to protect women’s sports in Idaho and West Virginia.
Other notable outcomes at the nation’s high court that stem from ADF’s efforts in the legislative arena include Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and United States of America v. Skrmetti. In Dobbs, the Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi bill that ADF and state lawmakers crafted. In doing so, the court overturned Roe v. Wade and clarified that states are allowed to protect women and children from abortion. In Skrmetti, the court’s ruling on a Tennessee bill on which ADF worked allows states to safeguard children from experimental and dangerous drugs and surgeries involved in so-called “gender transition” procedures.
“Every American should be free to peaceably live and speak the truth, but that can only happen when our laws respect human dignity, our First Amendment freedoms, and the basic biological differences between the sexes,” said ADF Senior Counsel Matt Sharp, director of the ADF Center for Public Policy. “Thanks to the many courageous lawmakers and like-minded allies we have the privilege of partnering with day in and day out, we have made significant progress in recent years. We still have a long way to go, and we are hopeful that we can continue to achieve lasting victories together this legislative season.”
For the next several years, ADF’s Legislative priorities include:
- Protecting Americans from government and institutional censorship, including threats posed by international laws like the Digital Services Act.
- Pushing back on discriminatory debanking that denies Americans access to critical financial services because of their speech or religious exercise.
- Reversing the spread of radical gender ideology, including protecting women’s private spaces and ensuring our laws reflect accurate understandings of what it means to be male and female.
- Securing parental rights from government interference, especially against the secret social transition of vulnerable children in public schools without parents’ knowledge or consent.
- Expanding educational opportunities for families to raise their children consistent with their faith.
- Defunding taxpayer-funded abortion businesses and gender identity clinics.
- Halting the illegal trafficking of abortion drugs.
- Protecting people of faith, their businesses and professions, religious institutions, and pregnancy centers from government discrimination that excludes them from participating in the marketplace or government programs.
“The government’s primary role is to protect the God-given freedoms that our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee,” said ADF Senior Counsel Zack Pruitt, director of U.S. government relations and deputy executive director of ADF Action. “As our founders understood, none of these promises is self-executing. Each requires vigilance and careful collaboration between the legislative and executive branches. ADF and ADF Action are honored to stand with key allies at the U.S. Capitol and at statehouses across our great nation to ensure that all might be free.”
In recent years, congressional and state lawmakers have invited ADF attorneys to bring their extensive legal experience to bear by testifying before committees on their cases and the impact proposed legislation would have on their clients and countless other Americans. Most recently, Sharp testified alongside former ADF client Deborah Figliola at the U.S. House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education on school districts’ secret social-transition policies that direct school officials to hide information about children from parents.
More information about the legislative work of ADF Action is available at ADFaction.org.
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.
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