Jonathan Scruggs

Jonathan Scruggs serves as senior counsel and vice president of litigation strategy and the Center for Conscience Initiatives with Alliance Defending Freedom. In this role, he identifies new litigation opportunities and develops new strategies for protecting free speech and religious liberty in collaboration with the chief legal counsel and litigation team directors. As the leader of the Center for Conscience Initiatives, Scruggs oversees the litigation team defending the rights of professionals and business owners to live out their faith as well as the litigation efforts to protect equal opportunities for women in athletics.

Since joining ADF in 2006, Scruggs has worked on and prevailed in a variety of cases that protect the right of people to freely express their faith in their business, at school, and in the public square, including Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 303 Creative v. Elenis, and Brush & Nib Studio v. Phoenix, which Scruggs argued at the Arizona Supreme Court. Scruggs has argued before numerous federal appellate courts and trial courts across the country and has extensive experience litigating free-speech, religious-liberty, establishment, and equal-protection issues on behalf of students, businesses, professionals, and non-profit entities.

Scruggs earned his B.A., summa cum laude, from Vanderbilt University in 2003 and his J.D. at Harvard Law School in 2006. He is also a 2004 Blackstone Fellow.

A member of the bars of Arizona and Tennessee, Scruggs is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal district and appellate courts.