Mason Laney

Mason Laney serves as legal counsel for the Center for Conscience Initiatives at Alliance Defending Freedom. He defends the rights of business professionals, parents, female athletes and others across the country to freely practice their faith, without fear of government coercion.

Prior to joining ADF, Laney interned with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where he worked on some of the first cases arising out of the FACE Act’s place-of-worship protections and supported challenges to state affirmative action plans that discriminated on the basis of race. He also served as a summer associate at Latham & Watkins LLP in Washington, D.C., and interned twice for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee—first for Senator Mike Lee, where he researched judicial nominees and advised the Senator directly, and later for Senator Eric Schmitt, where he helped prepare the Senator for the confirmation hearings of the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI. As an undergraduate, he interned with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

Laney earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2026, where he served as symposium editor-in-chief and managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, co-president of Harvard Law Students for Life and student liaison to the Federalist Society’s Religious Liberty Executive Committee. Harvard’s Federalist Society chapter named him its best board member for 2024–2025.

Laney graduated summa cum laude from Wheaton College with a B.A. in economics and political science. His admission to the Virginia state bar is pending.