Conservative lawyers with Christian agenda secure more influence

Attorneys from firm near Dallas land jobs with feds, Texas AG

AUSTIN — Lawyers who espouse a conservative Christian agenda have found plenty of opportunities in Texas, suing on behalf of Bible-quoting cheerleaders and defending a third-grader who wanted to hand out Christmas cards that read in part “Jesus is the Christ!”

But for the First Liberty law firm, the past few years have been especially rewarding: Their attorneys have moved into powerful taxpayer-funded jobs at the Texas attorney general’s office and advised President Donald Trump, who nominated a current and a former First Liberty lawyer to lifetime appointments on federal courts. Another attorney went to the Department of Health and Human Services as a senior adviser on religious freedom.

It’s a remarkable rise for a modest-sized law firm near Dallas with 46 employees, and it mirrors the climb of similar firms that have quietly shifted from trying to influence government to becoming part of it. The ascent of the firms has helped propel a wave of anti-LGBT legislation and so-called religious-freedom laws in statehouses nationwide.

“First Liberty just struck gold with a Republican president and the Texas attorney general. It’s pretty incredible and definitely

unusual,” said Daniel Bennett, a professor at John Brown University in Arkansas and author of a book on the conservative Christian legal movement.

Since 2015, First Liberty and a conservative Christian law firm, the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom, have moved prominent lawyers to top jobs in attorney general’s offices in Texas and elsewhere. Their influence is widening under the Trump administration as it attempts to deliver on his pledges to evangelicals and other religious supporters.

Paxton connection

It’s not unusual for legal nonprofits to lose key staff to attorney general’s offices. But few have expanded their footprint in recent years like First Liberty.

For Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has hired from First Liberty, two of his largest political donors are board members of the group: oilmen Tim Dunn and Kyle Stallings, who combined have given Paxton more than $767,000 in his political career through personal campaign donations and Dunn’s archconservative group called Empower Texans.

One example of the back-andforth between First Liberty and Paxton came in 2015, when he worked with the firm on legislation to curtail courtroom payouts to losing lawyers in certain cases.

“Thank you for this,” First Liberty attorney Hiram Sasser wrote to Paxton’s office, according to emails obtained under Texas open-records laws. “I know you guys worked hard before on this bill and are working hard on this amendment. We appreciate it.”

Asked about the email exchange, Paxton spokesman Marc Rylander said in an email, “When constituents inform us about upcoming legislation, we help put them in touch with key experts in the field.”

But First Liberty’s attorneys are no everyday citizens to Paxton. First Liberty founder Kelly Shackelford has known Paxton for more than 30 years, endorsed his wife for a seat in the Texas Senate and donated $1,000 to a legal-defense fund for Paxton, who is awaiting trial on felony charges of misleading investors in a tech startup before becoming attorney general. He has pleaded not guilty.

Sasser rejected the idea that his firm’s lawyers had become insiders, but he declined to discuss whether they were in contact with the Trump administration. Sasser and Shackelford also declined to comment on their work with Trump’s transition team after the 2016 election, citing confidentiality.

Doubled revenue

First Liberty, in Plano, has grown faster than any prominent Christian legal group recently, having doubled its revenue since 2013 while reporting taking in $11 million last year. Its cases include defending a Texas judge who was sued over inviting pastors to give invocations in his court. Sasser said First Liberty is different than similar firms in that they represent people of all faiths.

“We love having people who care about religious freedom and the Constitution and the First Amendment in the highest positions in government they can get in,” Shackelford said. “We’re all in favor of that. It doesn’t put us as sort of insiders.”