Featured Cases

Mesa Public Schools (MPS) policy (the “Trans Policy”) assists and encourages students to “transition” their gender while keeping this information hidden from parents. After this policy of parental non-notification caused controversy in the local community, the school district rewrote its policy to obfuscate what was going on. In practice, however, the non-notification policy appears to continue in force, and MPS employees do not notify parents about a student’s sexual identity issues unless the student consents to notification. Furthermore, MPS still encourages confused students to transition their gender, and at most, parents only get notified after their child has already started to socially transition at school.

The Trans Policy violates Arizona’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, which establishes that “[t]he liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health of their children is a fundamental right,” A.R.S. § 1-601(A), that is “exclusively reserved to a parent of a minor child without obstruction or interference from this state, any political subdivision of this state, any other governmental entity or any other institution.” A.R.S. § 1-602(A). In fact, the Parents’ Bill of Rights specifically prohibits what MPS is doing—all public employees, including school employees, are prohibited from “encourage[ing] or coerc[ing]” minors “to withhold information from the child’s parent.” A.R.S. § 1-602(C). Moreover, Arizona law absolutely forbids school employees from ever talking to children about any matters related to human sexuality without advance parental notification and consent.

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) denied Matthew Foldi and Bethany Mandel access to a June 27, 2023, school board meeting following community uproar against LGBT-themed books required in MCPS curriculum and the district’s removal of parent’s ability to “opt-out” of woke curriculum. MCPS only allowed invited attendees and pre-selected speakers to physically attend the open-session school board meeting on this topic. MCPS limited access to the meeting to prevent an overwhelming number of people protesting MCPS’ policies from assembling in the meeting room, to avoid media coverage, and to mitigate the political impact of the district’s policy denying parents their opt-out rights. But in doing so, the rights of our clients were violated.

The Department of Homeland Security formed the “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group” in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). FACA requires that an advisory committee’s membership must be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee.” This group is a partisan, hand-selected committee that lacks diversity in viewpoints and any credibility to speak on national security matters. Not one member of this group served in the Trump Administration or has a record of advancing an America First viewpoint on national security. Members of the group are all political allies of the Biden Administration, have overwhelmingly donated to President Biden, and are Democrats.

AFL filed a FOIA request with the Department of Justice seeking records related to the Loudoun County Grand Jury investigation of a sexual assault at a Loudoun County School, and related to the arrest of the victim’s father who was angry with the school for failing to protect his daughter. The Department of Justice then estimated that the request would take more than nine months to process, which is in excess of the time provided by the FOIA.

AFL filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security for Hunter Biden records generated between February 21, 2022, and the present. These requests followed public admissions that Hunter Biden’s laptop was genuine and that the claims to the contrary in 2020 were false. To date, however, not a single record has been produced.

AFL filed nine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records relating to GEC grant awards and funding opportunities, which functionally outsource Biden’s propaganda and censorship program to leftist nonprofits. AFL’s requests related to grants awarded to The Atlantic Council, National Endowment for Democracy,  Moonshot CVE, and Digital Public Square, as well as funding opportunities for a “New Counter-Disinformation Game” and NATO. The Department of State, however, has refused to turn over the requested records.

AFL obtained emails from litigation against the National Archives and Records Administration confirming that Hunter Biden directly represented Burisma in its dealings with the Obama White House, and particularly to the Office of the Vice President. Hunter was both a board member of Burisma, which qualifies him as a “foreign principal” under 22 U.S.C. § 611(b). Hunter was also an attorney at the law firm representing Burisma. An “agent of a foreign principal” under FARA includes “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal.”

Hunter Biden was thus apparently Burisma’s agent and subject to registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”). Following this damning revelation, AFL filed a formal complaint with the DOJ against Hunter Biden for failing to register under FARA.

On June 20, 2023, Outdoor Research employee Johnathan Talbot was leaving a focus group in Bozeman, Montana, when he saw Manoah Ainuu, a North Face-sponsored ice climber who has used his platform to decry what he sees as systemic racism. Talbot introduced himself to Ainuu and mentioned that he had been on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at his previous job. Ainuu then began accusing Talbot of being a racist and having white privilege. At 3:00 a.m. the next morning, Ainuu took to Instagram and told his 15K followers that Talbot had said racist things and tried to fight him. Ainuu encouraged his followers to get Talbot fired from his job. The most egregious of these posts was re-shared by a North Face executive who managed sponsored athletes. Ainuu continued his crusade against Talbot for several days, and it ultimately resulted in Talbot being fired from his job at Outdoor Research.

Following widespread errors and technical problems during the 2022 general election, AFL submitted a public records request to the Arizona Department of State requesting all emails from November 8 to 16 sent to and from Katie Hobbs (Secretary of State), Allie Bones (Assistant Secretary of State), C. Murphy Hebert (Director of Communications), and Sophia Solid (Deputy Communications Director). Then-Secretary Hobbs sat on the request and never responded before she assumed the governorship. On February 1, 2023, the Department of State under Secretary Adrian Fontes denied the request, claiming that our request for emails from four officials during a span of 9 days was “an unreasonable administrative burden.”

Kroger’s Board of Directors adopted The Kroger Co. Policy on Business Ethics, which commits Kroger “to a policy of equal opportunity for all associates without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, or gender ideology.” NCPPR sent a proposal to Kroger requesting, as shareholders, that Kroger issue a public report detailing the potential risks associated with omitting “viewpoint” and “ideology” from its written equal employment opportunity (EEO) policy.

Kroger submitted a letter to the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance arguing that the proposal “deals with matters relating to the Company’s ordinary business operations” because it pertains only to “Kroger’s management of its workforce and policies concerning employees.” Kroger and the SEC effectively turned a blind eye and blocked the proposal, ignoring the fact that conservatives often face employment discrimination due to political ideology while acknowledging other factors like “gender.”

A girl, purporting to be a transgender man, shot and killed three children and three adults at Covenant, a private Christian school in Nashville. The Nashville Police Department obtained documents from executing search warrants of her vehicle and house. She left behind what the police called a “manifesto.” AFL’s client, Star News Network, a network of news agencies, filed a public records request asking for the manifesto. Metro Nashville refused to provide the manifesto, citing an ongoing criminal investigation. At the same time, Metro has identified no additional potential suspects, and the perpetrator of the crime was killed at the school by heroes of the Metro Nashville Police Department.

Arizona’s “Save Women’s Sports Act” prohibits biological males from playing on girls’ sports teams at public schools. On April 17, 2023, two biological male students seeking to overturn the law sued Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, the two students’ local schools, and the Arizona Interscholastic Association. Arizona Senate President Warren Peterson and Speaker of the Arizona House Ben Toma filed a motion to intervene in the case to defend the Act. The court later granted their motion.

One plaintiff in the case is a prepubescent eleven-year-old, and the other is a fifteen-year-old taking puberty blockers and female hormones. The lawsuit argues that because these two plaintiffs have not gone through puberty, they would not have any athletic advantage from being biological males. On July 20, 2023, the district court issued a preliminary injunction ordering that the two plaintiffs in the case–both biological males–should be allowed to play on their schools’ girls’ sports teams.

Target Corporation and its Board of Directors have misled shareholders and customers with misleading representations on the company’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) mandates. Target assured shareholders that it was monitoring for political and social issues and risks that could arise as a result of the ESG and DEI policies. However, management only cared when leftist “stakeholders” cared about these business decisions. Following Target’s May 2023 embrace of the radical transgender agenda, Target shares have seen more than a $12 billion collapse in value, the largest stock price decline in over 20 years.

Washington state’s Senate Bill 5599 is a new law that allows shelters to take in children struggling with gender dysphoria and potentially provide them with life-altering “care” (potentially including sterilization) without parental consent or knowledge. The recently signed legislation creates a dangerous incentive for minors who disagree with their parents on “gender-affirming care” to run away to a shelter or host home. The new law takes away a requirement of notice to parents.

Progressive Insurance engages in racial discrimination by offering $25,000 grants to ten “black-owned small businesses to use toward the purchase of a commerical vehicle.” Our client, a white male who owns a trucking company, received an email from Progressive, his insurance company, about a grant he otherwise would have qualified for if not for the color of his skin.

The plaintiff, James Harker, is an older white male. He has worked on film sets for more than 20 years doing electrical work. He has worked as a gaffer, the chief electrician on set, as well as a best boy electrician. The Defendants, Meta, BBDO, AICP, and Something Ideal, discriminated against him in hiring and job placement, despite his experience; all because he is the wrong race. The Defendants put into practice a program called “DoubletheLine,” which hired candidates based on whether they were “BIPOC,” otherwise known as “Black, Indigenous, or People of Color.” Because Mr. Harker is white, he was not eligible to participate in the DTL Program.

Defendants launched their colossal mass-surveillance and censorship program, in close cooperation with government officials, probably the largest mass-surveillance and mass-censorship program in American history—the so-called “Election Integrity Partnership” and “Virality Project.”  Four entities—Stanford Internet Observatory, University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Graphika, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Lab—collaborate closely with federal, state, and local government officials to monitor and censor disfavored viewpoints on social media. This government-private censorship consortium tramples on the First Amendment rights, privacy interests, and business expectations of millions of Americans.

For decades, the Palestinian Authority – lavishly funded by the U.S. and other Western governments – has paid terrorists to indiscriminately murder and maim people living in or visiting Israel. Among other things, the PA’s “Pay to Slay” program rewards terrorists and their families with cash bounties based on the number and severity of the civilian casualties they inflict.

Responding to a Palestinian terrorist’s 2016 brutal murder of U.S. Army Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran and West Point graduate Taylor Force, and the subsequent Palestinian Authority’s payment of a bounty to the terrorist’s family, Congress passed and President Trump signed the Taylor Force Act. The Act prohibits U.S. economic assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority unless and until the Secretary of State certifies the PA has terminated Pay to Slay. Under President Trump, the government obeyed the law. However, under President Biden, the government has lawlessly transferred hundreds of millions U.S. taxpayer dollars to directly benefit the Palestinian Authority. President Biden and Secretary Blinken are violating the law and financing the PA’s violent extremism and virulent, eliminationist antisemitism.

The Department of Health and Human Services has for decades provided “family planning services” to adolescents under a provision known as Title X. Our client has sought to raise his children in accordance with his Christian faith, and his view as a parent is that his children should not be able to make use of the contraceptive services provided by the Federal Government without his consent. Texas passed a law that gives parents the right to be informed and to grant or withhold consent for their children to participate in programs like Title X. The Biden Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services disregarded Texas’s law and continued to provide these services without informing the parents of children who sought to make use of the program.

The Cedar Grove School District in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, began gathering information from young children about gender identity, same-sex unions, religious affiliation, and race/ethnicity. In 2021, the parents filed complaints with the New Jersey Department of Education. Within six months, the State investigated, held a hearing, and ruled that the school district had violated parents’ rights. The parents also filed PPRA complaints with the Department of Education, but the complaints sat for well over a year without any action. In 2022, AFL filed two FOIA requests and sent a letter to the Department of Education demanding reasons for the delay. Then, and only then, the Department notified parents that it was opening an investigation. But since January 2023, the parents have heard nothing further.

The New York University Law Review has chosen to use race and sex as factors in determining which articles to publish, which significantly impacts the career prospects of those authors denied publication. A coalition of faculty, alumni, and students opposed to racial preferences sued the University for this discrimination, and the University prevailed in the Second Circuit.

The Department of Justice filed a frivolous and politically motivated lawsuit against the State of Texas in an attempt to enjoin every person in Texas from exercising their rights under the Texas Heartbeat Act. The Biden Administration filed this lawsuit after abortion providers and pro-abortion groups failed to persuade the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of the law.

Section 5003 of the American Rescue Plan Act provided financial benefits to restaurant and bar owners injured by forced closures due to COVID-19. The Act charged the Small Business Administration with administering the program—which only had a limited sum of money—and with providing access to those benefits through a race-based prioritization scheme. In short, minority business owners went to the front of the line, and white business owners went to the back of the line—effectively cutting off any likelihood of obtaining funds.

AFL’s client is a Christian student who frequently speaks about the Bible and his Christian faith. He seeks to inform his classmates of the Bible’s teachings, urging them to repent their sins and put their faith in Jesus. The County College of Morris suspended him for engaging in “hate speech” for sharing his faith.