About Us

LRRP believes that religious liberty: 

  • Must protect everyone if it is to protect anyone

  • Should be liberatory rather than oppressive; and 

  • Should work in tandem with, rather than against, other fundamental rights. 

Our mission is to ensure that religious liberty laws and policies reflect these values. LRRP engages in education, advocacy, coalition-building, and academic scholarship to advance a progressive vision of religious liberty. 

Our Team

Elizabeth Reiner Platt (she/her) ∙ Director

Liz is the Director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project (LRRP), and has been with the project since 2015. Before joining Columbia, she was a Staff Attorney at MFY Legal Services Mental Health Law Project. A leading voice on religious liberty and the intersection of faith and law, Liz’s work has been published in The Hill, Religion Dispatches, Religion News Service, Rewire, Canopy Forum, Columbia Law Review Forum, Sojourners, and The Review of Faith & International Affairs, among others. She has been cited as an expert in law and religion in numerous publications including The Washington Post, New York Times, and the Associated Press. Under Liz’s leadership, LRRP has become a nationally recognized thought leader on the meaning, purpose, and protection of religious freedom.

She holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law and a B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Christine Ryan (she/her) ∙ Associate Director, Religion & Reproductive Rights

Dr. Christine A. Ryan is a human rights lawyer and scholar who directs LRRP’s groundbreaking work at the intersection of religious liberty and reproductive rights. Christine is a leading expert on legal and movement strategies for abortion rights in the U.S. and abroad. 

Christine joined Columbia from the Global Justice Center (GJC), a women's rights non-profit in New York, where she served as Legal Director. Among other projects at GJC, Christine co-led a campaign for a new UN treaty on Crimes against Humanity, produced large-scale reporting on the human rights impacts of U.S. abortion restrictions, and pursued accountability for international crimes. Before that, she served as Senior Legal Advisor and Director of Programs to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief where she completed human rights investigations in 8 different counties. Christine has also worked on human rights in Iran, LGBT rights, and human rights approaches to international development. Christine began her legal career as a human rights advisor to the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade.

A scholar of gender, human, and constitutional rights, Christine completed her doctorate in law at Duke University School of Law as a Fulbright Scholar. She holds an LLM from University College London and a Bachelor of Laws and Irish from University College Cork. She is a member of the Religions for Peace Standing Commission and an Associate Expert at the Religion and Equality Project, at the University of Essex.

Katherine Franke ∙ Founding Director

Katherine Franke is the founding director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, where she founded LRRP in 2015. She is among the nation's leading scholars writing on law, sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.

Their first book, Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality (NYU Press 2015), considers the costs of winning marriage rights for same-sex couples today and for African Americans at the end of the Civil War. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 to undertake research for Wedlocked. Her second book, Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Slavery’s Abolition (Haymarket Press 2019), makes the case for racial reparations in the United States by returning to a time at the end of slavery when many formerly enslaved people were provided land explicitly as a form of reparation, yet after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated the land was stolen back from freed people and given to former slave owners.

Daniela Sweet-Coll∙ Communications, Design & Administration

Daniela is the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law's communications and design specialist. She manages visual design and communications, including websites, social media, newsletters, and document design, as well as event production for the Law, Rights & Religion Project, as well as its home at CGSL. Daniela joined the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law in 2023 after working as an independent graphic designer and Spanish-English translator. She completed her undergraduate degree in Wesleyan University’s interdisciplinary Design and Applied Sciences program, where she received honors for her digital design-focused textile art thesis.

Our Partners

  • Auburn Theological Seminary

    Auburn Theological Seminary

    In 2020, LRRP worked with Auburn on All Faiths & None, a guidance memo for policymakers.

  • Center for American Progress

    In 2018, LRRP and CAP co-published a report on the Trump administration’s controversial guidance on religious liberty.

  • Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life

    Columbia University’s IRCPL sponsored LRRP’s upcoming Black Religious Liberty Curriculum.