Our Mission

The Law, Rights and Religion Project (LRRP) is a law and policy think tank based at Columbia Law School that promotes social justice, freedom of religion, and religious pluralism. We develop strategic thought leadership on the complex ways in which religious liberty rights interact with other fundamental rights. 

Our mission is to ensure that laws and policies reflect the understanding that the right to free exercise of religion protects all religious beliefs and communities, including the non-religious; requires respect for religious pluralism and equality principles; and must be balanced against other liberty and equality rights where they are in conflict. Our work takes the form of legal research and scholarship, public policy interventions, advocacy support, events, and academic and media publications.

  • LRRP is based at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law (CGSL or the Center). CGSL is the first and most prominent law school-based policy center devoted to translating academic legal research  into real-world change, and training the next generation of lawyers/advocates fighting for gender and sexual justice.

    The Center’s faculty, staff, and team of researchers develop rigorous policy analysis and strategic thought leadership on cutting-edge issues at the intersection of gender, sexual, reproductive, racial justice, and religious liberty. In addition to LRRP, CGSL is also the home to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Project.

  • The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Project at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law is a law and policy think tank that develops academically rigorous research, policy papers, expert guidance, and strategic leadership on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, and on the role of the ERA in advancing the larger cause of gender-based justice.

Our Vision & Strategy

LRRP fills a gaping vacuum in legal advocacy and thinking on the meaning and protection of religious freedom. Over the past 40 years, the conservative legal movement has successfully captured the public discourse on “religious liberty” and redefined its scope in our federal courts. This has had devastating consequences for marginalized communities, including religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and those seeking reproductive healthcare.

In contrast to the boldness of the Christian Right, progressives have been far more hesitant to harness every argument at our disposal to defeat, or at least slow down, the erosion of fundamental rights. To resist the advance of white Christian nationalism, we argue that the Left must engage in litigation, policy, and communications work to reclaim a progressive approach to “religious liberty.”

LRRP’s vision for true religious liberty for all—and not merely for a favored few—is guided by six principles. Namely, religious liberty must be:

  1. neutral

  2. noncoercive

  3. nondiscriminatory

  4. not absolute

  5. democratic

  6. pluralistic

Our strategy has both short-term and long-term components:

  • In the short term, we must fight to protect the faith-based activities of religious communities who have been marginalized or threatened by the Christian Right. This includes protecting the religious practices of people of faith who support reproductive and LGBTQ rights—such as doctors who provide abortion and trans-affirming medical care because of, not despite, their religious commitments.

  • In the long term, progressives must engage in deep culture change work to change the narrative on religious liberty. After ceding “religious liberty” as a political issue to the Christian Right for far too long, we must demand religious freedom protections that allow all communities, including the nonreligious, to thrive.

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. After graduating from New York University School of Law, she was a Carr Center for Reproductive Justice Fellow at A Better Balance. During law school, Liz worked with the Urban Justice Sex Workers Project, New York Civil Liberties Union, and Brennan Center for Justice. In 2013, she published Gangsters to Greyhounds: The Past, Present and Future of Offender Registration, 37 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 727 (2013).

A leading voice on religious liberty and the intersection of faith and politics, Liz’s work has been published in The Hill, Religion Dispatches, Religion News Service, Rewire, Canopy 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 and the Associated Press.

Dr. Christine Ryan (she/her) ∙ 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 (she/they) ∙ Founder & Faculty Director

Katherine Franke is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University, and Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law. Professor Franke is the founder and faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project. She is also on the Executive Committees of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation's leading scholars writing on law, sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory. In 2021, Professor Franke launched the ERA Project, a law and policy think tank to develop academically rigorous research, policy papers, expert guidance, and strategic leadership on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, and on the role of the ERA in advancing the larger cause of gender-based justice.

Professor Franke is currently leading a team that is researching Columbia Law School’s relationship to slavery and its legacies.  Her 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.

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.