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LRRP Director Liz Reiner Platt’s new piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy makes the case that funders need to invest in a progressive vision of religious freedom rather than ceding this critical legal protection to the Christian Right. The Christian Right has invested heavily in religious liberty. Alliance Defending Freedom alone lists more than 80 staff attorneys and 5,000 “allied” attorneys on its website, and its 2025 revenue exceeded $123 million. Add Becket, First Liberty, the Thomas More Society, and the American Center for Law and Justice, and the conservative religion law infrastructure totals at least 180 staff attorneys and $260 million. There is no comparable investment on the progressive side. That imbalance has consequences. While conservatives have filed hundreds of religious liberty suits seeking exemptions from anti-discrimination, public health, and reproductive rights laws, religious freedom suits seeking to advance social justice are rare. Over the past year, courts have held that the Trump administration’s immigration policies violated the religious freedom of congregations and faith leaders, and an Indiana court found that the state’s abortion ban violated the rights of people whose faith leads them to end a pregnancy. But cases like these remain the exception. Platt argues that funders must step up to remedy this imbalance. She calls on them to invest in grassroots faith-based organizing, in scholarship and training opportunities to support the next generation of religion law attorneys and advocates, and in legal organizations that help faith communities bring their own claims. In Minnesota, faith communities mobilized against “Operation Metro Surge,” the federal immigration crackdown that sent thousands of agents into the Twin Cities last winter. That activism ultimately produced court victories protecting faith leaders’ right to minister to detained immigrants, and offers one model of what coordinated investment can produce. The op-ed is free to read: you’ll just be asked for your email address.
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