Liberty Counsel vs. transgender people

Groups Reviewed August 28, 2026 2 min read

Liberty Counsel is an American Christian legal advocacy organization. It was created as “a Christian antithesis to the ACLU.”

Liberty Counsel is designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center.

Background

Liberty Counsel was founded on December 26, 1989, by attorneys Mathew D. “Mat” Staver and Anita L. Staver, who married and later served as chairman and president, respectively.

The organization initially concentrated on free-speech litigation before broadening into religious-liberty, anti-abortion, and family-law cases.

In 2008, Liberty Counsel argued a marriage equality case before the California Supreme Court, defending their “one-man-one-woman” marriage statute. They also argued Miller v. Jenkins before the Virginia Supreme Court concerning a same-sex civil union custody dispute.

In the early 2010s, the organization was involved in challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate on behalf of Liberty University. In 2015, Liberty Counsel represented Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis after Davis was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following Obergefell v. Hodges.

In 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed the group as a hate group, in part because Liberty Counsel opposes LGBT participation in Scouting organizations and because its leadership implicitly compared gay people to pedophiles. In 2017, Liberty Counsel sued GuideStar USA for flagging it as an SPLC-designated hate group; in 2018, a Virginia federal judge dismissed Liberty Counsel’s suit.

Anti-trans activism

Liberty Counsel has publicly opposed transgender military service, gender-identity provisions in hate-crimes law, and trans healthcare for young people.

Liberty Counsel and the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence filed briefs supporting the school board against transgender student Gavin Grimm’s bathroom-access claim. Their filings were kicked back by the court clerk for misgendering Grimm in their captions.

Liberty Counsel represented the family of a cisgender student challenging a Marion County, Florida school district policy that let transgender students use facilities matching their gender identity, arguing religious-liberty and privacy grounds.

Liberty Counsel represented Liberty University (its longtime institutional partner) in defending the firing of transgender IT employee Ellenor Zinski, arguing religious-exemption grounds under Title VII.

Liberty Counsel has filed amicus briefs in several high-profile legal cases involving transgender people:

United States v. Skrmetti, No. 23-477 (S. Ct., argued Dec. 4, 2024) [PDF]
Little v. Hecox, No. 24-38, and West Virginia v. B.P.J., No. 24-43 (consolidated, S. Ct., 2025 Term)
Chiles v. Salazar, No. 24-539 (S. Ct., 2025 Term)