# American Center for Law and Justice The most overtly **politically-aligned** of the major religious-liberty litigation shops in the [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] — founded in 1990 by [[Pat Robertson]] as the Christian-conservative legal counterweight to the [[ACLU]], explicitly modeled on its target ("ACLU" → "ACLJ"). Headquartered in Virginia Beach, sharing institutional space with [[Christian Broadcasting Network]] and [[Regent University]] (both Robertson institutions), and led for over three decades by Jay Sekulow as Chief Counsel, the ACLJ has operated as a fusion of religious-liberty litigation, broader conservative-political legal work, fundraising-direct-mail empire, and the Sekulow family broadcast operation (the daily *Sekulow* radio show, formerly *Jay Sekulow Live*). The ACLJ's docket is broader and more politically-omnivorous than its three sister organizations ([[Becket Fund]], [[First Liberty Institute]], [[Alliance Defending Freedom]]) — it has handled school-prayer, abortion, religious-display, and free-exercise cases in the standard religious-liberty mode, but it has also expanded into Trump-defense legal work (Sekulow served on Trump's personal legal team during the 2017–2019 Russia investigation and the first impeachment), Israel-policy advocacy (the European Centre for Law and Justice, an ACLJ affiliate, files at the European Court of Human Rights and at the United Nations on Christian-Zionist Israel-policy questions), and broader conservative-movement legal work. The organization has been the subject of long-running ProPublica reporting on financial structure, executive compensation, and the use of donations across the Sekulow family network of nonprofits and for-profits. For the Right Wing KB, the ACLJ is the **populist-evangelical and dispensationalist-Christian-Zionist wing** of the Legal-Litigation Infrastructure layer (see [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]]). Where Becket positions for establishment-respectable pluralism credentials and First Liberty engineers Establishment Clause doctrine, the ACLJ operates as the Robertson-era populist-evangelical legal vehicle, with deep ties into the [[Dispensationalism]] / [[Christian Zionism]] strain of the CN coalition and into the personal-legal and political-defense work of major Republican figures. ## Founding [[Pat Robertson]] founded the ACLJ in 1990, explicitly framing it as the conservative-Christian counterweight to the [[ACLU]] — the name itself is a deliberate mirror. Robertson, who had run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, was building a suite of institutional vehicles: [[Christian Broadcasting Network]] (media), [[Regent University]] (education), the [[Christian Coalition]] (political organizing), and the ACLJ (litigation). All were headquartered in Virginia Beach, all drew from the same donor base, and all served Robertson's vision of a mobilized conservative-Christian political infrastructure. Robertson recruited **[[Jay Sekulow]]** as the ACLJ's Chief Counsel — a role Sekulow has held since founding. The choice was unusual: Sekulow was not an evangelical-movement insider but a Jewish-born lawyer who had converted to Messianic Judaism (a form of Christianity that retains Jewish liturgical practices while accepting Jesus as Messiah). Sekulow had come to prominence through a 1987 Supreme Court case, **Board of Airport Commissioners v. Jews for Jesus** (unanimous, 1987), in which he successfully challenged a Los Angeles airport's ban on [[First Amendment]] activities. The case brought Sekulow to Robertson's attention, and Robertson saw in him a talented Supreme Court advocate who could bring professional credibility to the new organization. Robertson died on **June 8, 2023**, at age 93. His death did not substantially change the ACLJ's operations, which had been functionally controlled by Sekulow for decades. ## Jay Sekulow **Born 1956**, Brooklyn, New York. Sekulow grew up in a Jewish family, studied at Mercer University (Atlanta) for undergraduate and law school, and converted to Messianic Judaism in his early twenties. After practicing tax law, he became involved in Jews for Jesus litigation and discovered an aptitude for constitutional advocacy. He has personally argued approximately **12 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court** — a record that gives him professional standing in the legal community despite the ACLJ's populist-evangelical institutional positioning. Sekulow's significance to the Right Wing KB extends beyond the ACLJ. He served on **Donald Trump's personal legal team** during the Mueller investigation (2017–2019) and was **lead counsel for Trump's defense** during the **first impeachment trial** (January–February 2020, acquitted 52-48). The dual role — religious-liberty litigator and presidential defense lawyer — made Sekulow the most politically-connected figure in the religious-liberty litigation ecosystem during the Trump era, and created a direct institutional bridge between the ACLJ and the [[Trump White House]]. ## Major Supreme Court Cases The ACLJ's SCOTUS docket is concentrated in the 1990s school-prayer and religious-expression cases that established the first-generation doctrine of equal-access and public-forum religious rights: **Board of Education v. Mergens** (1990) — **8-1.** Upheld the Equal Access Act, requiring public secondary schools that allow non-curricular student clubs to also allow student religious clubs. Sekulow represented the student Bible club. The case established that religious student groups have equal-access rights in public schools — a foundational precedent for the religious-expression docket. **Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District** (1993) — **Unanimous (9-0).** Held that a school district could not deny a church access to school facilities for after-hours use when it allowed other community groups to use them. The case established that excluding religious groups from generally available public facilities constitutes viewpoint discrimination. **Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board v. Pinette** (1995) — **7-2.** Upheld the right to display a private religious symbol (a Ku Klux Klan cross, in the specific case, alongside a menorah placed by Chabad) on the grounds of the Ohio Statehouse in a public forum. Sekulow represented the Klan's right to display the cross. The case reinforced the principle that private religious expression in a public forum does not constitute government endorsement. Sekulow also participated in multiple **abortion cases** during the 1990s, representing pro-life interests in clinic-buffer-zone and protest-rights litigation — consistent with the ACLJ's broader conservative-political docket. ## The Sekulow Family Financial Structure The ACLJ has been the subject of extensive investigative reporting — particularly by **ProPublica** and the **Associated Press** — regarding the financial relationship between the nonprofit organization and the Sekulow family. The structure works through a network of related entities. The ACLJ (501(c)(3)) and its sister organization **CASE (Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism)** (also 501(c)(3)) collectively raised and spent tens of millions annually. An AP investigation found that over a 10-year period, the organizations had directed more than **$65 million** to Sekulow family members and their for-profit entities through salaries, consulting fees, and contracts. A separate analysis by the **Trinity Foundation** (a religious-fraud watchdog) estimated the total family benefit at over **$103 million** when including all related transactions across the nonprofit-for-profit interface. **Jordan Sekulow**, Jay's son, serves as the ACLJ's executive director and co-hosts the daily *Sekulow* broadcast. The broadcast itself functions as both a fundraising vehicle and a political-commentary platform — its audience overlaps substantially with the conservative-talk-radio and [[Fox News]] demographic. **CharityWatch** has issued a **donor alert** regarding the ACLJ/CASE financial structure, flagging the related-party transactions and the difficulty of determining what percentage of donations goes to actual legal work versus family compensation and broadcast operations. ### Revenue and Fundraising Model The ACLJ reported approximately **$28.3 million in revenue** in 2024. The organization's fundraising model is **direct-mail intensive**: it distributed approximately **12.4 million direct-mail pieces** in 2024, making it one of the most prolific direct-mail operations in the religious-conservative nonprofit space. The direct-mail model relies on urgent-threat appeals — typically framed around imminent legal battles, threats to religious liberty, or political crises — and produces a donor base of small-dollar contributors rather than major-gift philanthropists. ## European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) The ACLJ founded the **European Centre for Law and Justice** in **1997**, headquartered in Strasbourg, France — strategically located near the European Court of Human Rights. The ECLJ holds **consultative status** at the United Nations and files regularly at the ECHR, the UN Human Rights Council, and other international bodies. The ECLJ's docket has two primary tracks: **religious-liberty cases** in the European context (church-state cases, religious-symbol cases, conscientious-objection cases) and **pro-life and pro-family advocacy** at international institutions. The ECLJ has also been a significant vehicle for **Christian-Zionist Israel-policy advocacy** — filing briefs and lobbying at the UN on Israel-related resolutions, consistent with the ACLJ's dispensationalist-Zionist theological orientation. The ECLJ represents the ACLJ's most ambitious institutional extension: a permanent international-law advocacy presence that allows the organization to influence human-rights norms globally. It is unique among the major U.S. religious-liberty litigation firms — neither [[Alliance Defending Freedom]], [[Becket Fund]], [[First Liberty Institute]], nor [[Liberty Counsel]] maintains a comparable international institutional presence, though ADF has expanded internationally through ADF International. ## KB Significance The ACLJ occupies a distinct position in the [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]]'s legal-litigation infrastructure layer. Where [[Becket Fund]] provides establishment-credentialed doctrinal engineering, [[Alliance Defending Freedom]] provides the broad CN-aligned litigation and policy docket, and [[First Liberty Institute]] focuses on military and public-school religion-clause cases, the ACLJ is the **Robertson-era populist-evangelical legal vehicle** with three distinctive features. First, the **Sekulow-Trump bridge**: no other religious-liberty organization's leader served as presidential defense counsel, creating a direct institutional link between the legal-advocacy ecosystem and the Trump White House. Second, the **dispensationalist-Christian-Zionist orientation**: the ECLJ's international work and the ACLJ's Israel-policy advocacy reflect the theological strain within the CN coalition that connects evangelical end-times theology to U.S. Middle East policy. Third, the **direct-mail fundraising model**: the ACLJ's 12.4 million direct-mail pieces represent a mass-donor mobilization apparatus that doubles as a political-messaging platform, blurring the line between legal advocacy and conservative-political broadcasting. The financial-structure controversies — the Sekulow family's extraction of $65M–$103M through related-party transactions — illustrate the recurring pattern of family enrichment through nonprofit religious-movement institutions that appears throughout the [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] (compare [[Jerry Falwell Jr.]] at [[Liberty University]], the Graham family at BGEA, the Robertson family at CBN/Regent). ## See Also - [[Pat Robertson]] - [[Jay Sekulow]] - [[Christian Broadcasting Network]] - [[Regent University]] - [[Alliance Defending Freedom]] - [[Becket Fund]] - [[First Liberty Institute]] - [[Liberty Counsel]] - [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] - [[Christian Zionism]]