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In the last several months here at Blue Tent, we’ve reported extensively on the pressing need for a well-funded progressive legal movement—one that can recognize liberal shortcomings of the past, accomplish short-term goals during Democratic presidencies, and build a sustainable infrastructure for the future. But part of understanding the urgency for pursuing—and funding—this work is to understand the scale of the opposition: Who are the major players, what are their goals and strategies, and how much money is behind them?
Republican politicians and judges have captured the federal judiciary and important state courts, too, in large part thanks to a web of influential ideological and political organizations. Many of these same people learned their trade or were groomed for leadership by a battalion of well-funded conservative legal groups—groups that employ an army of lawyers to craft new legal arguments and bring high-impact cases to the now right-leaning courts. Below, we detail the work and funding of the most well-known groups in this extensive network. Depending on the year, the financial resources of the following conservative legal groups can exceed some $300 million.
The Conservative Legal Death Star
The most infamous group among liberal critics of conservative jurisprudence is the Federalist Society, founded in 1982 as a place for law students, professors, practitioners, and, eventually, judges, to network and discuss legal ideas. While the organization’s annual fundraising seems paltry in the era of ultra-billionaire political donors (revenues for the group in 2019 exceeded $23 million), its budgets are often close to triple that of the American Constitution Society, FedSoc’s closest comparable group on the left.
A large reason for FedSoc’s power and influence came from its longtime leader and conservative power broker Leonard Leo. As detailed in numerous reports by journalists and watchdogs of nonprofit and political funding, Leo sits at the hub of a major political money machine focused on expanding conservative jurisprudence. Though Leo stepped down from day-to-day leadership of FedSoc in 2020, he remains firmly in control of a sticky web of dark money conservative groups focused on judges and legal issues; if these groups represent the Death Star of the conservative legal movement, Leonard Leo is Darth Vader and the Emperor rolled into one.
Two of the major groups that work in close harmony with Leo and FedSoc are the 501(c)(4) Concord Fund and the 501(c)(3) 85 Fund, formerly called the Judicial Crisis Network and Judicial Education Project, respectively. (Both of these groups changed their legal names in recent years for unclear reasons, maintaining their original names as “aliases.”) Concord Fund/JCN has traditionally been the right’s most prominent spender and advocate on judicial nominations and the courts. In 2018, the group reported revenues of over $29 million. The 85 Fund/JEP has acted as both a funding intermediary—often taking money from Donors Trust and shuttling it to allied groups—and an advocate itself. In 2020, the group adopted another new legal name, the Honest Elections Project, behind which it has purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads stoking fears over election integrity. In 2021, the shapeshifting group reportedly hauled in at least $50 million, according to Open Secrets.
Both Concord and 85 Fund are closely connected to CRC Advisors, a new conservative hub started by Leo and communications executive Greg Mueller in an attempt to mimic the liberal Arabella Advisors. Both groups are also closely connected to Rule of Law Trust, a 501(c)(4) run by Leo that ended 2018 with nearly $80 million on hand.
The rightwing ACLU
Like liberal civil rights organizations, right-wing public interest groups take on cases—often pro bono—that they believe can help push the law, legislation, or public opinion in their ideological direction. The largest such group is the Alliance Defending Freedom, an explicitly Christian conservative organization with revenues in 2019 that exceeded $65 million. ADF was founded by a collection of Evangelical leaders in 1994, and brings cases primarily focused on anti-LGBTQ causes, religious liberty, and conservative free speech. The group claims 13 Supreme Court victories since 2011 and is currently involved in challenging federal vaccine requirements.
Another major conservative legal advocate is the Institute for Justice, founded by longtime conservative litigator and civil rights critic Clint Bolick, who now serves on the Arizona Supreme Court. IJ takes a more libertarian view of the law, but its $35 million revenues in 2019 can still safely be categorized as part of the conservative legal movement. The same can be said for the California-based Pacific Legal Foundation, which was founded by former advisors to then-Governor Ronald Reagan in 1973 to counter the “collectivist” trend in public interest law. PLF’s cases focus largely on what it sees as regulatory overreach on businesses and property owners, claiming a track record at the Supreme Court “on par with the ACLU but at a fraction of their budget.” In 2019, PLF revenues came in at more than $16 million.
Other nonprofit litigators on the right include the smaller Center for Individual Rights (2019 revenues of $1.5 million), Thomas More Law Center (2020 revenues of $1.5 million), and the Center for Equal Opportunity (2019 revenues of around $500,000). There are also well-funded single-issue groups like the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which brought in $13 million in 2018 to fight against unions.
The idea testers
No successful political project would be complete without a smattering of thought leaders and people devoted to state and local issues (funders on the left, take note.) Conservatives have been especially effective in building and coordinating state-level groups of all kinds, which can help push state-level changes as test runs for future federal policies, while recognizing local-level issues or cases that could make an impact nationally.
These organizations include groups focused primarily on law and litigation, like the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Mountain States Legal Foundation. The right has also excelled at funding think tanks at the state level with legal arms, like Arizona’s Goldwater Institute, Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, all of which maintain budgets to rival many national-level liberal think tanks.
Finally, speaking of national-level think tanks, liberals devoted to court reform and advancing progressive legal ideas should be reminded of the deep investments the right has made in legal ideas. Groups like the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and American Enterprise Institute do not typically engage directly in litigation, but they serve as thought leaders and researchers for conservative legal ideas, contributing pieces of their eight- or nine-figure budgets to maintain programs and fellowships for attorneys and legal scholars.