LYNCHBURG — Here on the training grounds for Christian lawyers, they’ve built an exact replica of the courtroom where the U.S. Supreme Court presides.
The mahogany bench, the nine high-backed chairs that sit behind it and the red curtain backdrop provide all the trappings of the nation’s highest court, but nearly 200 miles away on the campus of Liberty University School of Law.
When students argue their cases during mock court sessions in this room, the theory goes, they will be inspired to one day appear before the real Supreme Court – or maybe even occupy one of those nine chairs.
“Basically, this courtroom represents our vision of restoring the rule of law,” said Mathew Staver, dean of the law school and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a Christian-based nonprofit law group that calls itself a champion of religious freedom, the sanctity of life and family.
In recent weeks, Staver has been using the courtroom to practice for a case, scheduled to be argued Monday in Roanoke’s federal court, in which the Giles County School Board is being sued for displaying the Ten Commandments in a high school hallway.
Liberty Counsel, a separate entity from the law school but closely linked to its evangelical Christian mission, is defending the school board.
Staver argues that because the commandments appear alongside historical documents such as the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, they do not violate the constitutional separation of church and state, as a student at Narrows High School alleges in the lawsuit.
It is just one of hundreds of cases across the nation in which Liberty Counsel has offered free representation to those it sees as victims of religious injustice.
In Florida, it represented an anti-abortion demonstrator who argued that restrictions on protests at an abortion clinic were too broad, a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In New York, it filed a lawsuit against Harvey Milk High, a public school with a focus for gay students. While supporters saw the school as refuge for harassed students, Liberty Counsel called it a “sexually deviant high school.” The case ended with a settlement that changed the school’s mission.
In California and elsewhere, it successfully defended the right of the Good News Club, an after-school Christian group, to meet in public schools at no charge.
When Staver and his wife, Anita, formed Liberty Counsel in 1989, “we wanted to be a voice for those who hadn’t been represented,” Staver, 55, said during a recent interview in the mock courtroom.
“For 70 years, groups like the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] have been in existence, and there has not been a lot of opposition to the ACLU, in an organized way,” he said.
“So Liberty Counsel was one of the first organizations in America to be established … to be on the opposite side of the ACLU.”
In fact, the ACLU is representing the Narrows High student in the lawsuit, which asks U.S. District Court Judge Michael Urbanski to order that the Ten Commandments be taken down.
Critics of Liberty Counsel see an organization driven by rigid ideology that runs counter to the U.S. Constitution’s mandate that government should not infringe on an individual’s religious beliefs – nor should the state impose those beliefs on anyone.
“The Liberty Counsel is a misnamed group,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which first raised questions about the Ten Commandments display in Giles County.
“It doesn’t really believe in liberty, because there can’t be any true religious liberty without the ability to dissent,” Gaylor said. “And that’s what our First Amendment guarantees us.”
Seeing the light
When Mathew Staver was growing up in central Florida, he felt no ambition to do the Lord’s legal work.
After graduating from high school, “I began to associate with crowds that were ultimately going to take me down the wrong path,” Staver said, offering little elaboration.
“I was really searching for meaning in my life at that time.”
In 1975, when Staver was in his late teens, he happened across a traveling evangelist who ended every sermon by saying if he were to die that night, he had assurances that he would be with God.
“I didn’t have that assurance,” Staver said. “I had an emptiness in my life.”
So when the preacher called on members of the audience to step up to the altar and be saved, “I just went forward … and gave my life to the Lord,” Staver said. “And that was a life-changing event for me.”
Staver decided to study theology and wound up at Southern Missionary College in Tennessee, a conservative religious school affiliated with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
There, he immersed himself in his studies and his new-found faith, said his roommate and good friend, Tony Bullington.
Because both students “were not involved in the best of things in high school,” Bullington said – by his account, their sins involved drinking and dating girls – they forged a strong bond as they soaked up the Christian environment.
“When we came to the Lord, we both had radical conversions – just total 180s,” Bullington said.
Although Staver showed no interest in becoming a lawyer at the time, he had an intense drive that would later serve him well in a courtroom.
“It’s like a laser beam focus,” Bullington said, “and he will stay headed toward the target until he gets there.”
For all his intensity, Staver knew how to loosen up and enjoy a good joke, said Bullington, who still keeps up with his college friend.
At the time, Staver drove a 1968 Camaro, orange with a white stripe down the middle. Staver’s white hair was blond back then, and with his dark-haired friend riding shotgun, it wasn’t long before people started calling them Starsky and Hutch.
In what became “an ongoing joke,” Bullington said, the two would cruise around campus, threatening to arrest young couples for public displays of affection.
Staver went on to seminary school and later became a pastor in Kentucky, preaching at several Adventist churches. Then, in 1983, he had another life-changing experience.
When another pastor invited Staver to watch a video about abortion, he said he was shocked by what he saw. Afterward, he looked up the local Right to Life group in the Yellow Pages, paid them a visit, and walked away with all the literature they had.
When Staver asked for a copy of Roe v. Wade, he was directed to the nearest law school. In the library, he read his first legal case – and began to think about studying the law.
“Being involved in the pro-life movement, you’re naturally at the intersection of law and policy,” Staver said. “I began to realize I could have a big impact.
“That was when I began to feel that God was directing me in a different direction, to go into law.”
After earning his law degree from the University of Kentucky, Staver moved back to Florida and soon began a law practice. It didn’t take him long to develop a specialty.
‘Dignity and respect’
Based in Orlando, Staver & Associates was a commercial litigation firm with big-name clients such as Marriott Corp., Walmart and the Orlando Magic professional basketball team.
But Staver’s real passion was for the side practice he started in 1989. In the beginning, Liberty Counsel occupied some spare space in his firm, providing pro bono representation in religious liberty cases.
Then, in the early 1990s, Staver took a case to the U.S. Supreme Court, garnering national attention for the lawyer and his cause.
A group of protesters at an abortion clinic in Melbourne, Fla., challenged a state court order restricting their access in a number of ways, saying it violated their free speech rights.
On its website, Liberty Counsel says it “successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, regarding rights of sidewalk counselors.”
The ruling was a bit more complicated: The high court upheld a 36-foot buffer zone between the front of the clinic and the protesters, a decision described by one activist as having “devastating consequences for the pro-life movement.” But in the same ruling, the court struck down another part of the state order that barred picketers from approaching potential patients within 300 feet of the clinic.
For Liberty Counsel to describe the case on its website as a victory is a stretch, said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
“They are certainly prone to exaggeration about the significance of their quote-unquote successes,” Lynn said.
In the years that followed the abortion case, Liberty Counsel took on more high-profile cases. It fought against gay marriage, protected the rights of Floridians to display “Choose Life” license plates, opposed an abortion for a mentally disabled woman who was raped and defended displays of the Ten Commandments in county courthouses, winning one case and losing another.
Today, Liberty Counsel has about 35 employees and offices in Lynchburg, Orlando and Washington, D.C. Hundreds of lawyers and others from across the country volunteer their services.
Located in the same building as the law school at Liberty University, the Lynchburg branch offers externships to law students, and faculty members sometimes serve as special counsel.
“I think they have made an important and significant contribution to the development of religious freedom and law in the U.S.,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a group similar to Liberty Counsel that was formed by evangelist Pat Robertson.
Staver’s vision and work ethic – a 2007 filing with the Internal Revenue Service said he worked 65 hours a week for Liberty Counsel – often come up in conversations about the group.
“He is what he says he is,” said Rena Lindevaldsen, associate dean for academic affairs at Liberty University Law School. And that, she said, is someone committed to “fighting the cultural battles” to restore prayer in schools and overturn Roe. v. Wade.
But during a recent interview, Staver did not spout the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric that some might expect from his quarters.
And when he faced ACLU attorney David Friedman in a Ten Commandments case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court – a matchup akin to the most ardent Virginia Tech and University of Virginia fans sitting next to one another during a championship game – he was always cordial and respectful, Friedman said.
“I’m going to treat every person with dignity and respect,” Staver said. “I think God created everyone in his image.”
The doctrinal statement of Liberty Counsel strikes the same tone. “All things were created by God,” the group’s guiding principles state in part.
The statement continues: “Angels were created as ministering agents, though some, under the leadership of Satan, fell from their sinless state to become agents of evil.”
Getting the message out
The courtroom is just one of the battlefields for Liberty Counsel. The organization also pushes its agenda in the education and policy arenas.
It runs the Liberty Center for Law & Policy from offices in Lynchburg and Washington, offering training for lawyers, students, legislators and policymakers.
And through radio, television and other outreach efforts, it promotes a conservative, faith-based view of American politics.
One program, called “Adopt a Liberal,” encourages followers to pray for certain misguided elected officials, so they might change their ways and “become a good influence on our nation’s culture.”
The liberals, pictured on cards similar to baseball trading cards, include President Barack Obama, who has “assembled what is arguably the most radically liberal administration in American history.”
“His policy initiatives have favored socialism, the homosexual agenda, and the funding of infant genocide around the world,” Liberty Counsel’s website states.
Other initiatives include the Change is Possible campaign, which encourages gays to reject their homosexuality, and an annual call to boycott businesses that disrespect Christ with the phrase “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”
Sex before marriage is also frowned upon by Liberty Counsel, which encourages young people to remain pure both “in mind and action.”
Lynn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is often a target of Liberty Counsel. He is one of their liberals in need of prayer, and says he has been described by the group as being out to destroy America.
“They think pretty apocalyptically,” Lynn said. “This is edgy stuff.”
Big churches, big money
Filing lawsuits and waging cultural wars is never cheap, and Liberty Counsel relies in large part on donations to support its efforts.
The group had revenues of $4.2 million in the last fiscal year, according to an independent auditor’s report.
As a nonprofit organization exempt from taxes, Liberty Counsel is required to register with the Internal Revenue Service. But unlike many nonprofits, it does not have to file annual reports with the IRS that detail its finances.
That’s because in 2006, the IRS approved a request by Liberty Counsel to change its status to a church auxiliary.
In its last filing with the tax agency, which covered the 2006-07 fiscal year, Liberty Counsel reported $1.3 million in revenue, most of it from direct public support.
Expenses were listed as $1.1 million, which included a $100,831 annual salary for Mathew Staver and $76,421 for his wife, Anita Staver, the group’s president.
Staver said he no longer makes $100,831. When he took the job of dean of the law school, he cut back on his hours with Liberty Counsel and became the chairman of its board.
In a response to an emailed question, Staver did not say how much he and his wife currently make.
Lynn, of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, said he finds the lack of reporting to the IRS troubling.
“We don’t know where they’re getting their money or how they are spending it,” he said. “This cloak of invisibility is unique and, I think, really disreputable.”
In 1943, Congress exempted all churches, synagogues and mosques from having to file annual returns with the IRS, according to Charity-Watch, an independent group that monitors nonprofits.
Annual reports from churches could “help donors to judge how efficiently they are operating, or understand what types of specific activities they are engaging in,” said Laurie Styron, an analyst with CharityWatch.
While it was once believed that congregations could best monitor a church’s spending, CharityWatch is calling for greater transparency with the advent of megachurches and large religious organizations.
As for Liberty Counsel, Staver said it undergoes an extensive audit by an independent firm. A copy of the most recent audit, provided by the group, did not include details such as salaries and itemized operating expenses, which are required in annual reports to the IRS for many non-church-related charities.
The audit produced by Liberty Counsel was eight pages long; its last report to the IRS in 2007, before its status was changed, was 36 pages.
Anita Staver said in an email that the audit shows the organization “continues to be a financially responsible ministry.”
“Liberty Counsel’s tax status is no different than the Salvation Army and thousands of other nonprofit organizations,” said Mathew Staver, who serves on the Commission on Accountability for Religious Organizations, a panel formed at the suggestion of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has raised questions about tax policies for churches.
Going the distance?
In early 2011, the Ten Commandments issue was heating up in Giles County.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation threatened to file a lawsuit, and angry crowds packed school board meetings to demand that God’s rules remain in the schools.
At some point in the controversy, Liberty Counsel volunteered its services to the county school board. So far, there’s been no legal tab for taxpayers, as the representation is free.
But should the ACLU prevail, the losing party could have to pay its legal costs. In Kentucky, two rural counties that waged a losing battle over a Ten Commandments display in their courthouses ended up with a $450,000 bill.
Staver said he’s optimistic that in this commandments case, Giles County will be the victor.
As he sat at one of the attorney’s tables in the mock courtroom at Liberty University, Staver was asked about the chances of the Giles County case going all the way to the real Supreme Court.
“Certainly, if it were to go that far, we are very optimistic and hopeful that it would set good precedent,” he said.
Where or when the legal conflict will end, of course, is unknown. But this much is clear: It begins in earnest on Monday, in a federal courtroom in Roanoke.