Kristen Waggoner Is Driving the Anti-LGBTQ Push in the Supreme Court. And Seattle’s the Town That Made Her. by Hannah Murphy Winter Earlier this month, in a feature in the Gay Times, Uncloseted Media introduced many of their readers to Kristen Waggoner, one of the world’s leaders in anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice advocacy, and fighter for “religious freedom.” She was presented—for very good reason—as a “legal powerhouse” in the conservative movement, with more than a decade of success attacking queer and reproductive rights in the courts, a key driver of Trump’s anti-LGBTQ movement, and by some observers’ estimations, a member of Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court. Underneath this flurry of conservative bonafides, though, there’s one detail that’s easy to miss: She built the foundation for that work right here in the Pacific Northwest.  Today, Waggoner is the CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal advocacy group founded by some 30 members of the Christian Right. If you’re unfamiliar with the organization, it’s helpful to imagine them as the religious right’s answer to the ACLU. As of last year, they had an annual operating budget of $102 million dollars. They fund potential precedent-setting cases that have constitutional implications, offer training programs for young lawyers who want to work for Christian causes, and run a global wing of their operation that, among other things, has advocated for making gay sex illegal between consenting adults. It should come as no surprise that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated them as a hate group. Waggoner has led the ADF through its most prolific, most effective, most damaging era. But before she rose to the national stage, she was a Christian Right underdog in a sea of progressivism, fighting the fight at a “boutique” law firm in downtown Seattle.  Waggoner started her journey in Longview, WA—a town along the Columbia River, right on the border to Oregon—and she fancied herself an underdog from day one. In an interview with podcaster David Lat, she described her town as having “a lot of diverse views—maybe not as diverse as they used to be, because they’re barreling hard left in a number of respects.” She described herself and her father as “first-generation Christians” surrounded by a much more left-leaning family.  Her father was a superintendent at a Christian school, and she said she witnessed “government overreach” in the school (presumably meaning that the State wanted the school to meet Washington’s accreditation standards—often a challenge for religious schools). In that same podcast with Lat, she explained that her dad “felt pretty strongly early on that I had a vocational call on my life.” By 12 or 13 years old, she said, she knew that she was “called to go into law and to protect religious freedom.” She attended a small Christian college in Kirkland and then went to Regent University for law school because it was the only accredited Christian law school in the country.  Her career launched on a pretty standard track, clerking for Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard B. Sanders, a relatively liberal member of the Libertarian party who voted to uphold a ban on gay marriage. But her next job brings us to a law firm that I’ve had my eye on for a long time: Ellis, Li, and McKinstry PLLC, otherwise known as ELM Law. Waggoner describes them as a “boutique law firm” in downtown Seattle, which is true. They describe themselves as a small, client-oriented firm “built on listening so intently to the needs of businesses and individuals that the common distractions of the legal system fall quiet.” That may be true, too. But the reason I’ve been watching them for the last few years, is that they’ve been representing ADF cases in Washington state for the last decade.  Waggoner spent 15 years there, eventually becoming a partner in the firm. And it was there that she discovered her “purpose.”  Waggoner’s lightbulb moment is actually an era that Washingtonians might remember. It started in 2012. “I began to feel a growing sense of restlessness—that my faith was prompting me to be the ‘risk taker,’” Waggoner told the Conservateur years later. “At the time, I was lead counsel in a case called Stormans, where Washington state was trying to force pharmacy owners to dispense early abortifacients.” By “abortifacients,” of course, she means Plan B.  Then in 2013, a gay couple in Richland, in southern Washington, sued Arlene’s Flowers after she refused to provide flowers for their wedding, citing the usual deeply held Christian beliefs. Both of these cases were ultimately championed by the ADF, but on the ground here in Washington—like many of the ADF’s cases—it was handled by ELM Law. And specifically, they were led by Waggoner. “Those two cases prompted me to get involved in pro-bono advocacy full-time,” Waggoner said. She joined the ADF, and the rest is “legal powerhouse” history. The ADF has seen 15 Supreme Court victories in the last 12 years. Recently, you might have heard of: Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which determined by a 7-2 vote that the bakery couldn’t be compelled to make a cake for a gay wedding if it violated the owner’s religious beliefs; 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, which did the same for wedding websites; and Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Waggoner has been the lead attorney on every one of those cases, driving the movement to reshape American civil liberties in a Christian image. The first Trump administration gave the ADF a huge leg up in their federal cases, and as we head into a new Trump administration, the ADF is supporting dozens of anti-LGBTQ cases currently moving through the lower courts. In the Uncloseted Media profile, they note that because Waggoner hasn’t had any experience on the bench, she’s not a likely Supreme Court pick—not yet, anyway. At least one expert that they spoke to thought it was possible Trump could appoint her to a lower court for a bit before promoting her, giving the ADF unprecedented control of our legal landscape.  “It feels a bit like we’re David against Goliath,” she said of ADF's work. “Yet we know how that story ends.”