Lori Windham

Lori Windham is Senior Legal Counsel at Becket, a non-profit legal and educational institute with a mission to protect the free expression of all faiths. She has represented clients in religious freedom cases at every level, from the district courts to the Supreme Court. Her work has included cases under the Free Exercise Clause, Establishment Clause, and federal and state religious freedom laws. Her diverse clients have included Amish builders penalized for their traditional construction practices, Evangelical churches unable to use their property for worship, and public school districts sued for accommodating religious expression. At the Supreme Court, she has worked on four landmark religious liberty cases, protecting the right of churches to choose their own ministers, the right of prisoners to engage in religious exercise, the right of Catholic nuns to run their organization according to their faith, and the right of the Green family and Hobby Lobby to live out their faith in the conduct of their business.

Lori has been invited to serve as an expert on religious liberty law in a variety of settings. She has debated and lectured on religious liberty issues at Yale Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Central European University, and other venues. She has been called to testify on religious freedom issues before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Lori regularly appears in national media to speak about her cases, including appearances on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other outlets.

Lori is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Abilene Christian University. She has served on the Board of Visitors of Abilene Christian University and received the ACU Young Alumnus of the Year award for her work at Becket.