If the Supreme Court undid the “final pillar of marriage law” - that it be between a man and a woman - it would lead to a “clash of absolutes” between religious faiths that see gender as a binary and LGBTQ communities who believe, in Kacsmaryk’s words, “the human person is more like a pluripotent cell whose sex and sexuality are subject to autonomous self-definition.” Supreme Court was considering whether states must allow and recognize same-sex marriages, Kacsmaryk penned an essay in the National Catholic Register entitled “ The Abolition of Man … and Woman.” He argued “sexual revolutionaries” had desecrated marriage by allowing no-fault divorce, decriminalizing adultery and legalizing contraception and abortion. “As President Trump recognized … it is time to reaffirm ‘America’s leadership role as a nation that protects religious freedom for everyone.’” “Our clients have been litigating against the government’s effort to punish business owners and ministry leaders for following their religious beliefs and moral convictions since 2013,” Kacsmaryk said in a statement at the time. In a lawsuit, First Liberty argued that providing these medications, which they said were abortion-inducing, violated the plaintiff’s sincerely held religious beliefs.įirst Liberty settled the suit in 2017 after the Trump administration amended the requirement to exempt those with “conscience-based objections” to providing contraception. Supreme Court, including one in which the high court found a school district discriminated against a football coach who prayed on the sidelines after a game.Īt First Liberty, Kacsmaryk challenged the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurance plans cover birth control and emergency contraception like the morning-after pill. Its attorneys have argued several cases before the U.S. First Liberty, formerly the Liberty Institute, is a religious liberty legal group based in Plano. In 2014, he joined First Liberty Institute as deputy general counsel. Kacsmaryk attended Abilene Christian University and the University of Texas School of Law before working in private practice at Baker Botts and serving as an assistant U.S.

One of the plaintiffs is a doctor from Dumas, north of Amarillo, who claims he and his patients have been harmed by the FDA’s approval of the medication. But the group incorporated an Amarillo outpost in August 2022, records from the Texas Secretary of State’s office show, three months before filing the lawsuit. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the anti-abortion group challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, is based in Tennessee. And he ruled that a longstanding federal program that gives teens confidential contraception violated state law. He struck down efforts from the Biden administration to protect LGBTQ workers and trans youth. He reinstated the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy on behalf of Texas. Since Kacsmaryk joined the bench, the Texas attorney general and private litigants have brought their most contentious suits to Amarillo, largely with the desired outcome. Kacsmaryk himself has been outspoken in his opposition to LGBTQ rights.

Under his leadership, First Liberty was involved in several legal fights over reproductive health care, including trying to block the “contraception mandate” which required health insurers to pay for birth control. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk hears 95% of the cases filed in Amarillo.īefore Kacsmaryk was appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2019, he was deputy counsel for the First Liberty Institute, a deeply conservative religious liberty law firm based in Plano. They filed it in Amarillo, a Texas city that didn’t have an abortion clinic even before the state all but banned the procedure.īut Amarillo does have a federal courthouse with, importantly, just one federal judge presiding. When anti-abortion groups wanted to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of an abortion-inducing drug, they didn’t file the lawsuit in Maryland, where the FDA is headquartered, or in any state where the pill is still legally prescribed. Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

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