Voices of Freedom - Interview With Todd Gaziano

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

An Interview with Todd Gaziano, President, Center for Individual Rights At a time when constitutional rights face continuing pressures---from campus censorship to race-based government policies---one organization has spent the last 35 years winning legal battles that set lasting precedents for individual liberty. The Center for Individual Rights was founded in 1989 to defend constitutional principles through strategic litigation. Its first major Supreme Court victory, Rosenberger v. University of Virginia in 1995, established that public universities cannot discriminate based on religious viewpoint---a principle that continues to influence cases to this day. CIR also secured landmark victories challenging race-based admissions policies in the University of Michigan cases. Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Todd Gaziano, who became CIR's president in 2023. Before joining CIR, he led legal centers at both the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Heritage Foundation, served as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and as chief counsel to a House subcommittee. He discusses CIR's strategic approach to defending equal protection, religious liberty, free speech, and competitive federalism---and explains why these constitutional battles matter for every American. Topics Discussed on this Episode: Todd's path to the Center for Individual Rights and the most urgent threats to constitutional rights today The 30-year legacy of Rosenberger v. University of Virginia and its impact on campus free speech CIR's current cases challenging race-based policies in Portland schools and within federal programs Religious liberty and competitive federalism: why these areas matter Concerns and hopes for the future of constitutional rights in America

Hello and welcome to Voices of Freedom, a Bradley Foundation podcast. I'm Rick Graber, President and CEO of the Bradley Foundation. On the podcast, we'll explore issues that affect our freedoms with a focus on free enterprise, free speech, and educational freedom. So let's get started. At a time when constitutional rights face continuing pressures from campus censorship to race-based government policies, one organization has spent the last 35 years,

winning legal battles that set lasting precedence for individual liberty. The Center for Individual Rights was founded in 1989 long time ago to defend constitutional principles through strategic litigation. It has argued eight Supreme Court cases setting landmark precedence for free speech and federalism and challenging race-based admissions policies in two very well-known University of Michigan cases. Today, CIR focuses on equal protection, free speech, and restoring competitive federalism, in short, taking on cases that protect individual rights against government overreach. Todd Gazziano became CIR as president in 2023.

He previously led legal centers at both the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Heritage Foundation, served as commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and served as Chief Counsel to a House Subcommittee. Todd, welcome. It is wonderful to have you on Voices of Freedom. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be talking with you today. Absolutely. And let's jump right in, Todd. And let's talk a little bit about you to start. As mentioned at the top, you've worked in government, you've worked in Congress, at major legal organizations before making the decision to join CIR. What drove you to CIR?

What attracted you to this organization? Thanks for asking. I really have been lucky in my career. I've had a lot of really great jobs. So I wasn't looking for anything. But I couldn't resist when the chairman of the board at CIR told me the longtime president was retiring, mostly because of CIR storied history that you mentioned of so many Supreme Court and other court decisions that have furthered individuals. that have furthered individual rights.

But it's also a specially important time. There has never been a court system that is as receptive to restoring individual rights and placing constitutional limits on government in my lifetime as there is now. And then the final factor is that I've enjoyed in my career helping build institutions. I help build a department at Heritage,

the Legal Center and a couple of departments of Pacific Legal Foundation. This may be my last rodeo, so to speak, at my age. But I really enjoy growing CIR staff, our docket of cases, which we've already doubled in two years, and, of course, to what end, to increase the impact that we're able to have. Fantastic. And let's build on that a little bit. When you took this job a couple years ago, what did you see as the most urgent threats at that time, constitutional rights, not all that long ago. And with that, what opportunities did you see for

CIR to make a difference? Well, it got together with my senior team, which existed of, you know, current and some new people. And we decided that there were three areas that were really important rights that were under threat, but that also CIR had a real expertise in a history of helping advance. And those were the three that you mentioned just a minute ago, guaranteeing equal protection of the law to all Americans, and not equity of result, but equal protection of the law, freedom of speech for all Americans, and restoring competitive federalism. And if you don't mind, Rick, let me just expand a little bit on that last point, which is that CIR won an important Supreme Court case restoring federalism. And it's one of the few public

interest law firms in our network that has such an expertise. And so it's been a very important foundation in which to build a project on federalism. And we're unique in that. I think we're the only organization that's put a stake in the ground and said restoring federalism is our top priority. We're going to lead the nation in it. And we are delighted. We are delighted. There are many other important individual rights. We're delighted that others are specializing in it, but it's those three that we think are both vital and that we can make a contribution toward it. Let's dig a little bit deeper on competitive federalism, as you call it. We've got a lot of non-lawyers in our audience, I'm sure.

What do you mean by that term? Why does it matter? Exactly what problem does your project attempt to address? Thanks. And I don't think whether you're a lawyer or not a lawyer, I think a lot of people have a few mission understandings about the federalism of the U.S. Constitution. And there are different federalist designs. But the framers of our Constitution spent the longest time trying to get separation of powers right and federalism right. Now, people understand that the separation of powers is how they divided the national government, Congress, the president, and the courts, and that was designed to

promote individual rights. It wasn't because they had a passion for Congress, qua Congress. It's that they wanted those three institutions to be properly divided in the powers to protect their individual liberty. Well, they had the exact same thought in mind for federalism. When they debated federalist and the federalist system, it wasn't because they love states, qua states. And that's maybe one of the misapprehensions. Well, states should always have the power because states are closest to people. States are closest to the people, but states can abuse our rights too. So the framers in setting up federalism did the same thing. Certain powers go to the federal government, certain powers of the states. It wasn't just that

they were trying to divide them randomly, but the idea about competition comes in place into two ways. If the federal government is kept in its proper lane, then states compete with each other. And we can talk about that a little bit more later. Let me just put that aside. But the framers also wrote about the fact that we can make the federal government and state governments compete with each other for our affection, our allegiance, so that if one of them gets out of their lane and begins to abuse us, we can appeal to the other level of government to push back and try to restore the other level of government, whether it be the federal government of the States into their proper place. And at CIR, I mentioned we had one Supreme Court case in 2000 called

United States v. Morrison. And that's one of the very few cases where the Supreme Court has struck down a federal law as exceeding Congress's power. It was a part of the Violence Against Women Act that we had struck down. It's not that we're for violence. against anyone, of course, but that's a state power. And so we struck down that attempt of Congress. And that's important because if we don't limit the federal government to its enumerated constitutional powers, it won't leave any room for the states. And if you don't mind, let me mention one other case we're currently litigating.

We actually have two cases that leading challenge to the Corporate Transparency Act pending right now. The Corporate Transparency Act was passed by a few Congresses ago that would purport to require 32 million organizations. These are HOAs, big corporations, small corporations, family trusts, pool associations. You must register with the federal treasury all your beneficial owners. And if you get it wrong, you're liable to civil or criminal penalty. Now, there's many things wrong with that. One is it violates the First Amendment, probably the Fourth Amendment, but also the federal government has no authority to require that.

They have no authority over corporate registration. That's a state issue, and the framers actually debated that. Madison wanted to give power to Congress, to register corporations, and people said, no, that's a state function. A federal judge last December struck that law down on our theory, that it exceeds congressional authority, issued a nationwide injunction, and went up to the Supreme Court at the end of the Biden administration. The Trump administration has sort of put it on pause saying that they'll narrow the rule. They were supposed to do that by the end of this year. They're a little late.

But why is that important? It's important, I think, to kill the statute and not just narrow the rule because if, as we argued, if the federal government's theory of its power is right, then there's no limit to Congress's power. If there's no limit to Congress's power, we're just waiting for Congress to get around to regulate us. And there'll be, the states would just exist at the sufferance of Congress. So these kind of cases are extremely important if we're going to maintain the, what we call the vertical separation of powers. The vertical separation of powers is federalism. And it's equally important with the separation of powers at the national level.

Well, it's why it's so important to have organizations such as CIR watching that because I have a hunch the average citizen is not watching that or may not understand all the consequences. And I got to assume the federal government. I've got to assume all governments try to get outside their lane at times and have to be rained in. But if we assume that the federal government stays in its lane, then states will thereupon enact different policies from each other. And citizens can decide where to live or not live based on those differences. In today's mobile society, it certainly is much, much easier than at the time of our founders for people to move from one state to another. Is that still important? Is this notion of states in effect competing

with each other still important? It's incredibly important. And it may be even more important now than it was in olden times. But progressives, of course, are frustrated by that. They're frustrated by the ability of states. States competition on the level of taxation, the type of taxation, the type of business regulation, the type of economic. That kind of competition is one of the few ways that we, the people, can actually put pressure to reduce taxes. So why do progressives dislike it?

Progressives dislike it because they want one size fits all policies that they dictate. So they would like Congress to take control, dictate everything across the board. One of the few ways that we still have, of course, to try to pressure states to be responsive to us is by threatening to vote with their feet. We've seen such migration. We've seen migration out of California, Illinois, New York, into Texas and Florida. The reason Texas and Florida are going to. Let me mention two conditions that are necessary for this to work. by the way, the phrase in the early 20th century that someone came up with is called Laboratories of Democracy.

So one of the other ideas that this works is if you allow policy innovation, some states are going to come up with better ideas, or at least ideas that they think are better, and the ones that work are going to be replicated. And by the way, it doesn't mean that every state has to adopt every, you know, if you really like high taxes and some services that are provided, then God bless you, move to Illinois and California and New York and just live in that high-tax tax nirvana. But anyway, for that to work, two conditions have to happen. The federal government needs to stop mandating or bribing states. And the bribery is something, some people call that cooperative federalism.

Michael Greva, who's a co-founder of CIR, now a professor at Scalia Law School, that many listeners know, he calls it coercive federalism so that, you know, those money for Medicaid and education funding always comes with strings. And when you have too many strings, state innovation is impossible. The other condition we need is that states need to stay in their lanes, and we are interested in suing other states that try to regulate extraterritorially. So California, New York, and sometimes Texas and Florida like to legislate beyond their boundary. For this to work, states need to only regulate their own economic behavior and not pass greenhouse gas rules that impose regulations outside their border.

So if you like high regulation, high tax, it could work, but it's got to be confined to that state. So that's the two elements of our project to restore competitive. of pedilism. Well, that's great. Let's stay at the state level. You noted earlier that state officials are just as capable of abusing our rights as federal officials. I know you recently launched a lawsuit against the Portland Public Schools challenging its so-called equity allocation formula that provides additional funding based on race. Talk to us a little bit about that case and what makes it so significant in today's civil rights landscape. Thank you for asking.

And I think one reason that it's significant is people have heard that the Supreme Court did strike down Harvard's racist admissions policy. And they know that the Trump administration is trying to dismantle diversity, equity, inclusion, or DEI policies mostly at the federal level, but they're using their influence elsewhere. And some people wrongly assume that that means that the fight to end government racial preferences and racial discrimination is over. Well, it's not. And the Portland case shows one way in which it's still a very hard fought battle. People at the local level are doubling down on racial preferences. And in this case, Portland is providing more money to schools that have a higher percentage of certain favored minorities and less to other schools. And by the way, if you're a minority student at one of the

majority Asian schools, you're kind of screwed by that too. But there's another aspect of what Portland did that's even worse. Not only is Portland funding the schools unequally based on race, but they told parents who previously were allowed to contribute and raise money and contribute to their own kids' schools, that they could no longer make up for the difference. They issued a new rule a little over a year ago that said that all parent fundraising will now go to the central kitty and will be redistributed according to our racial equity and social justice model, and said that instead of these parents being able to make up the difference for teachers' aides and cafeteria workers and front office workers, which was some of the ways that they were trying to make up

for the difference. Now we will hoover up all that money. Well, guess what? Parent fundraising dropped precipitously, predictably, in one year. Millions of dollars were removed, but the bureaucrats in Portland would rather those kids in certain schools suffer. And they told during the debate, white parents, Asian parents, many of which don't have a lot themselves, but were raising money for their own kids' school. They said that they were racists for trying to raise money and better their own kids. And that's not just crazy. That's evil and that's unconstitutional. And we're going to stop it.

I like your chances. And I got to think Portland's not the only school district in this country that's doing similar things. Do you have evidence of others? We think that there are others, and that's actually a great point, Rick. Another significance of our case is that we've got to set a precedent to prevent other school districts from doing the same thing. But also we don't want them. If we didn't challenge it, the lead that, you know, the kind of policies that Portland is instituting would be more likely to be followed by other schools. This is why setting legal precedence is so important.

I mean, executive orders can come and go depending on who's in charge nationally or at the state level. But a legal precedent's a little bit different, isn't it? That's absolutely right. Some of our other litigation is equally important for that reason. Regardless of what good a particular administration is doing, what one executive order can do, a president can repeal with another executive order. So the legal cases, the legal precedents are important. Your recent docket report examines the 30-year legacy of Rosenberger v. University of Virginia,

which was CIR's first Supreme Court win back in 1995. And that established that universities can't discriminate against religious viewpoints. What was that case all about and why is it proven to be so important? Thanks for asking about that, too. our kind of review of it showed several lessons. So I'm just going to begin with the facts first of that case. In the early 90s, UVA, like many universities, had a student activity fee. And that student activity fee was used to fund student-run clubs and organizations of all types,

unless they had a religious viewpoint. And so Ron Rosenberger and his friends founded a student-run magazine with a religious perspective, and they applied for support to print it, and they were denied under the UVA policy. And what was terrible was that the law seemingly actually required that. There were a few wrongheaded Supreme Court cases from the 60s and 70s that said, you must express, in our terms, hostility to religion and deny any funds from ever going to something that's religious or that would create an establishment of a religion. Well, we knew that was crazy.

And CIR, my predecessors represented Ron Rosenberger and his friends, and they lost on appeal at UVA, and they lost in every federal court, federal appellate court. They hired Michael McConnell, who was the then and still as one of the leading religious liberty advocates. He even lost at the court of appeals level. So that's how entrenched this doctrine was. but we took it to the Supreme Court and CR won a hard-fought 5-4 decision. And the Supreme Court, unsurprisingly, it was surprising to maybe us today that it was 5-4, and Justice O'Connor had a sort of hand-wringing concurrence. But they ruled that no colleges cannot discriminate in their funding decisions

based on religious viewpoints. In other words, free speech includes the freedom of religious speech. Now, again, that seems unremarkable to us today. So what is its impact meant? Well, if your viewers and listeners want to go to our website, they can find that Docket Report article. But we found that it's been cited over 1,600 times in judicial decisions, 57 of them in the Supreme Court,

and 11 of them in the Supreme Court are particularly important. What's most interesting to me, though, was that there weren't a whole lot of citations and then it trailed off. That's what we might have expected. No, it's been pretty, the citations are pretty steady, but they increased in recent years. So it's more important 30 years later than it was initially. And here are some of the impacts. It was a killer of a later landmark case. that upheld school choice plans from your neck of the woods, actually.

But there was an argument in the early school choice days that school choice is unconstitutional because money might flow to Catholic schools or might flow to other religious schools. And the Supreme Court said, no, we already decided in Rosenberger that it isn't unconstitutional if funding is on an equal basis and some of it goes to religious schools. another five or seven years later, the Supreme Court struck down a state constitutional ban that banned any state money to flow to any religious institution, even if it was on an equal basis. These are the so-called Blaine amendments, which were largely anti-Catholic. But the Supreme Court, again, citing Rosenberg, we've already decided that money can flow. And in fact, this is a violation of people's freedom of association and religious liberty for that to happen.

And the last phase, and this is why I think Rosenberger is actually have an uptick in recent years, is campus sort of culture and campus cancellation debates. Rosenberger is applied in a different context instead of funding a student magazine. It's still involving student speech. So the same principle we established 30 years ago is now being applied in a different context. And I'd like to say that the last lesson is that this is why strategic litigation is important. It can give you an immediate important win,

but it can also continue to provide dividends for decades to come. Really impressive. That's great. Beyond Rosenberger, I know CIR has remained very active in combating campus viewpoint discrimination, why does that area continue to be so critical and what do recent cases look like in that space? Well, thanks. And on this, I'm just going to try to do a little amateur history first. Sure. As most folks know, from the 1960s on, the left launched a decades-long battle to capture control.

of colleges and universities. And they did this because they wanted to dictate scholarly debate, and they wanted to control the education of college graduates for decades to come. Well, in the 1960s, when this really became hot, they were the defenders of free speech. But as soon as they succeeded, largely succeeded in capture and control, then they wanted to silence their opposition. So all too often, they intimidated or punished or threatened speech that they didn't like. And as we know from surveys of professors and students, many students and faculty stay silent rather than face retribution.

Now, I think in recent years, it's gotten a little bit better. But let me tell you about one of our cases in which we've had a four-year battle and we're, continuing to fight, and it shows why this is still important. We are suing the University of Pittsburgh on behalf of Norman Wong. Now, Norman Wong is a cardiologist in the medical school. Dr. Wong was the director of the one of the cardiology residency programs, and he wrote a peer-reviewed article in the leading cardiology journal that questioned the use of racial preferences in medical education, and he also questioned the legality. No one at University of Pittsburgh noticed the article for about four months. And then they noticed it and all hell broke loose because the dean

and the other administrators felt really threatened, really threatened by an article in a peer-reviewed medical journal. And so they called Dr. Wong in and they pressured him to retract his article. And he refused. So then they started the severe punishment. They told him he could have no contact with students or residents because he was too dangerous. A person with that view was too dangerous. They cut his pay.

They took away his directorship of the medical residency program. They began a really nasty campaign to ostracize him at the university and in the academic community. They eventually pressured the medical journal to withdraw. draw his article through defamatory claims that we're now suing on. And in fact, during this litigation, we've uncovered an email where one other faculty member was concerned that the attacks were so severe that Dr. Wong might commit suicide. Well, instead, he's fighting. And we've been representing him for more than four years. That case is now in the federal appellate court in Philadelphia. and it shows just how long and hard these battles are.

You may think the tide is turned on campus culture, but they never give up. And it's very expensive to take on a big university and a medical center that's attached to the university like that. But we have no choice. They're not going to give up just because Trump is in the White House and we can't give up because if we do bigotry wins. But when we do win, we set a precedent.

that goes beyond just the University of Pittsburgh. It sends a strong message to all the other universities that there will be a price to pay for this kind of cancellation. Thanks very much for that work. Fantastic. We've got time to explore one more example of your work. And I really like this one because it's a great example of collaboration among like-minded organizations.

I know that you're currently partnering with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Young America's Foundation, both of which are very well known to the Bradley Foundation, to challenge a small business administration program which discriminates against millions of Americans in lots of different federal programs for grants, for loans, contracts, other benefits. Tell us about that lawsuit. Glad to. Very excited to bring this new case with these partners. I'll begin with a teeny bit of history.

CIR won a major case two years ago called Ultima, striking down the small business administration's use of a racial presumption in its minority business contracting program. Billions of dollars were going into this minority business contractors. In the way that program worked, the law presumed that members of certain races were automatically socially disadvantaged and, qualified, and everyone else had to go through all sorts of hoops, and most people never qualified. So it was a great day when the judge said that was unconstitutional, but what the judge ruled was that the SBA could not rely on the presumption in the regulation. The regulation stayed on the books.

What we also then figured out later was that that regulation had been embedded in 20 other federal programs that give grants, investment opportunities, loans, even internship programs that the Young America Foundation folks would like to apply to. But that regulation was issued in 1999, and the statute of limitations has seemingly run on attacking it. Well, we came up with an innovative way to do that. So that's why we partnered with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. And we did that for a couple of reasons. They're also very successful in this area. We decided that our clients and our work together could make a bigger difference together than separately. It's also more fun. And I have a great deal of confidence that we will be able to get a very broad and lasting

precedent because what's important is even if the Trump administration is not applying those presumptions. And by the way, our clients have found out that they still are. You know, there's 20 some programs. We call this, this regulation we're going after. If you're a Lord of the Rings fan, instead of the one ring that controls them all, this is the one regulation that controls them all. So we need a judicial ruling that will take it out forever. We've got to kill this regulation once and for all so that no future president can revive it. And as I say, We're delighted to be working with a lot of allies in that effort. Great.

Todd, last question. You've mentioned your broad career. You've seen constitutional issues from all kinds of vantage points. And through government service, working in the Congress, now leading CIR. As you look ahead, on one hand, what concerns you most? And then on the other hand, let's end on an upbeat note, what gives you hope about the state of constitutional rights in America? What gives me concern is that I don't think American schools are teaching the fundamental constitutional principles very well or to very many Americans. I'm not through our grantees, but absolutely agree.

And if we don't understand as citizens are fundamental at a principal level that applies regardless of who's in power, it's going to be harder for us to restore that. But what gives me hope is that we're not in it alone. And just as you said, there are great institutions like the Line and Harry Bradley Foundation, like our other allies that are listening, like the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, that are all focusing on constitutional principles and education about them. So that's what makes all of our work possible that there are so many other people who care about the same things that we do. Fantastic. Todd, before we go, how can our listeners learn more about CIR and? and more about what you do. Thank you.

Yes. Listeners, viewers can go to our website, C-I-R-U-S-A-O-R-G. It's been really great talking to you, but I'd like to hear from others, too. Great. Todd Gazziano, thanks so much for your time today. Thanks so much for your leadership,

for your organizations, leadership, and tackling really fundamental issues, issues that have made our country exceptional and will continue to do so. Thanks again. Thank you so much. And as always, thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of Voices of Freedom. Join us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for our next conversation

on issues impacting our freedom in America's foundational principles. And make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. I'm Rick Graber, and this is a Bradley Foundation podcast. Thank you.