Mathew Staver


Mathew D. "Mat" Staver is an American lawyer and former Seventh-day Adventist pastor who became a Southern Baptist. He is a former dean of Liberty University's law school. In 1989, he founded Liberty Counsel law firm, where he serves as chairman. ProPublica called him "a leading Christian legal theorist."

Education

Staver received a B.A. in theology from Southern Missionary College, an M.A. in religion from Andrews University, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Kentucky. During college he began a process which led him to later leave the SDA church and eventually attend a Southern Baptist church.

Career

A Young Earth creationist who believes that intelligent design should be taught in public schools, Staver also denies Darwinian evolution.
He has argued before the Supreme Court of the United States twice, has argued before most of the federal courts of appeals, and testified before the United States Congress.
Staver served as the dean of the Liberty University School of Law from 2006 to 2014. Staver has been a frequent guest speaker at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C.
In 2011 he was added to the Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations, which was established by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.
In October 2015, Staver claimed that 100,000 people gathered in Peru to support his client Kim Davis in support of her refusal to issue marriage licenses. The event was shown to have happened more than a year earlier and was unrelated to Davis. Liberty Counsel issued a press release, stating that Staver had relied on a member of the Congress of the Republic of Peru for the information on the rally.
In late 2018 he voiced his opposition to LGTBQ rights by requesting that references to gender identity and sexual orientation be removed from a senate bill that would make lynching a federal crime. Staver "pushed back against mainstream media coverage, and explained that while no one can or should oppose a bill banning lynching, there were provisions in it that served an ill purpose."
In 2020, he represented a Tampa, Florida pastor who was arrested for holding church services when the county had mandated churches to close. Charges against the pastor were later dropped.

Legal cases

In 1994 Staver argued the Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc. at the United States Supreme Court, representing individuals who fought a court order banning protesters from interfering with those entering or exiting the clinic within a 36-foot buffer zone. The Court ultimately ruled 6-3 striking down the 300-foot zone around people going in and out of the clinic and striking down the prohibition against images "observable" from inside the clinic. The court upheld the 36-foot buffer zone. An audio recording of the case was made by the Supreme Court.
In 2012 Staver unsuccessfully argued a case at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia on behalf of Liberty University against the Affordable Care Act. On July 12, 2013, the Fourth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act over Liberty's arguments against the "employer mandate."
Staver also represented former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis who has fought issuing any marriage licenses because she did not want to issue licenses to same-sex couples based on her religious objection. The case was petitioned before the U.S. Supreme Court.