Press Releases

Advancing American Freedom led an amicus brief with 36 other amici in Consumers’ Research v. Consumer Product Safety Commission urging the Supreme Court to take up the case and rule in favor of Consumers’ Research, restoring the President’s constitutionally established authority over the Executive Branch.

“With its recent decision overturning Chevron, the Court rightly reasserted the constitutional authority of its own branch. In this case, it has the opportunity to do the same for the Executive Branch,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat.

“Over the last century, the powers vested by the Constitution in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government have been slowly and purposely leeched by the Progressive movement into the ‘fourth branch’ administrative state,” Wheat said.  “This case will help reverse that process and restore the Constitution’s three co-equal and distinct branches in order to safeguard liberty.”

As is the case for several agencies within the administrative state, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is headed by a multimember board, the members of which are protected from presidential removal except in narrow circumstances. As a result, the Commission, which is ostensibly a part of the Executive Branch, operates beyond the control of the person vested by the Constitution with the executive power: the President.

Wheat concluded, “We urge the Supreme Court to take up this case and take another important step in the direction of restoring the balance of powers established by the Constitution.”

Read the full brief here.

Advancing American Freedom led an amicus brief with 66 other amici in Parents Protecting Our Children, UA v. Eau Claire School District, Wisconsin, urging the Supreme Court to take up this case and rule that parents suffer harm when school districts hide from them the so-called social gender transition of their children.

“The effort to drive a wedge between children and parents on the issue of gender, and thus to undermine parental authority at the expense of parental rights, is concerted and nationwide,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “So far, the courts have failed to adequately protect the interests of parents who believe, as did virtually all people just a few years ago, that children cannot change their gender. The Supreme Court has so far largely ignored this most important of issues. America’s families cannot afford for it to do so any longer. We call on the Court to take this case and rule that the parents have standing to protect their children from the outset, not just after the harm to their children has already been done.”

Read the full amicus brief here.

Vice President Pence released the following statement after the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron decision which checks the power of the Executive Branch as designated by the Constitution.

“Today’s decision by the Supreme Court Overturning Chevron Deference is a great day for the Constitution and the American people. Since Chevron was decided in 1984, the heavy hand of big government has been encroaching on Congressional powers, and that power has rightly been put in check today. No longer will the Constitution’s safeguards be whittled away as our courts are forced to defer to unelected bureaucrats. The Constitution is the greatest charter of freedom in human history, that has been proven by the test of time. Today’s ruling is a monumental moment for preserving freedom, prosperity and Constitutional Limited Government for future generations of Americans”.

Advancing American Freedom issued the following statement after the Supreme Court overturned Chevron, checking the power of the administrative state.

“Today, the Supreme Court rightly overturned the four-decade old Chevron Doctrine, reasserting the fundamental role of the federal judiciary to ‘say what the law is’ rather than deferring to the often expansive and ridiculous interpretations of self-interested, unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “With 17 amicus briefs on the issue in appellate courts and the Supreme Court, seeing Chevron overturned has been one of our chief goals because of the damage it does to our constitutional system. The Constitution created three branches of government and balanced the powers among them because the Founders understood that the unification of the powers of government was one of the central threats to liberty. Chevron has allowed the courts to turn a blind eye to unelected bureaucrats of the administrative state contriving regulations that have the force of legislation, can enforce those regulations against Americans like the executive, and can do so before their own kangaroo court administrative law judges rather than before the courts established through the Constitution and the constitutional process. Chevron made matters worse because it required courts to defer to the administrative state’s interpretation of law, removing yet another check on the administrative state. The Court’s decision today was an essential repair of Constitutional order. AAF will continue to engage in legal advocacy that returns power to the constitutional branches of government that were established nearly a quarter of a millennium ago to protect freedom against government overreach.”

“Today, the Supreme Court failed to reverse the Biden Administration’s absurd pro-abortion interpretation of a Reagan-era law, instead allowing a lower court’s pause on Idaho’s pro-life law while the case makes its way through the courts,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “In 1986, a bipartisan coalition in Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) which was designed to prevent emergency rooms from turning away patients who could not afford to pay and which includes express protections for the unborn. Nearly forty years later, after the Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the Biden Administration announced its novel interpretation that EMTALA ensured that abortion was among the stabilizing treatments EMTALA required emergency rooms to provide. As we explained in our amicus brief, this reinterpretation has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the statute and everything to do with the Biden Administration’s anti-life agenda. The Court’s decision puts both unborn children and hospitals around the country at risk. In this instance, as justice Alito notes in his dissent in this case, ‘[a]pparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents.’ AAF will continue to fight for life in this and future cases to ensure that no child’s chance at the blessings of liberty is snuffed out by abortion.”

You can read the amicus brief here.

“In a very important decision today, the Court took another step towards reviving the separation of powers established by the Constitution, ruling that defendants against charges of fraud are entitled a jury trial before an Article III court,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “Today, the Court decided SEC v. Jarkesy, clawing back significant power from the administrative state’s in-house ‘administrative law judges’ (ALJs) requiring instead, as the Constitution requires, that civil actions alleging fraud be brought in front of independent Article III courts. As we argued in our amicus brief in this case, the ALJ system is one of the many ways the administrative state flies in the face of the constitutional separation of powers and thus in the liberty of the people that system was designed to protect. There is much work to be done but today’s decision brings us one step closer to reining in the administrative state.”

You can read the full brief here.

Advancing American Freedom issued the following statement after the Supreme Court reached a decision in Murthy v. Missouri.

“Today, the Supreme Court failed to hold the Biden Administration accountable for its censorship of Americans through social media companies, finding that the plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri lacked standing,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “In our amicus brief, we argued that the government cannot indirectly censor speech that it dislikes any more than it can do so directly, yet that is exactly what it did here. The Court’s failure to ensure that Americans’ First Amendment speech and associational rights are protected ensures that they will be violated in the future. The standing doctrine is an important limitation on the Court, ensuring that it cannot insert itself into every issue it thinks is important. Nonetheless, the Court should not use standing to avoid its fundamental duty: protecting the rights of the people.”

You can read the full statement here.

Advancing American Freedom led an amicus brief with 39 other amici in Iowa v. SEC, which consolidates eight cases from around the country challenging the SEC’s new rule requiring corporations to make significant and costly disclosures not only about their own environmental impact but also about the environmental impact of certain companies with whom they do business.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission exists to support a healthy and competitive securities market which is an essential element the American economy. The commission is not empowered by Congress to engage in environmental regulation,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “This climate disclosure rule prioritizes the environmentalist agenda of a few powerful corporations and union pension funds at the expense of everyday Americans, and in the process, tramples on the constitutional rule of law that was designed to ensure the liberty of the people. For these and many other reasons, this rule must be struck down.”

You can read the full amicus brief here.

Advancing American Freedom today announced a $10 million nationwide grassroots education campaign to defend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and advocate for pro-growth conservative fiscal policy. The campaign will include direct engagement with Capitol Hill through seminars, policy memos, and media alongside targeted grassroots activation focused on the ongoing tax and spending debate. The campaign will begin this summer and extend into 2025.

“Advancing American Freedom is launching a campaign to defend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the largest tax cuts and tax reform in American history that let the American people keep more of their hard-earned money and returned jobs to America. The past few years of the Biden administration have shown us that you cannot spend your way out of inflation, and you will not be able to tax your way out of a spending problem,” said AAF Founder Vice President Pence. “Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Our national debt is out of control, and taxing the American people more is not the solution.”

See Advancing American Freedom’s new tax report here.