Andrew Layton Schlafly (; born April 27, 1961) is an American lawyer and Christian Right conservative activist.
Schlafly was the lead counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons' efforts to bring the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act before the United States Supreme Court.
Early life and education
Schlafly is one of six children.
His great-great-grandfather August Schlafly was a
Swiss American to the United States. His father Fred Schlafly was an attorney, and his mother
Phyllis Schlafly (née Stewart) spearheaded the movement opposing the Equal Rights Amendment and was founder of the
Eagle Forum.
Born and raised Catholic Church in Alton, Illinois,
Career
Engineering
After graduating from Princeton, Schlafly briefly worked as a device physicist for
Intel in Santa Clara, California until 1983, when he became a
microelectronics engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Schlafly later worked for
Bell Labs before enrolling at Harvard Law School.
Legal
Schlafly graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991 with a
Juris Doctor in the class that included future U.S. president
Barack Obama.
From 1989 to 1991, Schlafly was an editor of the
Harvard Law Review.
["Harvard Law Review Board of Editors, Volume 104, 1990-1991." From search of the Harvard Visual Information Access system , Record Identifier: olvwork365353.]["Harvard Law Review Board of Editors, Volume 103, 1989-1990." From search of the Harvard Visual Information Access system , Record Identifier: olvwork390852]
After law school, Schlafly served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall Law School.
Schlafly was an associate for the Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz law firm in New York City before moving to private practice. Additionally, he is General Counsel at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and led its unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
In 2010, Schlafly took the role of lead counsel for a group seeking to recall US Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey. The group, associated with the Tea Party movement, argued that the US Constitution permits a recall election for federal offices without explicitly so providing.[Isenstadt, Alex (November 18, 2010), "Court kills Robert Menendez recall push", Politico.] Later that year, Schlafly represented the group RecallND in RecallND v. Jaeger before the North Dakota Supreme Court in another effort to recall Democratic Senator Kent Conrad.
Conservapedia
Schlafly created the
wiki-based Conservapedia in November 2006 to counter what he perceived as a liberal bias present in Wikipedia.
He felt the need to start the project after reading a student's assignment written using
Common Era dating notation, rather than the
Anno Domini system that he preferred. Although he was "an early Wikipedia enthusiast", as reported by Shawn Zeller of
Congressional Quarterly, Schlafly became concerned about perceived
bias after Wikipedia editors repeatedly undid his edits to the article about the 2005 Kansas evolution hearings.
Schlafly expressed hope that Conservapedia would become a general resource for American educators and a counterpoint to the liberal bias that he perceived in Wikipedia.
The site has been accused of spreading Pseudoscience, such as HIV/AIDS denialism, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, climate change denial, relativity denial, and vaccine/autism connections,
In 2009, Schlafly appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss his Conservative Bible Project, a project hosted on Conservapedia that aims to rewrite English translations of the Bible in order to remove or alter terms advancing a "liberal bias".
Dialogue with Richard Lenski
Richard Lenski, an
Evolution known for his work on the
E. coli long-term evolution experiment, was contacted by Schlafly in 2008 regarding a set of results that showed one population of
E. coli evolved the novel trait of being able to metabolize
citrate. Conservapedia supports
creationism and objects to evolution, so Schlafly disputed that bacteria could evolve via beneficial
. The correspondence was commented on across the Internet. Schlafly was criticized by Lenski on
Ars Technica, among other sites, for not reading Lenski's paper properly, for not understanding the experimental data he requested, and for not taking notice of people on Conservapedia itself who considered the paper well researched.
Trademark lawsuit against Saint Louis Brewery
In 2011, Schlafly led a lawsuit on behalf of the family of his activist mother, Phyllis, to block
Schlafly Beer from acquiring a trademark on the name "Schlafly". In 2018, the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of The Saint Louis Brewery.
Personal life
In 1984, Schlafly married Catherine Kosarek, a medical student and fellow Princeton alum.
They live in Far Hills, New Jersey.
External links
