Freedom Guard

Freedom Guard was the pro-bono public-interest law firm Mike Johnson built after his stint as dean of a law school that never opened. Search for the firm’s name today and every result treats it as a passing clause in Mike Johnson’s biography — “in 2015 he founded Freedom Guard” — and moves on. Nobody profiles the firm itself: not its board, not its business model, not the one famous case it won and what happened to that win afterward (Kentucky Lantern).

The details that do exist come from an Associated Press investigation into Johnson’s pre-Congress career. The AP found that after Johnson resigned in the fall of 2012 from Louisiana College — where he had been hired as inaugural dean of a Judge Paul Pressler School of Law that collapsed without enrolling students, amid financial infighting and a denied accreditation — he went back to litigating for Christian causes and “started a new pro-bono firm, Freedom Guard,” with Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council president and a longtime Johnson mentor, serving as a director according to business filings (Associated Press).

A four-part mission, run by one lawyer

The closest thing to a founding manifesto comes from August 2015, quoted in an Accountable.US research memo from a profile in The Bridge. It described Freedom Guard as “a public interest law firm” that was “dedicated to defending faith and freedom through landmark litigation, strategic counsel, education initiatives, and public advocacy,” with the work “led by CEO and Chief Counsel Mike Johnson, a nationally recognized constitutional law attorney” who had been a member of the Louisiana Legislature and previously served as senior legal counsel and media spokesman for Alliance Defending Freedom (Accountable.US). Liberty University’s own journal dates the founding to 2015 and describes Freedom Guard as “a nonprofit legal ministry to defend people and institutions of faith” (Liberty Journal). The Baptist Message, the Louisiana Baptists’ news outlet, uses the same 2015 date (Baptist Message).

The Ark Encounter case

Freedom Guard’s signature engagement began when Kentucky rescinded tourism tax incentives for the Ark Encounter, the 510-foot wooden Noah’s Ark replica that Answers in Genesis was building in Grant County. The state tourism cabinet had initially awarded the project a sales-tax rebate worth up to $18 million, then withdrew it in 2014 after concluding that Answers in Genesis had shifted the project from tourist attraction to religious ministry — including screening employees on religious grounds (Kentucky Lantern).

Baptist Press’s contemporaneous coverage of the lawsuit’s filing identified the legal team precisely: “Freedom Guard, a non-profit law firm dedicated to freedom of religion, and the Center for Religious Expression are providing free legal representation to AiG in the case.” Johnson, as chief counsel, argued that the denial amounted to viewpoint discrimination: “Just because an applicant happens to be religious does not mean that they can be treated differently. They can’t be excluded from a program just because of their viewpoint.” The same article recorded the state’s position from a December 10, 2014 letter: the Commonwealth would not grant incentives to a company that intended to discriminate in hiring based on religion, and considered the incentives an unconstitutional advancement of religion (Baptist Press).

Johnson appeared in a 24-minute video with Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham discussing the case, and in 2016 U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove ruled for Answers in Genesis, holding that the state’s exclusion of the ark from the tourism incentive based on its “religious purpose and message” violated the First Amendment (Kentucky Lantern). After the ruling, Johnson said: “The court has affirmed a longstanding principle that the Constitution does not permit a state to show hostility towards religion.” The Lantern later reported that WDRB had reported Kentucky agreeing to pay Answers in Genesis $190,000 in legal fees in connection with the case (Kentucky Lantern).

The other cases

The Baptist Message records a second Freedom Guard engagement: Johnson “defended the sports chaplaincy program at Louisiana State University from attacks that it was unconstitutional” (Baptist Message). And in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision, the LSU student paper The Reveille — citing NOLA.com — reported that Johnson “offered legal services under the group ‘Freedom Guard’ to any public official who refused to issue a same-sex marriage license” (The Reveille).

What happened after Johnson left

Johnson was elected to the U.S. House from Louisiana’s 4th district in 2016, and Freedom Guard — always essentially a vehicle for his litigation — fades from the record at that point. No readable source verifies any activity by the firm after 2016, and no source verified for this profile describes the firm’s current status. The tax-incentive victory itself later unraveled in part: after the property was transferred to a nonprofit affiliate, Kentucky pulled the incentives again over a breach-of-contract claim, according to reporting quoted in the Accountable.US memo (Accountable.US).

What this profile does not claim

It does not claim a precise legal formation date for Freedom Guard — the AP’s reporting implies a post-2012 start while Baptist and university sources say 2015. It does not claim the firm remains active; nothing verified describes its status after Johnson’s 2016 congressional election. It does not assert a client list beyond Answers in Genesis, the Center for Religious Expression co-representation, and the LSU chaplaincy defense. It does not repeat the Accountable.US memo’s editorial characterizations of Johnson; that document is used here only for the August 2015 Bridge description it quotes in full.