Michael Farris has been a national leader in the homeschooling movement since he founded Home School Legal Defense Association in 1983. He has been the Chairman of HSLDA for the last 42 years.
Mike is a constitutional lawyer with over 48 years of experience. He has litigated and handled the appeals of dozens of cases involving important questions of constitutional law. He has argued and won two constitutional cases in the Supreme Court of the United States. He has argued numerous additional cases in both the state and federal appellate courts across the country.
He has led numerous conservative legal organizations over his decades of practice. He is best known as the Founding President of the Home School Legal Defense Association which he started in 1983. He has received many awards for his leadership in homeschooling including being named to the Top 100 Faces in Education for the Twentieth Century by Education Week. He was cited for his work in winning legal recognition for the right to homeschool.
He was the President and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom from January 2017 until he retired in October 2022. During that time, ADF served as counsel in the Supreme Court for several important cases including Masterpiece Cakeshop. He personally argued NIFLA v. Becerra in the Supreme Court in 2018, winning a case that voided a California law that sought to silence pro-life pregnancy centers. During his presidency of ADF, the organization served as co-counsel to the Attorney General of Mississippi for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case that reversed Roe v. Wade.
Farris was the Founding President of Patrick Henry College. He is currently Chancellor Emeritus for PHC. For seventeen years, he taught Constitutional Law, Public International Law, and coached the school’s moot court team.
Michael Farris graduated from Western Washington State College with an honors degree in Political Science in 1973. He earned his J.D. from Gonzaga University School of Law in 1976 with honors. He was also an honors graduate from the University of London with an LL.M. in public international law.
He has used his international law degree primarily to lead efforts to successfully block the ratification of UN treaties which would have the effect of transferring jurisdiction of domestic issues from the states to the federal government which in turn would be under the supervision of the UN. He has successfully argued that Americans should make the law for America.
Michael Farris is also an ordained Baptist minister and currently serves as an elder for his church, Cornerstone Chapel, in Leesburg, Virginia. He and his wife, Vickie, have ten children, thirty-one grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.