Eric Kniffin
Principal, Kniffin Law PLLC
Eric Kniffin advises religious organizations and people of faith on employment, governance, and religious-liberty questions, and represents them in court when a dispute can’t be avoided.
He founded Kniffin Law PLLC in 2023 after two decades of civil-rights and religious-liberty work at the U.S. Department of Justice, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and Lewis Roca, where he was a partner in the firm’s religious institutions group.
Eric has represented religious institutions and faith-based businesses in more than thirty states, including denominations, dioceses, national conferences, colleges, K–12 schools, and social-service ministries. He helps them understand their legal protections and structure their decisions so those protections hold. He describes this work in Protecting Your Right to Serve: How Religious Ministries Can Meet New Challenges Without Changing Their Witness, published by The Heritage Foundation. He also represents individuals whose faith has put them at odds with an employer or the government.
At the Civil Rights Division, Eric enforced the Fair Housing Act and RLUIPA and represented the United States in three Ninth Circuit appeals. He helped secure a $2.7 million settlement against Donald Sterling, the section’s largest housing-discrimination settlement at the time. At Becket, he worked on Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, the Supreme Court’s first recognition of the ministerial exception. He also worked on Moss v. Spartanburg County School District Seven, protecting released-time religious instruction, and was co-counsel at a twelve-day trial in Stormans v. Selecky, defending pharmacists’ conscience rights. At Lewis Roca, he helped secure permanent injunctions for hundreds of religious employers against federal contraceptive and gender-identity mandates.
At Kniffin Law, he served as lead counsel, with Alliance Defending Freedom, for a coalition of Orthodox churches challenging Washington’s 2025 law requiring clergy to report abuse disclosed in confession. The case ended in a stipulated permanent injunction that protects the seal of confession.
His practice draws on the Administrative Procedure Act, RFRA, ERISA, constitutional law, employment law, and nonprofit formation, governance, and tax. He has advocated before state legislatures and has represented the USCCB, the Knights of Columbus, and the Assemblies of God, among others, as amicus counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Eric is also a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he leads EPPC’s amicus brief practice and writes on religious liberty, conscience, and federal regulation. His briefs, articles, and media appearances are collected on his EPPC author page. His writing has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, the National Catholic Register, Inside Higher Ed, and the Washington Times.
Eric’s work at EPPC is separate from Kniffin Law PLLC.
He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, Bonnie, and their seven children.
Experience
Kniffin Law PLLC, Principal, 2023–present
Lewis Roca, Partner, 2014–2022
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Legal Counsel, 2009–2014
U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Trial Attorney, 2005–2009
Education
Notre Dame Law School, J.D.
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, M.A.
Wheaton College, B.A., Philosophy
Clerkship
Hon. Theresa L. Springmann, U.S. District Court, N.D. Indiana, 2003–2005
Admissions
Colorado · Illinois · District of Columbia
U.S. Supreme Court and eight federal courts of appeals
