Andrew Schlafly

Andrew Layton Schlafly (/ˈʃlæfli/; born April 27, 1961) is an American lawyer and Christian conservative activist.[1] He is the founder and owner of the wiki encyclopedia project Conservapedia. He is the son of the conservative activist and lawyer Phyllis Schlafly.[2]

Andrew Schlafly
Schlafly in 2007
Born
Andrew Layton Schlafly

(1961-04-27) April 27, 1961
Alton, Illinois, U.S.
EducationPrinceton University (BSE)
Harvard University (JD)
Political partyRepublican
Spouse
Catherine Kosarek
​
(m. 1984)​
Children2
Parent

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.[3] His great-great-grandfather August Schlafly was a Swiss immigrant to the United States. His father Fred Schlafly was an attorney, and his mother Phyllis (née Stewart) spearheaded the movement opposing the Equal Rights Amendment and was founder of the Eagle Forum.

Born and raised in Alton, Illinois,[3][4] Schlafly graduated from Saint Louis Priory School and later received a B.S.E. in electrical engineering and certificate in engineering physics from Princeton University in 1981.[5][6]

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.[7] Schlafly later worked for Bell Labs before enrolling at Harvard Law School.[2]

Schlafly at the 2011 March for Life

Schlafly graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991 with a J.D. in the class that included future U.S. president Barack Obama.[1] From 1989 to 1991, Schlafly was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.[1][8][9]

After law school, Schlafly served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall Law School.[2] In 1992, Schlafly ran as a Republican for the United States House of Representatives seat of Virginia's 11th congressional district; Schlafly came in last place in a field of five candidates in the primary.[10]

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.[11][12] In 2010, Schlafly wrote an article for the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons about the economic effects of the legislation.[13]

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.[14] On November 18, 2010, the New Jersey Supreme Court rejected Schlafy's arguments, finding that the New Jersey provision violated the U.S. Constitution.[15] 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.[16]

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Main article: Conservapedia

Schlafly created the wiki-based Conservapedia in November 2006 to counter what he perceived as a liberal bias present in Wikipedia.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19][20][21][22] The site has been accused of promoting misinformation on scientific subjects, such as HIV/AIDS denialism, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, climate change denial, relativity denial, and vaccine/autism connections,[23][24][25] and has advocated Young Earth creationism,[26] Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories[27] and conspiracy theories that the January 6 United States Capitol attack was staged, as well as promoting criticisms of atheism, feminism, homosexuality, and the Democratic Party.

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".[28]

Dialogue with Richard Lenski

Richard Lenski, an evolutionary biologist[29] 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 mutations. 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.[30]

Trademark lawsuit against Saint Louis Brewery

In 2011, Schlafly led a lawsuit on behalf of the family of his notable activist mother, Phyllis, to block The Saint Louis Brewery 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.[31]

Personal life

In 1984, Schlafly married Catherine Kosarek, a medical student and fellow Princeton alum.[32] They live in Far Hills, New Jersey.[33]

References
  1. "Morris County resident, son of famous activist, runs 'Conservapedia' website". The Star-Ledger. January 6, 2010. Retrieved June 4, 2013. unsuccessfully ran in a Republican congressional primary in 1992 and also volunteered for [gubernatorial candidate] Steve Lonegan in 2009.
  2. "Phyllis Schlafly Bio". Eagleforum.org. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved March 24, 2013.
  3. Critchlow, Donald T. (2005). Phyllis Schlafly and grassroots conservatism: a woman's crusade. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 32–33. ISBN 978-0-691-07002-5.
  4. Mauney, Michael (1975). "Schlafly & Her Children". The LIFE Images Collection. Getty Images. Retrieved February 9, 2017.
  5. Hamilton, Keegan (November 4, 2009). "Hallowed Be Thy Name: A member of the Schlafly clan figures to do the Lord's work by cleansing the Bible of its "liberal bias"". Riverfront Times. Retrieved February 6, 2017.
  6. Bernstein, Mark F. (February 24, 2010). "A Moment With ... Andrew Schlafly '81, on 'Conservapedia'". Princeton Alumni Weekly. Retrieved June 4, 2013.
  7. Lee, D.J.; Becker, N.J.; Schlafly, A.L.; Skupnjak, J.A.; Dham, V.K. (October 1983). "Control logic and cell design for a 4K NVRAM". IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. 18 (5): 525–532. Bibcode:1983IJSSC..18..525L. doi:10.1109/JSSC.1983.1051988. S2CID 41608960.
  8. "Harvard Law Review Board of Editors, Volume 104, 1990-1991." From search of the Harvard Visual Information Access system Archived August 22, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, Record Identifier: olvwork365353.
  9. "Harvard Law Review Board of Editors, Volume 103, 1989-1990." From search of the Harvard Visual Information Access system Archived August 22, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, Record Identifier: olvwork390852
  10. "THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Primaries; Democrat Loses Arkansas Runoff". The New York Times. June 10, 1992. Retrieved July 19, 2010.
  11. "AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly Discusses ObamaCare Lawsuit". Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. May 4, 2010. Archived from the original on June 4, 2010. Retrieved June 4, 2010.
  12. "ObamaCare: Giant Meteor Scheduled to Strike in 2014" (Press release). June 2, 2010.
  13. Schlafly, Andrew L. (Summer 2010). "ObamaCare: Not What the Doctor Ordered" (PDF). Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. 15 (2): 58–59.
  14. Burton, Cynthia (May 28, 2010). "N.J. Supreme Court hears tea party's push to recall Menendez". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved June 4, 2010.
  15. Isenstadt, Alex (November 18, 2010), "Court kills Robert Menendez recall push", Politico.
  16. Beitsch, Rebecca (October 20, 2010). "Supreme Court hears arguments in recall of Conrad". Bismarck Tribune. Archived from the original on October 24, 2010. Retrieved October 31, 2010.
  17. Simon, Stephanie (June 22, 2007). "A conservative's answer to Wikipedia". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  18. Zeller, Shawn (March 5, 2007). "Conservapedia: See Under "Right"". The New York Times. Retrieved June 8, 2008.
  19. Siegel, Robert (March 13, 2007). "Conservapedia: Data for Birds of a Political Feather?". NPR.org. Retrieved July 26, 2007.
  20. Chung, Andrew (March 11, 2007). "A U.S. conservative wants to set Wikipedia right". The Star.com.
  21. Johnson, Bobbie (March 1, 2007). "Rightwing website challenges 'liberal bias' of Wikipedia". The Guardian.
  22. Goldsbrough, Susannah (July 22, 2020). "How Mrs America's son is flying the conservative flag – and fighting Wikipedia's 'liberal lies'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
  23. Gefter, Amanda; Biever, Celeste (August 11, 2010). "E=mc2? Not on Conservapedia". New Scientist. Archived from the original on July 1, 2015. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  24. "Weird, wild wiki on which anything goes". Metro. March 19, 2007. Archived from the original on March 23, 2007. Retrieved March 25, 2007.
  25. Simon, Stephanie (June 22, 2007). "A conservative's answer to Wikipedia". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 24, 2011. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  26. Stöcker, Christian (March 6, 2007). "Wikipedia for Christian Fundamentalists: The Lord's Encyclopedia". Der Spiegel. Archived from the original on April 22, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2015.
  27. Walker, Clarence E; Smithers, Gregory D (2009). The Preacher and the Politician: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and Race in America. University of Virginia Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-8139-3247-7.
  28. Gibson, David (October 7, 2009). "A Neocon Bible: What Would Jesus Say?". Politics Daily. Archived from the original on October 8, 2009. Retrieved October 7, 2009.
  29. "Richard Lenski | Home". Myxo.css.msu.edu. Retrieved March 13, 2011.
  30. Arthur, Charles (July 1, 2008). "Conservapedia has a little hangup over evolution". Technology Blog. The Guardian. Retrieved June 4, 2010.
  31. Stempel, Jonathan (November 26, 2018). "U.S. conservative Phyllis Schlafly's heirs lose trademark appeal over brewery". Reuters. Retrieved July 3, 2021.
  32. "Catherine Kosarek, Medical Student, Marries Andrew L. Schlafly, Engineer". The New York Times. November 25, 1984. Retrieved June 5, 2010.
  33. "Conservative Bible Project aims to rewrite scripture to counter perceived liberal bias". Associated Press/New York Post. December 4, 2009.

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