Conservative legal group aims to export its rightwing Christian mission beyond US borders

Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal advocacy group behind the overturning of Roe v Wade, has ramped up its global spending on litigation and other campaigns, in what appears to be an attempt to export what critics call its hard-right Christian theocratic values beyond US borders.

ADF and ADF International, a separate legal entity, spent a combined $10.9m on international grants and programs for the year ending June 2024, according to its most up to date public tax records, and appears to have increased by 70% year-on-year spending on Europe-related issues.

Paul Coleman, executive director of ADF International, who is based in Vienna, Austria, described the mission of his group as “not only defending the persecuted, but also countering censorship, upholding biological reality, and securing rights for parents”.

“By God’s grace, that’s exactly what we have done,” he said in ADF International’s 2024 annual report, which states the group has had “success” in 39 cases at the European court of human rights and 282 victories in national courts.

In the US, the group, which was founded more than three decades ago, has been involved in a number of high-stakes and high-profile legal cases involving conservative Christian issues: from challenges to gay and transgender rights to calls for religious charter schools to receive taxpayer funding.

Neither ADF nor ADF International, which are both led by CEO Kristen Waggoner, responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.

A review of ADF International’s work shows the group is trying to replicate a blueprint that has led to some major victories in the US: namely of promoting and supporting individual cases involving Christians who allege they are being persecuted or muzzled for their religious beliefs, and trying to elevate those claims to the highest courts.

Alyssa Bowen, deputy executive director of True North Research, an investigative research watchdog, said ADF’s activities should be raising alarm bells for civil society in Europe and other regions.

“Despite their PR claims, ADF’s foreign operations will use religious freedom not as a shield but as a sword to attack equal rights and to assail efforts to protect the fundamental rights and freedom of all people,” Bowen said.

The ADF’s record, she claimed, of “attacking the rights of women, the LGBTQ+ community, and parents and teachers who support truth in public education” ought to be a lesson for other countries to impose limits on spending to influence elections and protect judges’ independence.

In Finland, ADF has become a player in what it calls a free speech case involving a member of parliament, Päivi Räsänen, who was accused of incitement against a minority group after she criticized the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland in a tweet for supporting an LGBT Pride event, saying the move was “elevating shame and sin”.

Räsänen, a member of the Christian Democrats (a relatively small political party in Finland) has twice been acquitted but her case is now being reviewed by the Finnish supreme court. In emailed responses to the Guardian’s questions, she said ADF International had reached out to her in Autumn 2019 after it heard of her case.

“I am extremely grateful for the expertise of ADF International in defending the freedom of speech and religion,” she said.

At the center of the controversy is the question of whether Räsänen violated a law that prohibits threats, defamation or insults on the basis of race, color, descent, relgion or sexual orientation, among other classes. Most violators are fined under the law and – so far – only individuals who have deemed to be very harmful or racist against ethnic minorities have been found guilty.

Räsänen’s case is unique because it is the first one that tests the limits of hostile speech against a “sexual minority” in the supreme court, said Tuomas Äystö, a lecturer at the University of Helsinki.

“Räsänen’s legal team insists that a guilty verdict would “make it illegal to quote the Bible’, but this is not the case. It does not matter, from the perspective of the Criminal Code, which book the defendant has quoted; they are only interested in what the defendant has done,” Äystö said. A verdict of not guilty by the supreme court would lead to a big public discussion, he added, regarding the rights of sexual minorities, the role of religion in society and politics, and perhaps the influence of international actors in Finland. She would likely seek to appeal a guilty verdict to the European court of human rights.

“In both outcomes, I imagine Räsänen’s well-established international Christian networks will be interested and report on her verdict – either as a victory or an outrage,” he said.

The case has made her a celebrity among the European leaders of the far right. On a recent trip to Budapest, while attending a conference organized by the Axioma Center, she said she “unexpectedly received a request” to meet with Viktor Orban, who she said “set aside an hour for our conversation”. ADF was not involved in setting it up, she said.

ADF’s UK branch has funded the case of Livia Tossici-Bolt, an anti-abortion campaigner who was convicted in April 2025 for breaching a buffer zone outside an abortion clinic near Bournemouth. On its website, ADF UK said it “continues to support her legal defence”. In the US, a lawyer for the group appeared alongside Nigel Farage before the House judiciary committee, which had invited the Reform UK leader, and testified to what Farage called “the awful authoritarian” situation for free speech in the UK.

The New York Times reported that the ADF “brokered” a meeting between Farage and top state department officials in London and have “supplied the Trump administration with attack lines that cast the British government as hostile to free speech”.

In a statement to the Times, ADF International said the group is “non-politically partisan” and has “engaged with every major political party in the UK”. But a Labour spokesperson said there was not record of ADF having any contact with the party. Farage told the Times that his party spoke with “all sorts of groups” and denied any suggestion that he has spoken against abortion. He did tell the newspaper, however, that the 24-week limit on abortion was “looking in serious jeopardy given that we actually spend a fortune saving babies at 22 weeks”. “Maybe we need to rethink all of that,” he told the newspaper.

In Germany, ADF International has also fought in support of groups that hold vigils outside abortion clinics, saying that banning such protests violate rights to freedom of expression.

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