Bopp is known for his staunch
social conservatism, and his past and present clients are "a who's who of social conservatism," including the
Traditional Values Coalition, the
Home School Legal Defense Association,
Concerned Women for America, and the
Federation for American Immigration Reform. Bopp was the editor of
Restoring the Right to Life: The Human Life Amendment, a book promoting the
Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to overturn
Roe v. Wade and ban abortion. A study conducted in 2014 showed that Bopp was one of a comparatively small number of lawyers most likely to have their cases heard by the Supreme Court. He has repeatedly been named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the
United States by the
National Law Journal,
Activities in Republican organizations He became Indiana's Republican National Committeeman on the
Republican National Committee in 2006, and became the RNC's vice chairman in 2008. In 2009, Bopp was the lead sponsor of an RNC resolution that initially called on the
Democratic Party to change its name to
Democratic Socialist Party. A compromise resolution was passed instead, condemning President
Barack Obama and the
then-Democratic congressional majority for "pushing America toward socialism and more government control." During a 2010 RNC meeting, he was the chief sponsor of a resolution covering financial support of
candidates. The "
purity test" resolution (titled "Proposed RNC Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates") names ten
public policy positions that are important to the RNC and stipulated that public officials and candidates who disagree on three or more of the ten positions would be ineligible for financial support or endorsement from the RNC.
Activism against same-sex marriage and LGBT rights Bopp has repeatedly represented Indiana on the Republican Party's platform committee, On the committee, Bopp pushed for a socially conservative platform, advocating platform language stating that children "deserve a married mom and dad" and referring to "natural marriage" as between a man and a woman. Bopp opposed efforts by billionaire Republican
Paul E. Singer to add a statement to the party platform committing the party "to respect for all families," a signal of openness to
LGBT Americans; Bopp called the proposed language "redundant and superfluous." Bopp opposed an effort by some delegates to replace the 60-page platform that the committee had adopted with a simplified two-page "statement of principles" that excluded any mention of contentious issues, such as
same-sex marriage. Bopp wrote in opposition to the alternative proposal that: "Obviously, the adoption of this statement of principles would be a major defeat for those of us that want the Republican Party to promote traditional marriage since the minority report wipes out our current platform language that supports traditional marriage." In
ProtectMarriage.com v. Bowen, Bopp represented
ProtectMarriage.com in a suit challenging the finance limit required for reporting campaign donations and the open way in which information on such donations is shared in
California. This lawsuit was filed after the identities of people supporting
California Proposition 8 were revealed as a result of disclosure laws.
Attempts to overturn 2020 presidential election results In the November 2020 election, President
Donald Trump was defeated by Democratic candidate
Joe Biden. Trump refused to concede the election and made false claims that the election was "stolen" from him; Bopp supported Trump's false claims. Bopp filed four lawsuits challenging the election results in four swing states won by Biden—
Pennsylvania,
Michigan,
Georgia and
Wisconsin. Bopp's lawsuit, brought on behalf of a handful of voters in each of the four states, sought to throw out more than 6.3 million votes across 18 counties and therefore make Trump the winner of those states, and thus the election. One week after filing the lawsuits, Bopp abruptly withdrew the suits. He declined to explain why. Bopp also represented
True the Vote, a right-wing advocacy group that promotes false allegations of
election fraud, in several failed lawsuits that questioned the presidential election outcome in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The lawsuits produced no evidence of significant fraud or irregularities.
Representation of Republicans in unsuccessful lawsuits claiming voter fraud During the 2020 election, Bopp represented Republicans in lawsuits over voting rights. Bopp claimed, without evidence, that proactively mailing ballots to registered voters would lead to voter fraud.
Anti-vaccination lawsuit In 2021, Bopp was the lead counsel for a group of eight Indiana University students who sued the university over its requirement that all students and employees to be
vaccinated against COVID-19, except students and employees who had a religious or medical reason not to be vaccinated.
America's Frontline Doctors, a right-wing anti-vaccination group, financed the litigation. The federal district court rejected the group's request for an injunction, and the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs' motion for an injunction pending appeal.
Campaign finance and election-law suits Bopp is particularly known for his opposition to all forms of limits on money in politics and his role as counsel for groups seeking to strike down campaign-finance limitations. Bopp describing himself as launching a "ten-year plan" to invalidate campaign finance regulations. In 2011 in
Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, Bopp successfully defended the
Susan B. Anthony List against a defamation lawsuit by
Steve Driehaus, a former Democratic congressman who claimed that the SBA List had made false statements regarding taxpayer funding of abortion in the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The court ruled "We do not want the government deciding what is political truth — for fear that the government might persecute those who criticize it. Instead, in a democracy, the voters should decide." In
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Bopp represented
Citizens United, drafting the complaint and handling the early stages of the litigation. Bopp did not argue the case in the Supreme Court in 2009, having been replaced by
Ted Olson. In
Leake v. North Carolina Right to Life, Inc., Bopp also represented the challengers to a North Carolina campaign-finance regulations. In
Wisconsin Judicial Commission v. Gableman (2010), Bopp successfully represented
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice
Michael Gableman in a case alleging he broke the
Wisconsin Judicial Code of Conduct during his successful run for the state supreme court. The Wisconsin Supreme Court deadlocked, 3–3, on the case. In
Kurita v. Tennessee Democratic Party (2008), Bopp represented former
State Senator Rosalind Kurita, a Democrat, in her suit against the
Tennessee Democratic Party for removing her as the Democratic nominee in her State Senate district after she had won the primary. In
Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Montana (2012), Bopp represented party challenging Montana's ban on corporate independent expenditures. In
Doe v. Reed (2010), Bopp delivered oral argument to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that Washington state's disclosure of signatures on a
ballot initiative petition violate the
First Amendment; the Court rejected this argument. In
Randall v. Sorrell (2006), Bopp argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of Vermont Right-to-Life Committee, Vermont Republican Party, and American Civil Liberties Union in a successful challenge to Vermont's stringent spending and contribution limits. In
Federal Election Commission v. Beaumont (2003), Bopp represented North Carolina Right to Life, Inc., and others in the U.S. Supreme Court, unsuccessfully arguing that a direct contribution prohibition to nonprofit advocacy corporations violated the First Amendment. In
Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002), Bopp argued on behalf of the challengers to a Minnesota rule of judicial conduct barring candidates for judicial office from expressing their views on disputed legal and political issues; the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, 5–4, that the rule was unconstitutional. In
McConnell v. FEC (2004), Bopp represented the challengers in a suit challenging the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002 (McCain-Feingold); the challenge was largely unsuccessful, as the court upheld most BCRA provisions as constitutional, but the Supreme Court subsequently gutted one of the two key provisions of McCain-Feingold a few years later in
FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (2006–07), in which Bopp also represented the challengers. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit,
Crawford v. U.S. Department of Treasury, alleged that a number of provisions of the act unconstitutionally violate privacy rights of U.S. citizens, while burdening both private individuals and the financial institutions that they patronize.
14th Amendment lawsuits Bopp represented Representatives
Marjorie Taylor Greene and
Madison Cawthorn in separate lawsuits that attempted to disqualify them from office on the basis of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
National Right to Life Committee In 2022, responding to reports that
a 10-year-old rape victim travelled from Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion, Bopp said that model legislation he developed for the
National Right to Life Committee would have banned that abortion; he also said that they believed that the child should have been legally forced to carry the pregnancy to full term and give birth, and "we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child." ==References==