Chicago-Kent Reaches Semifinals, Takes Best Brief in Religious Freedom Moot Court Competition

On the Weekend of Oct. 10, two moot court teams sponsored by our ACLU student organization gave fantastic performances in Notre Dame's Religious Freedom Moot Court Competition and brought home some laurels!

The teams wrestled with whether a vaccine mandate act was constitutional, honing in on whether the law constituted an Establishment Clause violation by forcing universities to provide a religious exemption to the COVID vaccine mandate or lose state funding, and whether the Supreme Court should continue to use the Lemon test or officially endorse a different test for Establishment Clause questions. Our two teams, Ben Levine and Esteban Valtierra, and Alana Hirsh and Megan Janowiak, wrote their briefs and then fervently prepared for oral arguments in the short week between the brief due date and the competition this past weekend. Both teams gave fantastic oral arguments and did Chicago-Kent proud, with Ben and Esteban finishing as semifinalists. Ben and Esteban also won that golden ring of moot court competitions: the award for best brief!

Prof. Mary Nagel served as the teams' faculty coach, and the teams had guest judge appearances by Profs Godfrey and Schmidt (and Keller), alumni Mary Goers '21 and Jeffrey Tsai '21, and fellow students Hannah Bucher '22, Lauren Ehardt '22, Mia Hayes, '22, and Andy White '22.