Skip to content

What is the Civil Rights Defense Fund?

The Civil Liberties Defense Fund (CLDF) is an ongoing initiative of the KN Law Group and co-founders Nicholas Bonavia and Tim Garvey. It was started in September 2021 to fund and provide representation for strategic lawsuits involving civil rights and first amendment issues for individuals and business owners in Kansas. The CLDF has expanded upon the KN Law Group past successes related to challenging unreasonable governmental mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, in ongoing first amendment abuses by state and local government, and other constitutional litigation and legislative initiatives.

History

Since March 2020, the firm’s judicious selection of cases and strategic litigation decisions in civil liberties related matters have resulted in a high degree of precedent-setting success both in and out of court. Our litigation successes include:

  • obtaining a federal injunction against Governor Kelly regarding her statewide church shut-down order in the early days of the pandemic;
  • regular judicial and administrative litigation challenges to COVID-19 emergency orders;
  • challenges to discriminatory governmental actions and laws burdening religious freedom, free speech, free association, and other fundamental constitutional rights;
  • pushing back against overreach by the Kansas Department of Revenue and the Internal Revenue Service;
  • open government litigation for violations of the Kansas Open Meetings Act (KORA) and the Kansas Open Meetings Act (KOMA); and
  • forcing governmental bodies amending or rescinding illegal orders in response to strategic litigation and legal efforts.

For several of these cases, KN Law Group partnered with Private Citizen, Inc., a Missouri-based 501(c)(3) organization, and the Kansas Justice Institute, a Kansas-based non-profit litigation organization. These partnerships and keystone donor support have helped the firm initiate litigation throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to address serious threats to civil liberties imposed by Kansas governmental bodies, employers, and schools. Additionally, every effort is made to ensure that clients themselves make some financial investment or other alternative funding arrangements might be made before leveraging CLDF funds. However, given the expense of litigating against government entities, sometimes adequate resources are not available, and CLDF supplements these funding shortfalls. By policy, CLDF does not profit from any monetary judgment in its cases but only advances attorneys fees and litigation costs on approved cases.

Moreover, directly due to the firm’s efforts, the Kansas legislature addressed the concerns raised in many of these litigation successes by during the 2020 and 2021 session. HB 2016 (2020 session) and SB 40 (2021 session) successively stripped many emergency powers from state and local governments and added important due process protections for individuals in Kansas. Additionally, as a direct result of the firm’s groundbreaking lawsuit on behalf of a gym owner in Wichita, Kansas, the Kansas legislature appropriated 50 million dollars to compensate businesses for COVID shutdowns.

In Fall 2021, as governmental regulators began to reissue mask, vaccine, and other COVID-19 related local orders in Kansas in the wake of the COVID-19 delta and omicron variants, the CLDF, with the support of keystone donors, was pivotal in funding and pursuing litigation to protect civil liberties in Kansas. Many upcoming potential lawsuits are based on the expanded due process protections provided to citizens in SB 40, as well as other statutory and constitutional claims.

In 2025, CLDF engaged directly with parents of homeschoolers subject to discriminatory treatment in sports participation at local school districts. As a result of CLDF’s support, a local school district in Kansas reversed its discriminatory policies and the Kansas legislature passed SB 114, prohibiting school districts statewide from engaging in discriminatory treatment of school athletes solely based on their enrollment status.

CLDF continues to be involved in matters both in and out of court to protect First Amendment and other constitutional rights, parental rights, and the rights of businesses to be free from targeted or unwarranted governmental overreach.