David Hacker

David Hacker is Vice President of Legal Services and Senior Counsel at First Liberty where he manages and directs First Liberty’s litigation, communications, external relations, client outreach, and legal support teams. A natural leader and tenacious litigator, David has been a champion for religious liberty throughout his 20-year career.

During his tenure, First Liberty has won four Supreme Court cases: Groff v. DeJoy (landmark Title VII religious accommodation victory), Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (free exercise and free speech victory for praying high school football coach that eliminated the Lemon test), Carson v. Makin (giving religious parents equal access to state educational funds), and Navy SEALs v. Biden (injunction and settlement protecting over 4,000 sailors with religious objections to vaccine mandate).

David previously served on the executive team of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. As Associate Deputy Attorney General for Civil Litigation, he managed over 600 lawyers and staff in twelve practice groups working on more than 35,000 cases. He also was Special Counsel to the Attorney General and to the First Assistant Attorney General, who he advised on a wide variety of legal and policy issues, coordinated multistate legal actions, and handled relationships with key stakeholders. As Special Counsel for Civil Litigation, he handled the State’s highest profile cases and multistate litigation on topics as diverse as federal administrative law, separation of powers, Indian law, immigration law, nuclear waste policy, property rights, collective bargaining, education law, corporate governance, and healthcare regulation.

Earlier in his career, David spent over a decade at Alliance Defending Freedom as Senior Counsel and Director of the Center for Academic Freedom. While at ADF, he won many groundbreaking cases protecting free speech on college campuses, including Badger Catholic, Inc. v. Walsh, 620 F.3d 775 (7th Cir. 2010), DeJohn v. Temple University, 537 F.3d 301 (3d Cir. 2008), and College Republicans at San Francisco State University v. Reed, 523 F. Supp. 2d 1005 (N.D. Cal. 2007). He began his career in the Chicago office of Arnstein & Lehr LLP.

The Texas Supreme Court has twice appointed David to serve as a member of the Professional Ethics Committee of the State Bar of Texas in 2021 and 2024. He also teaches continuing legal education courses and speaks on religious freedom and free speech issues. Numerous media outlets have featured his cases and clients, including Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the journal Science.

David graduated from Northwestern University, with a degree in English and Philosophy, and Washington University School of Law, where he was a published editorial board member of the law journal.