Gene Schaerr
Gene Schaerr: Safeguarding Our Freedoms
By Ann Guthrie Hingston
The freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment are the underpinnings of our democracy. These are the freedoms for Americans to assemble, worship in the manner we choose, petition our government, operate a free press and, most importantly, speak freely without threat of government interference.
At a time when these rights are being challenged, we celebrate Gene Schaerr, a Derwood Republican and nationally recognized attorney, for using his exemplary legal skills to safeguard our freedoms and privacy. We thank him and Martha, his wife and a Central Committee member, for their continuing generosity to the Republican party. On Saturday, June 24 at the MCGOP Summer Soiree, Gene Schaerr will be a featured speaker. To attend, click here www.mcgop.com.
Gene Schaerr is a nationally recognized appellate litigator known in Washington as a “Super Lawyer” with a 75 percent success rate. Educated at Brigham Young University and Yale University where he earned two Masters degrees in economics and a law degree, he served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justices Warren Burger and Antonin Scalia and for DC Circuit Judge Ken Starr. He served also as an Associate Counsel to President George H.W. Bush in the White House. Over the years he built a career leading Sidley Austin’s appellate practice and served as the Chair of Winston & Strawn’s nationwide appellate practice. He has experience in virtually every area of federal law, constitutional law, including defamation, higher education, immigration, labor and employment, patent and trademark, product liability and warranty, statutory interpretation, and tax.
In 2014 Gene Schaerr established a boutique law firm, Schaerr and Jaffe LLP, and since then two non-profits to advocate for our freedoms. Today he serves as General Counsel of Protect the 1st Foundation, https://www.protect1st.org/, a nonpartisan group whose mission is to stop enactment of legislative and administrative provisions that violate First amendment rights, thereby helping those affected avoid spending the millions of dollars usually required to defend their rights in court.
He also serves as General Counsel of the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability (PPSA), https://www.protectprivacynow.org/, a citizens group advocating for greater protection of privacy and civil liberties in government surveillance programs, including using FOIA requests to uncover the nature and extent of federal surveillance on American citizens. Established in response to 9/11 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s section 702 has helped prevent some terror attacks and most recently been instrumental in combating cyberattacks and Chinese espionage but it also has been used to conduct millions of unwarranted invasions of citizens’ privacy. With Congress considering whether to renew section 702 this year, Gene Schaerr has been busy advocating for meaningful reforms to stop partisan and other abuses by the FBI and intelligence community. As Schaerr has written in the Washington Examiner, “Put legal guardrails in place to prevent abusive surveillance.”
We celebrate Gene and Martha Schaerr as members of our growing Montgomery County Republican family. We applaud their tireless efforts to assist our community, their devotion to the Church of Latter Day Saints, and their growing family with more than a dozen grandchildren.
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Ann Guthrie Hingston is a Member of the Maryland Republican Central Committee from Montgomery County.