It’s not often that a MAGA stalwart such as Laura Loomer and a group founded by Stephen Miller align with progressive-leaning trial lawyers against the US Chamber of Commerce and House Republicans.
Or that a Democratic lawmaker who has advocated for LGBTQ+ rights allies with a religious liberty group behind Supreme Court cases that dismantled LGBTQ+ protections.
Senator
The litigation funding industry began with the mission of bringing access to justice by giving individuals—and the trial lawyers representing them—the financial backing to sue big corporations and other institutions. It’s also a competitive asset class with funders taking the risk that their backing will pay off many times over in awards, jury verdicts and settlements.
That’s why funders were terrified that Tillis’ bill, which was originally wedged into Republicans’ tax and spending package, amounted to a death knell. But as Tillis discovered, conservative nonprofits that use donations to back lawsuits over favored causes such as religious liberty and fighting DEI don’t like litigation funding regulation.
Other conservative groups, including the Heartland Institute, argued that they’d be forced to disclose their donors. Some conservatives also have a profit motive: Donald Trump Jr. and Leonard Leo, co-chairman of the Federalist Society, have ties to litigation finance businesses.
Populist conservatives have tended to side with the funders, while Republican lawmakers backed by large corporations and insurance companies have continued to push for regulation.
“We seem to be having a hard time breaking out of, do you like third party litigation funding or financing or do you not like third party litigation funding or financing?” said Jonathan Bergner, president of lobbying firm Exigent Government Relations.
‘Coercion Cloaked in Virtue’
Issa’s bill was introduced in 2024 and never moved, was reintroduced in 2025, then skipped during a markup hearing in November.
The lawmaker began January’s hearing with a concession: he was open to changing the bill to only require disclosure in private to the judge. It wouldn’t be enough.
Many Democrats spoke against the bill.
Representative
“I’m so glad to hear populists from left to right standing up for the little guys,” Raskin said.
ADF founder Alan Sears, in an opinion piece in The Hill, said Issa’s proposal amounted to “coercion cloaked in virtue.”
Sears, in an email, said preserving the ability of individuals and organizations without significant capital to fund legal cases is central to protecting constitutional rights.
“Conservatives should also be wary of endorsing legislative efforts that create disclosure mechanisms that can one day be used against them,” he wrote.
Prior to the hearing, a group of conservative nonprofits signed a letter saying the measure would threaten core American principles of personal privacy, confidentiality, and freedom of speech and association.
“One can imagine the serious risks posed in unveiling the identity of individuals supporting lawsuits over heated issues like religious liberty, abortion, or transgender surgeries performed on minors,” the letter said.
Signees included Gene Hamilton, president of America First Legal, the conservative nonprofit founded by now-White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, which litigates against DEI initiatives and immigration reform, and Sal Nuzzo, executive director of Consumers’ Defense, the lobbying arm of Consumers’ Research, which lobbies against ESG and “woke capitalism.”
Hamilton and America First Legal didn’t respond to a request for comment.
President’s Inner Circle
Loomer, the online provocateur with President Trump’s ear whose postings have prompted policy changes and personnel firings, entered the debate by slamming Tillis’ bill on X and later on her podcast.
“Tillis’ bill empowers large, woke corporations, and protects them from lawsuits exposing DEI-driven discrimination or predatory practices,” she wrote in a lengthy thread in June. “Making this legislation even more sinister is the fact that it is backed by the anti-Trump, globalist US Chamber of Commerce and insurance industry, whose lobbying muscle dwarfs the average American’s voice.”
On her podcast, Loomer talked about the difficulty of financing lawsuits she’s filed. Her guest was Ashley Keller, founding partner of law firm Keller Postman LLC and chief investment officer of Gerchen Capital Partners, a Chicago-based litigation funder.
Keller, a trial lawyer, told her there are two types of Republicans.
“The first group realizes what time it is and recognizes that the Chamber of Commerce, and the C-Suite grandees that finance it, are not friends of conservatives,” he said. “And then there are people like Senator Tillis, who I don’t think have gotten the memo yet on that they think this is your grandfather’s Republican Party and that big companies can do no wrong and that the only thing they really want from government is a free market.”
Loomer and Keller didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Last year, Trump Jr. began investing in two patent monetization companies that invest in intellectual property litigation. In March, he was listed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing as having a stake in SIM IP, launched by Erich Spangenberg, which is planning an initial public offering.
Spangenberg helped pioneer the practice of buying patents and making them profitable by suing companies through aggressive litigation. Patents accounted for nearly a third of litigation finance commitments in 2024, according to a report by Westfleet Advisors.
Spangenberg said litigation finance legislation addresses mostly non-existent issues. “What is driving it? I believe it is the large insurers who detest that people without financial resources can get their day in court—this screws up the risk exposure for the insurers, so they ‘invest’ in our members of Congress’ campaigns and PACs to push this legislation,” he said, adding that he’s not opposed to disclosing funding sources to courts if it won’t lead to more litigation.
Trump Jr. also owns 5% of patent monetizer Fintiv, according to a story by The Information last year. Fintiv is in litigation with Apple and has also sued Paypal. Fintiv and Donald Trump Jr. didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Federalist Society’s Leo, who played a major role in securing a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, has ties to Vallecito Capital, which backs cases supporting a conservative policy mission. IRS disclosures from 2023 for Leo’s nonprofit Marble Freedom Trust list a $4.8 million “gift, grant or capital contribution” to Columbia Finance LLC, which Vallecito lists as the name of its private fund on its SEC forms.
Leo and Vallecito didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Vallecito’s former president, James Burnham, had several roles in the first Trump administration prior to starting the company. More recently, he worked for Elon Musk’s DOGE and is now general counsel at Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI.
“The idea with Vallecito Capital was OK, if companies are doing bad and unlawful things, shouldn’t we find a way for investors—people who care about these issues—to fund cases for a return that also seeks to penalize unambiguously bad behavior,” Burnham said during a 2023 Federalist Society webinar.
Leo has also funded and has a business relationship with Consumers’ Research.
“The conservative movement has increasingly been using litigation finance to push those cases and so I just don’t understand why you would hit it,” said Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, referring to litigation finance regulation that’s been introduced.
While his organization could support very limited disclosures of funders from the foreign adversaries list, fuller disclosure and taxing the industry “just makes it harder to bring cases against corporations, and especially at a time when a lot of corporations have engaged in behaviors that I think need to be stiffly punished,” said Hild, citing DEI and transgender initiatives.
Straddling the Fence
The Heartland Institute, a leading skeptic of climate change, initially signed a letter in favor of Tillis’ bill but then reversed course.
“On first pass the branding was like, oh this is almost nostalgic because so many in the conservative movement were butting heads with the trial bar back in the early aughts,” said Cameron Sholty, Heartland’s government relations director. “But as we looked into it and had those internal debates, we landed solidly against the legislation.”
Heartland worried the tax could lead to IRS filings disclosing donors and that the disclosure bills would reveal confidential information, Sholty said. The group also generally opposes additional taxes, he said.
Proponents of the litigation funding tax say funders’ investments aren’t capital assets and shouldn’t qualify for capital gains tax treatment.
Some conservative groups have stood behind efforts at regulation. The Center for Individual Freedom, which works against environmental regulation and for intellectual property protections, lobbied on concerns about foreign funders influencing the judicial system, a common refrain of opponents to the industry.
“There’s no First Amendment right to fund litigation, especially for a foreign government,” said Tim Lee, the group’s senior vice president of legal and public affairs. “We are very concerned about the right of private American citizens to contribute to causes that might otherwise get them doxxed and tormented.”
“But that’s distinguishable from litigation funding,” he added.
Chamber, Insurers
The US Chamber of Commerce, which spends more on lobbying than almost any other group, is the bogeyman of litigation finance. Its Institute for Legal Reform has written reports, including one in 2022, contending that litigation finance could be a national security issue. The reports have become the basis for numerous state and federal bills.
Many of the Chamber’s supporters are defendants in massive multi-district litigation in which funders are aiding the plaintiffs.
A representative for the US Chamber of Commerce did not respond to a request for comment.
Insurance company Chubb has been fighting for several years to avoid covering Catholic dioceses and other institutions facing litigation under New York’s Child Victims Act, which waived the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims.
Chubb, Marsh McLennan, and Uber Technologies, which is defending numerous sexual-assault lawsuits, are supporters of Americans for Litigation Tax Fairness, which has spent $160,000 lobbying in favor of a litigation finance tax since the fourth quarter of 2024.
The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, American Trucking Associations, and National Association of Manufacturers are members of the group.
Legislative Limbo
Litigation finance supporters at least so far are winning the debate on Capitol Hill.
Whether it was funder lobbying, nonprofit lobbying, or Loomer’s words reaching the right people, Tillis’ proposal was struck from Trump’s tax and spending package. The proposal is now in limbo as Tillis rounds out his final year as senator.
Shortly after intense debate of Issa’s bill during markup, the hearing went on a break and never returned. The bill never got a vote.
In January, the Republican Study Committee, an arm of the House Republican majority, put out its framework for passing legislation under the shortcut process known as reconciliation and listed Tillis’ bill as a priority. Since then, President Trump has said that there will not be another reconciliation this year, which would likely be the only way for the bill to pass.
In February, a new bill joined the group. The Litigation Funding Transparency Act, sponsored by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Tillis, John Kennedy (La.), and John Cornyn (Texas). It requires parties to publicly disclose litigation funding, including foreign funding, in mass tort and class action suits. It also prohibits funders from influencing litigation strategy or settlement negotiations.
One important difference in that legislation from other proposals: an exemption for nonprofit legal organizations.
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