Notre Dame Law 3L Simon Brake Wins First Place in Religious Liberty Student Writing Competition

Simon Brake, a third-year student at Notre Dame Law School, has been awarded first place in the Religious Liberty Student Writing Competition, sponsored by the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, for his paper, “Are Religious Nondiscrimination Clauses Religion-Neutral?”

The competition promotes legal and academic scholarship in the field of religious liberty among second and third year law students.

Brake’s paper examines a growing tension in Supreme Court religious liberty cases: whether state laws that claim to treat religious and nonreligious institutions equally are truly “neutral.” He observes that while states cannot exclude religious schools from public funding, many states impose conditions that effectively require schools to set aside their religious identity. Because “religious nondiscrimination” rules uniquely burden religious schools, he contends they are not truly neutral and should receive closer judicial scrutiny.

As the first-place winner, Brake was awarded a cash prize and the opportunity to participate in the J. Reuben Clark Law Society’s Religious Liberty Fellowship in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania this summer.

Brake, who grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame and later earned a master’s degree in theology from Boston College.

During law school, he served as executive notes editor of the Notre Dame Law Review and was a member of the Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic, where he worked on litigation matters. He spent his 1L summer as a judicial intern for Trevor N. McFadden on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and his 2L summer as a summer associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson Dunn.

Following graduation, Brake will clerk for Stephanos Bibas on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.