Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
April 2010 – Bryan J. Brown, a longtime pro-life activist and a one-time attorney for the AFA Center for Law and Policy, is no stranger to either controversy or battles against overwhelming odds. Now he is neck deep in both at the same time.
Brown, who has been a Kansas-licensed attorney since 1996 and who has successfully argued many cases before federal appellate courts, was recently denied entrance onto Indiana’s roll of attorneys. The reason for denying Brown? He said officials considered him mentally unstable due to his Christian and conservative beliefs.
A burden for Indiana
Brown has been a long-time culture warrior. In his home state of Indiana in the 1980s, his pro-life activism took him to the sidewalk outside the abortion clinic then located at 827 Webster Street in Fort Wayne. The resulting legal persecution against Brown and two associates bankrupted him and forced him to leave the state for Kansas in 1991.
In 1996, fresh out of law school, Brown came to work for AFA, where for the next six years, he pressed the battle against the abortion lobby by defending the rights of other pro-life activists. Brown left AFA in 2003 to serve as deputy attorney general under pro-life Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline.
In 2007, Brown returned to Fort Wayne after his father had purchased the building at 827 Webster Steet. In that former abortuary, he established the Archangel Institute, a ministry dedicated to “encouraging, empowering and emboldening Christians to cherish, defend and advance faith, family and freedom.”
The bitter-sweet irony is not lost on Brown. “The Institute confronts the culture of death from the very location where abortion thrived in Fort Wayne for 28 long years,” he said.
Back to court?
Brown intended to practice pro-life law from 827 Webster Street. He was certainly qualified. Brown was passed for moral character and mental fitness to practice law in Kansas and Montana (1996), before the U. S. Supreme Court (2000), by Missouri (2006) and by the National Board of Law Examiners (2006).
But Indiana apparently didn’t want him back in court. His application to the Indiana Board of Law Examiners was turned over to the Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program (JLAP), which exists to help members of the legal profession deal with substance abuse and/or psychological problems. Because of his pro-life protests almost two decades earlier – which Indiana officials regarded as demonstrative of mental instability – Brown was ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination.
The Indiana Board of Law Examiners mandated that Brown turn himself over to Dr. Elizabeth Bowman. Although Brown didn’t know it at the time, Bowman is an outspoken feminist, openly critical of both evangelical Christianity and the Catholic Church, of which Brown is a member.
She was apparently gunning for Brown’s religious views, which had been explored through a psychiatric test given by a government psychologist.
“The imprecise and intrusive personal questions were bothersome to me, but the religious questions were even more disconcerting,” Brown stated. “More than a few probed my views of the Divine, angels, sexual mores, sin and redemption. I have some understanding of the major doctrines of Christianity, and must report that most all were probed” by the psychological testing.
Timothy Sudrovech, clinical director for JLAP, reported to the Law Examiners that even though Brown’s testing revealed that he “did not meet the diagnostic criteria for [indicating] any specific [mental] disorder,” Brown’s responses to Dr. Bowman caused her to conclude that he suffered from “Personality Disorder, NOS [Not Otherwise Specified].”
Brown was then denied entrance into the Indiana bar and was told he could not reapply again for five years. By comparison, he told AFA Journal, a bar applicant who had admitted to indecent exposure was punished with a 90-day exclusion.
If the goal of Bowman and others was to keep Brown out of court, they failed. Brown has filed a federal lawsuit against the Indiana Supreme Court, JLAP, Bowman and Sudrovech.
“This was nothing less than a conspiracy to fail me through the bar application process for no other reasons than my Christian faith, pro-life beliefs and actions, and my constitutional perspective,” Brown said.
Brown has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking a review of his denial. Donate to the Archangel Institute at 827 Webster Street, Fort Wayne, IN 46802. Messages can be left for Brown at 800-399-4620. 
