The POWER List: Timothy Belz

Clayton Plaza Law Group, Clayton 

You can bet Tim Belz is getting involved if a case is shaking up religious freedom or First Amendment rights. 

In 2017, Missouri Lawyers Media honored him as an Influential Appellate Advocate. It recognized his major victory in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that challenged a provision of the Affordable Care Act that mandated contraception insurance coverage. 

In the case, he represented two religious nonprofit organizations in Missouri that objected to participating in insurance plans that cover methods of contraception that the groups claimed equate to abortion. The 8th Circuit held that the accommodation process that reduces their participation in this kind of plan violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. 

Missouri Lawyers Media honored Belz in 2004 as Lawyer of the Year for his defense of a Christian school that state officials raided to investigate allegations of student abuse. 

Belz earned his law degree in 1976 from the University of Iowa. Before entering private practice in 1982, he served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division.