Missouri Lawyers Media Missouri legal news and public notices
Clayton Plaza Law Group, Clayton
Tim Belz handles cases involving free speech, religious freedom and parental rights.
In 2004, after he had defended a Christian school that state officials had raided to investigate student abuse allegations, Missouri Lawyers Media honored Belz as Lawyer of the Year.
In 2015, he represented two religious nonprofit organizations that challenged a part of the Affordable Care Act that mandated insurance coverage to include contraception. The organizations objected to some of the allowed contraception methods, and their case worked its way up to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 8th Circuit held that the accommodation process to reduce the organizations’ participation in the plan violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In 2017, once it was clear that the case wouldn’t elevate further, Missouri Lawyers Media named him an Influential Appellate Advocate.
Belz was a prosecuting attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division before he entered private practice in 1982. He earned his law degree from the University of Iowa in 1976.
