Alan Reinach
Alan Reinach, Esq.
Director, Church State Council
Pacific Union Conference
Alan J. Reinach is a civil rights lawyer and Seventh-day Adventist minister who has served as Executive Director of the Church State Council, the education, advocacy and legal services ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the western United States, since 1994.
Reinach directs the legal services ministry of the Church State Council offering legal assistance to persons of all faiths complaining of religious discrimination in the workplace. His most notable achievement in the legal arena has been obtaining a 9-0 ruling from the Supreme Court in the 2023 case of Groff v DeJoy, redefining the standard of “undue hardship” required to justify an employer’s denial of religious accommodation. Previously, he drafted petitioner’s brief in Hobbie v. Florida, resulting in a favorable 8-1 decision in a free exercise case.
Reinach also directs the legislative advocacy work of the Church State Council, primarily focused on the separation of church and state and preservation of religious freedom for peaceful people of faith. In 2012, Reinach helped draft and enact the California Workplace Religious Freedom Act, providing strong protections for religious accommodation, and has helped enact regulations to enforce its provisions.
Reinach is a recognized leader in the legal community on issues of religion and the law and serves as co chair of the American Bar Association’s Religious Freedom committee, part of the ABA’s Civil Rights and Social Justice Section. He has also served for many years on the legislative committee of the California Employment Lawyers Association, working to advance workers rights.
Reinach is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Law in 1987, and of the State University of New York at New Paltz, with special honors in history, in 1984. Reinach is the grandson of a former member of the New York Stock Exchange,[Udo Reinach] the son of a commodities trader, [Anthony Reinach] and a best-selling children’s book author, song writer, producer extraordinaire [Jacquelyn Reinach] and the proud husband of Christa, and father of Chris, Zoey, Benjamin and Eli. He is also an “oxymoron squared,” in that he is both lawyer and minister, Jew and Christian.
