While once primarily concerned with the defense of religious liberties,[2] the organization later expanded its mission to encompass other constitutional issues such as search and seizure, free speech, and zero tolerance policy.
[3] Some of the institute's legal actions were widely reported, including helping Paula Jones pursue a sexual harassment lawsuit in 1997 against President Bill Clinton,[4] and its defense of middle and high school students suspended and expelled under inflexible zero tolerance policies,[5] and the free speech rights of preachers and political protestors.
[15] In 2011, the group took up the cause of Laura George, founder of the Oracle Institute, who wanted to build a "Peace Pentagon", a proposed interfaith study center and retreat, on the banks of the New River in Independence, Virginia.
[17] In 2012, The Rutherford Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of Harold Hodge, a man arrested in January 2011 for standing outside the United States Supreme Court Building carrying a sign which read, "The U.S. Gov allows police to illegally murder and brutalize African-Americans and Hispanic people.
[20] After the lawsuit in federal court and the negative publicity it generated, the Northside Independent School District abandoned the tracking program.
John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute said “The debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning,” [23] In 2008, The Rutherford Institute joined a coalition of civil libertarians and activists who called upon President George W. Bush to release a number of Muslim Uighurs who were being detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"[25] The next month The Rutherford Institute filed another lawsuit on the behalf of three passengers who took issue with the TSA screening procedures: a 12-year-old girl placed in a body scanner without parental consent, a man who was subjected to an invasive pat down in his genital area due to an abnormality caused by a childhood injury, and a woman who had undergone a mastectomy and was required to be patted down in her breast area.
In January 2012 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that police must obtain a warrant before placing a physical GPS tracking unit on a suspect's car.
[28] Following the 2020 Anti-police protests over the murder of George Floyd, but without mentioning it, Rutherford published an article denouncing no knock warrants and the granting of "qualified immunity" to police.