Emmett McGroarty

Executive Director, Belmont House

Emmett McGroarty is a graduate of Georgetown University (AB, Philosophy) and the Fordham University School of Law. He came to Belmont House in April 2023 from the Catholic University of America’s Institute for Human Ecology, where he was a faculty fellow and director of the program on the Constitution and Catholic Social Doctrine. Prior to that, he directed the federalism and education programs at the American Principles Project, which ignited the nationwide movement to defeat the Common Core initiative, and which was among the first policy groups to raise concern about student privacy and social emotional learning.

Mr. McGroarty’s previous experience includes the government, non-profit, and for-profit sectors. At the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office for Community and Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, he worked on regulatory reform with the goal of increasing nonprofit engagement in social services. At the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, he served in the Trafficking in Persons Office, with responsibilities for service delivery to victims and the design of the U.S. Government’s public awareness campaign for the identification of victims; the program and its public awareness campaign won numerous awards including the Assistant Secretary’s Program Recognition Award, the Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvil, and PRWeek’s Silver SABRE. His past experience also includes working as a litigator in two national law firms and serving as general counsel to Phil Gramm for President.

Mr. McGroarty is co-author of “Privacy, Property, and Third-Party Esteem in Arendt’s Constitutionalism” (Laws journal, forthcoming); Deconstructing the Administrative State: The Fight for Liberty (Liberty Hill and APPF/Sophia Press, 2018); “Controlling Education from the Top: Why Common Core Is Bad for America” (Pioneer Institute, May 2012); “Cogs in the Machine: Big Data, Common Core, and National Testing” (Pioneer Institute, May 2014). He has testified before federal and state bodies on over a dozen occasions. Mr. McGroarty is a Washington, DC, native and lives inside the Beltway with his family.