American Bar Association Slams Trump’s Crackdown on Law Firms

The American Bar Association (ABA) on Monday passed a resolution opposing government attempts to penalise “lawyers, law firms, or other organisations for representing or having represented any particular client or cause disfavoured by the government.”

 

The move marks the latest flashpoint in a growing dispute between the ABA -- the country’s largest voluntary association of lawyers with about 170,000 dues-paying members -- and the Trump administration. In recent months, the two have clashed publicly over attacks on judges and law firms, with administration officials dismissing the ABA as a “snooty” group of “leftist lawyers” and alleging that some of its diversity initiatives are unlawful.

 

Tensions escalated after the US Department of Justice barred its attorneys from attending ABA events and restricted the association’s role in vetting federal judicial nominees. In April, Trump threatened to revoke the ABA’s status as the federally recognised accreditor of law schools.

 

“The rule of law will not long survive if lawyers and law firms are threatened and punished for doing their jobs and if judges are threatened with punishment for doing their jobs,” the resolution declared.

 

The White House has yet to comment on the ABA’s stance.

 

The association has filed several lawsuits against the administration, including a pending July case seeking to block what it calls a White House “campaign of intimidation” against major law firms. According to the ABA, executive orders targeting specific firms have discouraged some public-interest groups from securing legal representation. A Reuters investigation last month reported that several firms have scaled back public interest work in response to pressure from the administration.

 

On Friday, the Justice Department urged a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to dismiss the ABA’s lawsuit, arguing there is no certainty Trump will target another firm’s business operations. The DOJ maintained that only individual plaintiffs, not the “monolithic” ABA, could bring such claims and that the association had failed to prove Trump’s actions deterred lawyers from taking certain cases.

 

The ABA’s House of Delegates is meeting in Toronto on Monday and Tuesday to discuss multiple resolutions, many related to federal government actions and the rule of law. The newly adopted measure also condemns threats to impeach judges “based solely on disagreement with the merits of the rulings made by those judges.”

 

Since returning to the White House, Trump has issued a series of executive orders against law firms over their past clients and hiring practices. Nine firms have reached agreements with the administration, pledging nearly $1 billion in free legal services on mutually approved matters to avoid further orders. Four firms successfully challenged the measures in court, overturning actions that had stripped their lawyers of security clearances, curtailed access to government officials, and restricted eligibility for federal contracts. 

 

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