US Judicial Panel Drops Donor Disclosure Provision in Amicus Brief Disclosure Rule

US judicial rulemakers on Thursday voted to abandon a key element of a proposed rule governing disclosure of funding behind “friend of the court” briefs, after senior judges raised concerns it could infringe the privacy of advocacy groups and their members.

 

The unanimous decision by the US Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules marks the latest instance of the judiciary scaling back disclosure obligations for amicus brief filers in a long-debated measure originally aimed at enhancing transparency.

 

The panel had previously supported a rule requiring organisations filing amicus briefs to identify donors who contributed more than $100 towards preparing a brief, where the donor was a non-member or had joined the group less than 12 months earlier.

 

The proposal followed an April 2025 vote against a broader change that would have required disclosure if a party or its counsel contributed 25 per cent or more of an organisation’s annual revenue.

However, in March, judicial rulemakers withdrew the narrower proposal submitted to the US Supreme Court for consideration, citing concerns raised by leaders of the US Judicial Conference, the judiciary’s top policymaking body.

 

In a March 10 letter, rulemakers said members of the Judicial Conference’s executive committee were concerned that requiring groups to identify newly joined members who contributed funding “could interfere with the privacy of those organisations and of their members”.

 

That concern was echoed by the US Chamber of Commerce, a frequent amicus filer, which argued in an April 2 letter that the rule, as previously drafted, could infringe associational rights under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

 

As a result, the appellate rules panel voted to scrap the provision relating to new members, leaving a revised rule that differs only slightly from the existing requirement that amicus filers disclose support received from non-members.

 

The judiciary has been considering changes to the rule since 2019, when Democratic lawmakers, including US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, introduced legislation aimed at improving transparency around such filings.

 

US District Judge Carl Nichols, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, said on Thursday that it had “always seemed to me that this was attempting to fix a problem we did not know existed”.

 

“I would not be pushing for a possible solution to a non-problem, given the very negative reaction we received,” he added.

 

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