As members of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates gathered for their midyear meeting in early February, they faced a fresh barrage of conservative backlash aimed at the organization.
On Feb. 9, the U.S. Department of Labor blocked its lawyers from participating in ABA events. A federal judge on Jan. 21 greenlighted a lawsuit brought by a conservative group against an ABA-backed scholarship for diverse law students. And government scrutiny of the ABA’s role as the nation’s chief law school accreditor is forcing the organization to change its structure and may be sowing doubt among independent law schools about the ability of students to access loans.
Those were just the latest salvos in the ongoing culture war over the ABA’s role in shaping the law, law schools and the future of the legal profession. Conservatives have long criticized the ABA as a bastion of liberalism. Since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, administration officials have turned conservative ire into action with several attacks aimed at curbing the ABA’s influence.
The ABA has responded with multiple lawsuits and resolutions vowing to oppose Trump administration policies. At the midyear meeting Feb. 4-9, the House of Delegates, the ABA’s 600-member policy-making arm, passed resolutions urging lawyers and the government to uphold the independence of the U.S. Department of Justice and the judiciary, decrying violence against judges and urging state and local prosecutors to investigate and prosecute federal officials for illegal acts.
“We cannot give up on our beliefs, our core values and our mission,” ABA President Michelle Behnke said in a speech to the House of Delegates. “The American Bar Association will continue to use its position to advocate for the legal profession and the judiciary. We will fight for the rule of law both at home and around the world. And we will not abandon our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Adapting—and Suing
In her speech, Behnke noted that the ABA is “adapting to change” and is even eyeing a new program that “would help people who want to understand what’s legal and what has precedent in a nonpartisan way.”
At the same time, she vigorously defended the ABA’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts from administration attacks and said the association will remain committed to DEI “because now is not the time to walk back the progress that we have made.” She also noted the impact of federal funding cuts and staff layoffs on the organization. “Change is all around us and managing that change is essential to what we must do as an association,” Behnke said.
One of the ways the organization is managing change is by going to court. The ABA has sued the Department of Justice for cancelling $3.2 million in grants used in training programs for lawyers representing domestic and sexual violence victims. The organization is also pursuing a case against the administration over a series of executive orders aimed at punishing law firms and lawyers for representing clients opposed to Trump and his allies.
In its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last summer, the ABA names 70 agencies and Trump administration officials and accuses them of implementing a “law firm intimidation policy.” The government argues the ABA lacks standing to bring the case and that its claims were overly broad.
At the midyear meeting, Behnke honored one of the firms targeted by Trump, Susman Godfrey, for “its pro bono work in support of the rule and the independence of the legal profession on behalf of the American Bar Association,” the ABA said. The law firm is representing the ABA in its suit over Trump’s executive orders.
Passing Resolutions
The ABA House of Delegates passed multiple resolutions aimed at recent Trump administration actions, as well as threats to the judiciary:
• Resolution 200 opposes threats and acts of violence, harassment and intimidation directed at the courts and encourages bar associations, law schools and civic organizations to promote public understanding of the role of an independent judiciary and to respond to attacks that threaten judicial independence and safety. The resolution also urges lawyers, public officials and the media “to refrain from rhetoric or actions that threaten or incite violence against the judiciary.”
• Resolution 510 calls on the Trump administration “to safeguard the independence of the U.S. Department of Justice by ensuring that investigative and prosecutorial decisions are free from political influence” and asks federal, state and local officials to reaffirm that prosecutorial decisions are also free from political considerations.
• Resolution 506 exhorts the federal government to “address domestic issues through local and civilian law enforcement agencies rather than military options” and to avoid federalizing state National Guards except in “exceptional circumstances.”
• Resolution 509 urges state and local governments to train and provide resources “to enable and encourage prosecutors and law enforcement officers to exercise their prosecutorial discretion to investigate…prosecute federal officials who violate applicable state laws while acting outside the legitimate and reasonable scope of their federal authority.”
‘Radical Goals’
One year ago, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, banned FTC political appointees from holding leadership positions in the ABA, participating in or attending the organization’s events, or renewing any existing memberships. The Department of Justice issued a similar order in April 2025.
A month later, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy would no longer allow the ABA to view nonpublic information, including bar records, to help review federal judge candidates. Judicial nominees “will also not respond to questionnaires prepared by the ABA and will not sit for interviews with the ABA,” Bondi wrote in a letter to the organization’s then-president.
The freeze is now extending to the U.S. Department of Labor. On Feb. 9, Solicitor of Labor Jonathan Berry sent an e-mail saying the agency would prohibit its employees from speaking at or attending ABA programs in their official capacity and would no longer reimburse staff for travel or registration fees at ABA events.
The Department of Labor’s “participation in ‘neutral’ ABA events contributes to institutional stature the ABA leverages to advance radical goals as if they were ‘neutral,’ ” Berry wrote in his message, Bloomberg reported. “No more.” The anti-ABA policy applies to “all department attorneys and non-attorney staff in the solicitor’s office. Career staffers who still wish to go to ABA events must fund it themselves.”
Scholarship Suit
The conservative attacks are coming from outside the government as well. In April 2025, the anti-affirmative action group American Alliance for Equal Rights filed suit over an ABA program offering diversity scholarships to law students.
The group is led by Edward Blum, a conservative activist who was instrumental in bringing the Supreme Court case that resulted in a 2023 decision banning the consideration of race in college admissions, according to Reuters. Blum’s Federalist Society biography notes that he has “filed over a dozen lawsuits challenging the use of race by corporations, law firms, venture capital firms and cultural institutions.” Blum’s group alleges that the ABA’s Legal Opportunity Scholarship is discriminatory because white applicants are ineligible to receive it.
The suit cleared a major hurdle in January. U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall of the Northern District of Illinois said the plaintiff—a white male Alliance member—had standing to bring the suit despite ABA arguments that he had not taken concrete steps to apply for the scholarship and was not harmed by not being selected, Reuters reported. “As much as the ABA tried to obfuscate its discriminatory policy, the court wisely decided to let this case go forward,” Blum told Reuters.
Gottschall did not address ABA arguments that the scholarship was protected speech, nor did she mention changes the ABA made to the program in October 2025 that eliminated requirements that applicants come from ethnic minorities or underrepresented racial groups, Reuters reported. In a November court filing, the Alliance said its case should proceed in spite of the changes and that it was seeking a “backward-looking request” for damages, Reuters added.
Accreditation Woes
The ABA is also defending its role as the primary accreditation body for U.S. law schools. A year ago, Bondi wrote to the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar accusing it of considering policies that would “encourage unlawful discrimination by the very law schools the Council is tasked with accrediting” and threatening its law school accreditation powers.
President Trump then issued an executive order directing the Department of Education to determine whether the federal government should strip the ABA of its status as law school accreditor.
Republican-led states have been acting as well. In January, the Texas Supreme Court said the ABA “should no longer have the final say on whether a law school’s graduates are eligible to sit for the Texas bar exam and become licensed to practice law in Texas.” The Florida Supreme Court followed suit, arguing that retaining the ABA would not be in “Floridians’ best interest.” The Ohio and Tennessee supreme courts are also considering whether to modify, reduce, or eliminate their reliance on ABA accreditation.
The state-level moves have won praise from conservatives. “When professional standards become instruments of thought control, the profession has lost its way. Texas and Florida saw the writing on the wall and acted,” said Allen Mendenhall, a Heritage Foundation senior adviser, in an op-ed for the Washington Times. “The ABA is a combatant in the culture war, fighting for the other side while demanding that conservatives continue treating it as a neutral referee.”
More Autonomy
The ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which manages the accreditation process, is attempting to fight back by asserting its independence from the rest of the organization.
In January, it passed amendments to its bylaws designed to “clarify the existing distinction between the section’s functions and the council’s accreditation work, reinforce the council’s independent decision making and make its processes more efficient,” the section’s managing director told the ABA Journal.
On Feb. 8, during the midyear meeting, the ABA Board of Governors signed off on the amendments, which, according to a report by the board, would allow the accreditation council to restructure and separate its bylaws and “to make additional changes throughout.” The goal, according to a memo to the council’s governance committee, is to give the council “more autonomy over its self-governance and more clearly separate the governance of the Accreditation Project and the Section activities.”
Whether the moves will satisfy critics is an open question. In November, the council also committed to conducting a comprehensive review of its accreditation standards and has appointed a committee of law school deans, state supreme court judges, and other stakeholders to advise on the process. The committee includes one of the members of the Florida working group and a Texas Supreme Court justice.
Financial Aid Worries
In the meantime, independent law schools are sounding the alarm that continuing questions about the accreditation council’s powers could place access to student loans in jeopardy, the ABA Journal reported.
“If the ABA council lost its accreditation authority, independent schools would need to find another accreditor,” the president and dean of New York Law School told ABA Journal. To receive federal financial aid, students must attend a law school accredited by a federally recognized organization.
While most law schools can rely on their parent university’s accreditation, 15 law schools “have no parent universities as a backstop,” the ABA Journal said. It added that “financial aid eligibility is especially important at independent law schools, which often attract first-generation law students, many of whom need” student loans.
As the dean of Vermont Law & Graduate School told the ABA Journal, if schools lose federal accreditation and students have no access to federal financial aid, “It’s hard for me to imagine any school to survive.”
---
David L. Brown is a legal affairs writer and consultant, who has served as head of editorial at ALM Media, editor-in-chief of The National Law Journal and Legal Times, and executive editor of The American Lawyer. He consults on thought leadership strategy and creates in-depth content for legal industry clients and works closely with Best Law Firms as senior content consultant.
