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The American Bar Association asked the Department of Justice on Tuesday to reconsider its historic decision to turn the organization out of the judicial nomination process and insisted that its potential judges were fair.
ABA President William Bay wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was “surprised and disappointed” by her decision, Bondi revealed in a letter two weeks ago.
“It is really disturbing that the Department of Justice has decided to limit the opportunities for judicial nominees without justification or basis,” Bay wrote.
Bondy accused the ABA of forming hundreds of thousands of lawyers and other legal professionals who favored the Democratic government’s nominees and refused to “address bias in its ratings.”
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Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a press conference of the Justice Department in Washington on February 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
The ABA has been involved in the rating of the president’s nominee for seventy years to serve as judges in the district and the Court of Appeal and Supreme Courts.
The ABA committee considers potential judges as “qualified,” “qualified,” or “failed” based on their level of experience, legal writings, and dozens of interviews with candidate colleagues and peers.
Bay noted that the ABA rated all three of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees as “qualified” and over the past two decades, it has given “qualified” or “qualified” ratings, with at least 97% of the nominees being rated.
The ABA also received non-public information about the nominees, including its bar records, through the DOJ waiver. Bondy said the department will no longer provide these.
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President Donald Trump and Amy Coney Barrett stand on the balcony of the blue room in the White House on October 26, 2020.
The Bay rhetoric is the latest development in Trump and Republicans’ enduring legal battle against the ABA and the big law as they suffer allegations of bias. The ABA sometimes promotes liberal initiatives, including abortion, diversity, equity and inclusion, and the LGBTQ agenda. The rating board is isolated from the rest of the organization, Bay said.
“The work of the Standing Committee is isolated from all other activities of the ABA to ensure its independence and impartiality,” Bey wrote.
The president nominates federal judges and the Senate votes on them. Once confirmed, the judge appointed a lifetime appointment.
For decades, the president and the Senate included the ABA in the nomination process, but Trump and President George W. Bush refused to conduct their first study of the ABA among the announced potential nominees.
Former President Joe Biden continued Trump’s law enforcement, but clarified that he valued the ABA’s rating and only received nomination information after the nomination to save time.
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President Donald Trump moved to the sideline to cheer for conservatives and criticize liberal-leaning organizations. (Istock/Sarah Yenesel via Getty Images)
“It’s obvious that the American Bar Association has lost its way and no longer treats all nominees in a fair and impartial manner,” a spokesperson for the Justice Department said in response to Bei’s letter.
R-IOWA Senator Chuck Grassley, who leads the Senate panel to review potential judges, said it was not surprising and that legal organizations “always take partisan positions on political issues.” Grassley noted that the ABA can still weigh nominees independently of the government.
“The Judiciary Committee will still accept letters from the ABA, as we do to all external organizations, but for this administration it makes no sense to make people a point of access to an organization that always shows political bias,” Grassley said.
Glasley’s Democratic peer, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, said in an online statement that the ABA’s rating process is objective.
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“The Trump administration is obviously just trying to provide coverage for unlimited and extreme nominees,” Dubin said.
Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, the wife of Attorney General Chad Mizelle, once named “Unqualified” by the ABA, served as a federal judge in Florida. The rating is due to her lack of experience, as the ABA’s criteria for federal judges include 12 years of practical legal experience.
The ABA mixed comments about Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991 and ended up giving him an intermediate “qualified” rating.
