The Department of Labor’s top lawyer ordered staff on Monday to stop engaging with the American Bar Association in their official capacities, saying the organization partakes in liberal activism and that any federal participation would only boost its influence.
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Trump-appointed Solicitor Jonathan Berry wrote in an email that the hundreds of attorneys at the Department of Labor are not to use taxpayer funds to participate in any ABA events or use their government job titles at them, according to a copy of the email reviewed by Fox News Digital.
“The ABA is strategically equivocal about its ideological stance,” Berry wrote. “Equivocal in that the ABA holds itself out as non-ideological at certain times, but takes decidedly radical ideological positions at others.”
His email marks the latest step in the Trump administration’s effort to weaken the ABA, the nation’s largest association of lawyers and other legal personnel.
The Department of Justice implemented a similar policy last year and terminated more than $3 million in federal grants to ABA programs before a judge found that ending the funds was unconstitutional. The Federal Trade Commission likewise severed its ties with the ABA’s antitrust arm, saying it “promotes the business interests of Big Tech.”
Republicans have long argued the ABA promotes Democrat-aligned viewpoints and that its institutional presence in the legal world is a disadvantage to conservatives. The ABA’s website touts that it is the “national voice of the legal profession” and showcases work that includes support for “LGBTQ+” initiatives, abortion access, stricter gun control measures, and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The ABA has also taken a stance against President Donald Trump, condemning what its president described as the administration’s “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law.”
The ABA wields enormous power, weighing in on nominations of federal judges, engaging in litigation and involving itself in the hiring processes across the legal industry. One arm of the ABA also handles law school accreditation.
In a reversal of a decades-long practice, Attorney General Pam Bondi told the ABA last year that the DOJ would not give the association a heads up on judicial nominees before they are announced, stripping the ABA of the ability to rate the nominees in advance.
Berry wrote in his email to staff that the Labor Department lawyers’ participation in the ABA would only serve to endorse what he viewed as an institutional problem.
“There is genuine benefit to our attorneys engaging with the employer bar in ABA programs, but the benefit genuinely feeds the problem too: Our participation in ‘neutral’ ABA events contributes to institutional stature the ABA leverages to advance radical goals as if they were ‘neutral,’” Berry wrote. “No more.”
The ABA declined to comment.
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