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Attorney General Pam Bondi
"This is a continuation of the administration's attack on the rule of law," says Andrew Ortiz of the Transgender Law Center.
The Trump administration is reducing the American Bar Association’s role in evaluating nominees to the federal judiciary, claiming the organization is biased in favor of Democratic picks, and LGBTQ+ legal groups are not pleased.
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“For several decades, the American Bar Association has received special treatment and enjoyed special access to judicial nominees,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a Thursday letter to the lawyers’ group. “In some administrations, the ABA received notice of nominees before a nomination was announced to the public. Some administrations would even decide whether to nominate an individual based on a rating assigned by the ABA.”
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy “will no longer direct nominees to provide waivers allowing the ABA access to nonpublic information, including bar records,” she continued. “Nominees will also not respond to questionnaires prepared by the ABA and will not sit for interviews with the ABA.”
“The ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations,” Bondi claimed. “The ABA’s steadfast refusal to fix the bias in its ratings process, despite criticism from Congress, the Administration, and the academy, is disquieting.”
The ABA remains “free to comment on judicial nominations along with other activist organizations,” but “there is no justification for treating the ABA differently from such other activist organizations and the Department of Justice will not do so,” she added.
Other presidents have taken similar actions, but this one goes further, Reuters notes. The practice of letting the ABA vet nominees before they go to the Senate began under a Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1953. It went on until Republican George W. Bush revoked it when he became president in 2001, and Democrat Barack Obama reinstated it when he was president. Donald Trump revoked it in his first term, and President Joe Biden did not restart it.
But “Bondi’s letter went a step further by curtailing the organization’s ability to vet nominees after they were named,” Reuters reports.
Chad Mizelle, chief of staff at the Justice Department, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the ABA “weighs nominees on politics, not qualifications. Some members of the ABA committee even ruled that Clarence Thomas — one of the greatest jurists of our time — was ‘not qualified’ to serve as a judge. That’s just one example. The ABA has become little more than a left-wing advocacy group. Under @AGPamBondi’s leadership, we will treat them like one.”
Mizelle’s wife, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, was one of 10 nominees the ABA deemed not qualified during Trump’s first term. The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary cited “the short time she has actually practiced law and her lack of meaningful trial experience.” The committee has stated that it does not evaluate judicial nominees based on ideology. Mizelle was confirmed to be a U.S. District Court judge in Florida in 2020 in a party-line vote by the Republican-majority Senate.
LGBTQ+ legal groups denounced the DOJ’s move, saying it will undermine the quality of the federal judiciary. “The administration’s decision is deeply misguided and harmful to the judiciary and the public,” Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told The Advocate via email. “The American Bar Association’s vetting of judicial nominees serves critical functions that protect the quality and integrity of the judiciary. The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary consists of practicing attorneys from diverse backgrounds who focus on professional qualifications rather than political ideology and who evaluate nominees based on established criteria rather than partisan considerations. The ABA has been evaluating federal judicial nominees since 1953, creating a consistent standard across different administrations and maintaining professional benchmarks regardless of political changes. The vetting process can reveal concerns about a nominee’s temperament, ethical record, or professional competence that might not be apparent from their résumé alone, helping prevent problematic appointments. Having an independent professional organization evaluate judicial nominees also increases public trust in the judiciary by demonstrating that appointments are based on merit and qualifications, not just political connections, and serves as a professional quality check that can help maintain the overall caliber of the federal judiciary. The administration’s decision recklessly sacrifices these enormous benefits and will undermine public confidence in our courts.”
Andrew Ortiz, senior policy attorney at the Transgender Law Center, shared this statement with The Advocate: “This is a continuation of the administration’s attack on the rule of law and its efforts to erode our constitutional system of checks and balances. In his first term, Trump nominated a slate of unqualified, anti-equality, far-right ideologues and loyalists to the federal judiciary. It is clear he intends to do more of the same and everyone should be concerned about the quality of our nation’s judges, not just those in the legal profession.”
The ABA has not commented publicly on the DOJ’s move.
One of Trump’s latest controversial nominees to the federal judiciary is Emil Bove, who defended Trump in his trial over hush money paid to adult-film performer Stormy Daniels. Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up the payments. Bove is now with the Justice Department, and Trump has nominated him to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Even conservatives have expressed concern about Bove. “It sure appears that Bove has been White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s implementer and enforcer on whatever bad idea crosses Miller’s mind,” Ed Whelan wrote Friday in the National Review. “Bove’s admirers call him ‘fearless,’ but the same could be said of mafia henchmen. Has Bove ever had the courage to challenge one of Miller’s bad ideas?”
