On October 2, 2025, 83 current and former leaders of bar associations in the District of Columbia, including former presidents and members of the Board of Governors of the District of Columbia Bar and six voluntary bar associations, filed an amicus brief in support of the American Bar Association (ABA), which is challenging what it calls “the Trump administration’s ongoing unlawful policy of intimidation against lawyers and law firms.”
The ABA is suing to vindicate the opportunity of the legal profession to be free to represent clients or causes without being blackballed or intimidated because the President dislikes the clients or causes or has a grudge against lawyers in the firm.
“These concerns are not fanciful or of merely historical interest,” the amicus brief states. “The President’s actions and threats continue to radiate throughout the legal community and are having real and unwarranted effects not only on the availability of legal services, especially pro bono services as this concept is generally understood, but on the lawyers or firms who are threatened with financial penalties for making an independent professional judgment.”
The brief was signed by 39 former leaders of the District of Columbia Bar, many of whom also signed amicus briefs in support of whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid and four law firms – Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, and Susman Godfrey – that the President sought to bar from representing clients before government agencies. The former D.C. Bar leaders were joined by 44 other current and past leaders of several District of Columbia voluntary bar associations, including the Bar Association of the District of Columbia, the Women’s Bar Association, the National Bar Association, and The Washington Bar Association, and by former executive staff, officers and members of the Board of Governors of the District of Columbia Bar.
Read the amicus brief
DC Leaders for Rule of Law 