On March 26, 2026, 73 current and former leaders of the bar in the Nation’s capital along with eight of the District of Columbia’s voluntary bar associations, filed an amicus brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in support of whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid, who has successfully challenged “dangerous, unconstitutional retaliation” by the Trump administration in revoking his security clearance.
The signers included former Presidents, members of the board of governors, and executive staff of the District of Columbia Bar, along with former officers and board members of several voluntary bar associations in the District. Additionally, eight of the District’s voluntary bar associations also signed the brief as organizations.
The bar leaders point out that retaliation against Zaid is part of President Trump’s larger campaign to attack lawyers and law firms that represent clients and causes the President does not like, including clients whom he regards as his personal political enemies or stand for public interest values that he does not share.
“The President’s action enjoined by the district court was not merely an attack on a single lawyer (or small handful of individual lawyers) but an assault on the underpinnings of the American legal system” the brief asserted. “The Rule of Law prohibits a President from blackballing a lawyer by summarily denying the clearance necessary to represent clients before government agencies, when this action reflects personal pique and hostility to the causes and clients that the lawyer represents.”
Zaid, an attorney who specializes in national security law and has represented prominent critics of President Trump, was targeted by a March 22, 2025 White House memorandum that stripped him of access to classified government information and secure government facilities. The amicus brief calls the President’s Executive Order “patently unlawful.” The appeal will be heard by the Court of Appeals at 9:30 am on Thursday, May 14, 2026, along with appeals of related District Court decisions in similar cases brought by four prominent law firms.
The brief supporting Zaid in the appeals court notes that it also supports the position of four law firms in the appeals that the Government has taken from the relief that four other federal judges have granted to them after finding President Trump’s orders against them unconstitutional.
The brief was signed by 38 former leaders of the District of Columbia Bar, many of whom also signed amicus briefs in the federal district in support of the four law firms – Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, and Susman Godfrey – that the President had sought to bar from representing clients before government agencies.
The former D.C. Bar leaders were joined by 35 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, the Washington Bar Association, and the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. A full list of signers is attached to the brief.
Read the amicus brief
DC Leaders for Rule of Law 