President Donald Trump walks from Marine One after arriving on the South Lawn of the White House, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Seventeen former D.C. Bar presidents and several voluntary bar associations are urging a federal judge to allow the American Bar Association”s (ABA) lawsuit over President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms to move forward, regardless of the fact multiple such firms have cut deals with the administration.
The signatories, seeking permission to file an amicus brief in the case, said their interest in the lawsuit is the defense of lawyering in general against the Trump administration’s efforts to “muzzle” attorneys through intimidation.
“The formal steps taken by the Trump Administration to penalize and intimidate the President’s perceived political enemies profoundly affect all lawyers, and most particularly those in the seat of government where we and others practice law,” said the Thursday filing.
Calling it an “extraordinary time in the history of our democracy,” such that even filing an amicus brief of this nature “potentially places us at personal risk of reprisal from the Trump Administration,” dozens of lawyers and the Hispanic Bar Association of D.C., the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association, the National Bar Association, the Trial Lawyers Association, and the Women’s Bar Association of D.C. collectively asserted that sounding the alarm over the bigger picture is “imperative.”
“We nonetheless believe that it is imperative that members of the legal community and particularly its leaders speak out publicly to denounce the current Administration’s unprecedented and unconstitutional actions to prevent its political opponents from having access to legal counsel and to muzzle and restrain a profession that is essential to the administration of justice,” the filing added.
The filing in support of the ABA from the would-be amici comes as U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, a Joe Biden appointee who has ruled against the administration before, weighs whether or not to toss the case.
In June, the ABA said Trump’s executive orders amounted to an “unconstitutional” and “unlawful policy of intimidation against lawyers and law firms” as part of the president’s revenge campaign against political rivals.
“[T]he American legal profession faces a challenge that is different from all that has come before,” the complaint said. “It is unprecedented and uniquely dangerous to the rule of law,” adding that it created a “blizzard-like chill on the profession” that saw firms avoid repercussions by pledging to do legal work for the administration for free.
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Most recently, and in opposing dismissal, the ABA said major firms’ capitulations through “settlements” with the administration do not weaken the lawsuit.
“[T]he ABA’s Complaint details a campaign in which the President himself issued virtually identical EOs against five different law firms while threatening to do the same against any other law firm that did not ‘behave,’ as the President warned to a nationwide audience from the Oval Office,” the ABA argued. “And the Complaint establishes that even the most sophisticated and well-resourced law firms in the country took the threat so seriously that they agreed to forgo constitutionally protected expression and to contribute more than $1 billion in pro bono work to avoid being subject to EOs themselves.”
“These allegations are not about coincidences and anecdotes, nor are they the product of overactive imaginations,” the filing continued. “The ABA has pleaded a well-defined and consistent policy that continues to repress constitutional rights.”
But the DOJ has countered that the ABA cannot show that it even has standing to sue, as it is not a law firm itself and claims of a “chilling effect” on others are not enough to demonstrate an injury to the ABA.
“It is well established that allegations of a ‘chilling effect’ on alleged constitutionally-protected activities without more—and the ABA fails to allege more—is not cognizable. And even if these sorts of chilling injuries could support Article III standing, the ABA has grounded those injuries in vague, speculative, broadbrush allegations,” the DOJ said.
The ABA is “shadowboxing without a shadow” and, as a result, has reached a “dead end,” the government said.
“The ABA purports to sue on behalf of law firms, as well as on behalf of non-member lawyers, that might be the subject of EOs in the future but cannot show why those firms or lawyers cannot bring suit on their own,” the DOJ stated.
Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
