Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—American Bar Association suit challenges Trump’s ‘Law Firm Intimidation Policy’, (Jun 17, 2025)

By Patricia K. Ruiz, J.D.

The ABA seeks an injunction preventing the Trump administration from implementing executive orders and other actions targeting lawyers.

The American Bar Association (ABA) has sued the Trump administration, challenging what it calls the administration’s “Law Firm Intimidation Policy” as unconstitutional. The ABA argues that the policy is designed to intimidate and coerce law firms and lawyers to refrain from challenging and even to support the administration and its causes.

Law firm intimidation policy. The ABA alleges that “President Trump has used the vast powers of the Executive Branch to coerce lawyers and law firms to abandon clients, causes, and policy positions the President does not like.” The administration has allegedly carried out this law firm intimidation policy through a series of materially identical executive orders designed to severely damage particular law firms and lawyers and intimidate others. The complaint also describes similar deals or settlements, executive orders, letters, memoranda, and public statements publicizing the objectives of the alleged policy. The ABA alleges that the attacks on law firms are not isolated events but parts of “a broader, deliberate policy designed to intimidate and coerce law firms and lawyers to refrain from challenging” the administration in court or from speaking publicly in support of causes the President disagrees with and to strongarm firms into conform their client selection and attorney hiring policies to the President’s liking.

Harm caused to lawyers, ABA. As a result of the alleged law firm intimidation policy, firms that previously contributed thousands of hours to pro bono work to a host of causes have withdrawn from that work because it is disfavored by the Trump administration. Members of the ABA have allegedly been harmed as a result of the orders, and the ABA has been forced to forgo litigation against the administration because counsel who took on such work are allegedly no longer willing. The complaint states, “[T]he ABA is uniquely situated to achieve meaningful and certain relief against this unconstitutional Policy on behalf of a substantial part of the American bar.”

Unconstitutionality. The administration’s law firm intimidation policy is unlawful, the ABA argues, elaborating in its complaint, “Our Constitution does not vest the Executive Branch with the power to point to individual lawyers or law firms, declare by executive fiat that their work or their internal policies are ‘against the national interest’ or otherwise illegal or improper, and direct (or threaten) executive action against that lawyer or law firm.” Exercising such power violates the First Amendment, the ABA alleges. The ABA has asked the court to declare the administration’s alleged law firm intimidation policy unconstitutional and to enjoin the named defendants from implementing and enforcing the policy against the ABA or any of its members in the future.

The case is No. 25-1888.

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