Attorney General Pam Bondi has officially shown the American Bar Association (ABA) the door. In a letter dropped Thursday like a legal thunderclap, Bondi made it clear that the Department of Justice will no longer treat the ABA as a privileged voice in the judicial nomination process, stripping the 146-year-old organization of its longstanding backdoor access to nominees and confidential evaluations.
Bondi’s message was unmistakable: “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications,” Bondi wrote in a pointed rebuke to ABA President William Bay. “Its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations.”
The DOJ, she continued, will now treat the ABA as what it’s become: just another activist organization with a partisan tilt, no different than any other group pushing a political agenda under the guise of objectivity.
Effective immediately, judicial nominees will no longer grant waivers to the ABA for access to confidential bar records. Nor will they participate in ABA interviews or respond to ABA-prepared questionnaires—once a routine part of the judicial vetting pipeline.
The ABA has, for years, presented itself as a neutral authority in evaluating judicial qualifications. But critics—especially from the conservative legal world—say that’s a myth that’s been shattered repeatedly.
The American Bar Association has lost its way, and we do not believe it serves as a fair arbiter of judicial nominees.@TheJusticeDept will no longer give the ABA the access they’ve taken for granted. pic.twitter.com/ViqX9IRa7w
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) May 29, 2025
In fact, the ideological bent of the ABA is no secret. It has supported liberal positions on hot-button issues like abortion, gun control, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage. According to National Review, “The ABA’s ideological bias has long tainted its ratings of judicial nominees.” And it’s not a new complaint. As far back as 1965, Joel B. Grossman detailed the problem in his book Lawyers and Judges: The ABA and the Politics of Judicial Selection.
Even the numbers tell a story: of the 15 members on the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary in 2019, five donated to Barack Obama, three to Hillary Clinton, and zero to the GOP’s three presidential nominees between 2008–2016. Is it any wonder then that conservative nominees—from the legendary Judge Robert Bork to legal luminaries like Richard A. Posner, Edith H. Jones, and William H. Pryor—have received subpar or minority “Not Qualified” ratings from the ABA?
The Trump administration—and Bondi in particular—has made it no secret that they’re working to purge the federal government of entrenched progressive influence. That means not just confronting rogue bureaucrats and activist judges, but shutting down the pipelines that have long fed the judicial branch with ideologically aligned figures masquerading as impartial.
American Bar Association = leftist political hacks https://t.co/fokHc6pGz7
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) January 19, 2025
The ABA, once treated as a kind of gatekeeper, is now off the list.
The move also signals a deeper philosophical shift: the administration is no longer willing to outsource vetting of judicial temperament and qualifications to an organization they believe has lost its credibility.
And for a DOJ determined to restore constitutional originalism and dismantle what it sees as a decades-long legal establishment tilting left, Bondi’s rejection of the ABA is more than just a procedural change—it’s a strategic realignment.
