The association ‘no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications,” Pam Bondi said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has ended the role of the American Bar Association (ABA) in vetting people nominated by the president to serve as judges.
Bondi said in a May 29 missive to ABA President William R. Bay that the association “no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations.”
She said that the association has refused to fix the bias in its rating process and that the Department of Justice will stop directing nominees to provide waivers that let the ABA access non-public information on the nominees, including bar records.
Nominees will also neither respond to ABA surveys nor sit for interviews with the association, Bondi said.
“The American Bar Association has lost its way, and we do not believe it serves as a fair arbiter of judicial nominees,” Bondi wrote on social media platform X.
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
She said the Department of Justice “will no longer give the ABA the access they’ve taken for granted.”
The ABA did not respond to a request for comment and has not appeared to respond publicly to the development.
“Excellent move by Attorney General Bondi. The ABA has been a progressive advocacy organization for many years, and should not enjoy special privileges,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote on X.
Excellent move by Attorney General Bondi. The ABA has been a progressive advocacy organization for many years, and should not enjoy special privileges. https://t.co/2KujulBQM7
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) May 30, 2025
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s chairman, and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the panel, did not respond to inquiries.
The ABA is an association of lawyers and judges. It says it has more than 400,000 members. An ABA committee began conducting independent evaluations of the qualifications of judicial nominees in 1953.
Some evaluations through 2000, and from 2009 to 2016, were conducted before individuals were formally nominated, if requested by the president. Since 2017, the evaluations have only been conducted after nominees are announced.
The evaluations result in a rating, such as “well qualified.”
