CHICAGO, April 28, 2025 — As of today, the ABA is a plaintiff in three separate actions seeking relief in the courts for what we believe are wrongful actions by the administration. Details of these cases are set out below.
Global Health Council, et al. v. Trump, et al., No. 1:25-cv-00402 (D.D.C)
The ABA, along with other plaintiffs, filed suit to enjoin the unlawful and unconstitutional exercise of executive power to cancel congressionally-appropriated funding for foreign-assistance programs administered through USAID and the State Department. For 35 years, the ABA Center for Global Programs has partnered with USAID and the State Department to advance the rule of law in more than 100 countries around the globe. The Rule of Law Initiative (ROLI), one of the center’s largest programs, is guided by a board chaired by former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. The sudden cancellation of funding imperils the critical work that ROLI and the rest of the center’s programs do to promote the international rule of law, human rights and U.S. national interests.
The ABA joined other legal services providers in this lawsuit to challenge DOJ’s terminations of federal contracts for services to provide information about the U.S. immigration process to immigrants who must navigate that process on their own. Congress appropriated funding for those services through multiple projects including the Legal Orientation Program. The ABA’s Commission on Immigration, Immigration Justice Project and the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project have partnered with the federal government to provide services for those programs going back to their very beginnings. The cancellation of those programs, in violation of Congress’ spending determinations, will leave immigrants without assistance in the complex immigration process and decrease the efficiency of immigration courts that will now have to educate immigrants appearing before them about the basics of the process before proceeding.
American Bar Association v. U.S. Department of Justice, et al., No. 1:25-cv-01263 (D.D.C.)
The ABA filed this lawsuit to challenge the cancellation of grants, upon which the ABA relies to train and provide technical assistance to lawyers and judges who work with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. The ABA contends that terminating grants from DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) to the ABA Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence is retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and unlawful. DOJ terminated all the ABA’s OVW grants the day after issuing a memorandum, which criticized the ABA’s other federal funding litigation and positions that the ABA has expressed that the current administration disfavors and which imposed limits on DOJ employees’ engagement with the association. In terminating the ABA’s OVW grants, DOJ stated that the decision was due to a change in agency priorities, but DOJ did not terminate funding to other grantees doing similar work. The cancellation of those grants imperils the ABA’s decadeslong work to advance the goals of the Violence Against Women Act, including improvement of legal and community-based responses to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking in the United States.
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