Bondi Cuts Out Leftist American Bar Association: No More Access To Non-Public Info | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Hank Berrien.

    The Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, pointed out the leftist bias of the American Bar Association (ABA) and ordered that it will bo longer have access to non-public information, including bar records.

    The ABA uses a ratings process in which their Standing Committee rates each nominee "Well Qualified," "Qualified" or "Not Qualified." "Unanimous committee ratings appear as a single rating. In other situations, the rating from the majority or substantial majority (2/3 or more of those voting) of the Committee is recorded first, followed by the rating or ratings of a minority of the Committee. The majority rating is the rating of the committee," the ABA notes on its website.

    "The ABA has a history of taking liberal positions on issues including abortion, the death penalty, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, and the Second Amendment," National Review stated in 2019. "The organization's ideological bias has long tainted its ratings of judicial nominees. An entire book on the subject was written as early as 1965, Joel B. Grossman's Lawyers and Judges: The ABA and the Politics of Judicial Selection."

    Of the 15 members on the ABA's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary in 2019, five donated to Barack Obama's campaign, three to that of Hillary Clinton, and none to the three Republican nominees between 2008-2016. Incredibly, the ABA gave a minority "Not Qualified" rating to iconic Judge Robert Bork and other conservative legal scholars, including Richard A. Posner, Edith H. Jones, and William H. Pryor, among others.


    "For several decades, the American Bar Association has received special treatment and enjoyed special access to judicial nominees," Bondi wrote in a letter to ABA President William Bay. "In some administrations, the ABA received notice of nominees before a nomination was announced to the public. Some administrations would even decide whether to nominate an individual based on a rating assigned by the ABA."

    She continued:

    Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees' qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations. The ABA's steadfast refusal to fix the bias in its ratings process, despite criticism from Congress, the Administration, and the academy, is disquieting. Accordingly, while the ABA is free to comment on judicial nominations along with other activist organizations, there is no justification for treating the ABA differently from such other activist organizations and the Department of Justice will not do so. Specifically, the Office of Legal Policy will no longer direct nominees to provide waivers allowing the ABA access to non-public information, including bar records. Nominees will also not respond to questionnaires prepared by the ABA and will not sit for interviews with the ABA.