Labor Department Bars Attorneys From Speaking at ABA Events (1)

A top Department of Labor official told agency attorneys they are prohibited from speaking at or attending programs hosted by the American Bar Association in an official capacity, saying the department will no longer fund travel or registration fees.

Labor Solicitor Jonathan Berry said the department cannot support the ABA’s “radical goals” in a Monday morning email to staff reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

It’s the latest escalation in growing tensions between the Trump administration and the nation’s largest professional association for lawyers. The ABA sued the administration in June, accusing it of targeting law firms through a series of executive orders to “intimidate and coerce” them into supporting the president’s agenda.

The DOL directive falls in line with similar policies at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, according to Berry’s email, which was first reported by Fox News.

The message said the “ABA holds itself out as non-ideological at certain times, but takes decidedly radical ideological positions at others.”

“Our participation in ‘neutral’ ABA events contributes to institutional stature the ABA leverages to advance radical goals as if they were ‘neutral’” Berry wrote. “No more.”

DOL attorneys may no longer speak at, attend, or participate in ABA events using their government titles, Berry said. The policy applies to all department attorneys and non-attorney staff in the solicitor’s office. Career staffers who still wish to go to ABA events must fund it themselves, Berry said.

Representatives for the ABA and the DOL didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration pulled their speaker from this year’s ABA midwinter meeting scheduled to start Feb. 24, according to a person involved in planning the conference agenda. The person with knowledge didn’t provide further information, but added that the ABA has substituted in former officials who recently left the government to give an agency-side perspective.

The ABA midwinter conference agendas for the Employee Benefits Committee, which concluded last week, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, scheduled for mid March, lacked any current DOL officials.

Jennifer Brand, the DOL’s associate solicitor for fair labor standards, so far is still scheduled to participate in a panel at the midwinter meeting of the Wage & Hour Committee, which starts Feb. 18.