Bar Fight: The ABA vs. the DOJ in the Spiciest Legal Drama Since Judge Judy
It started with a grant. It escalated into a lawsuit. Now it’s pure, gavel-swinging chaos.
In a legal showdown spicier than a daytime soap and with more plot twists than a “Law & Order” marathon, the American Bar Association (ABA) is suing the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Yes, the very same ABA that stamps approval on lawyers and accredits law schools is throwing its legal briefcase at the federal government, claiming retaliation after the DOJ pulled funding on a civil legal services grant.
Grab your popcorn and your pocket Constitution — this one’s gonna be messy.
The Premise: Drama in the Public Interest
At the heart of this fight is a federal grant that helped the ABA provide legal assistance to unrepresented immigrants, including vulnerable children and asylum seekers. But the DOJ, apparently channeling its inner soap villain, pulled the plug on the funding — and not quietly.
According to the ABA, the DOJ accused the association of violating terms of the grant and is now demanding a refund of previously distributed funds. The ABA, in turn, says this is not just a contract dispute — it’s retaliation for defending the legal rights of immigrants in a system increasingly hostile to them.
Translation: “They’re punishing us for doing our job.”
The Twist: The ABA Lawyered Up Against... Well, Everyone
In a move that would make even the most caffeinated cable news analyst raise an eyebrow, the ABA has gone full lawsuit mode — filing in federal court and accusing the DOJ of acting “arbitrarily, capriciously, and in abuse of discretion.” (Yes, that’s legalese for “They’re being jerks.”)
The lawsuit claims the DOJ’s sudden change of heart and demand for money back isn’t about accountability — it’s about politics. In other words, “You didn’t like what we said in court, so now you’re coming for our lunch money.”
Who’s Winning? Who’s Losing? Who’s Lawyering the Lawyers?
This is like watching your parents argue over who gets custody of the Constitution. Both the DOJ and the ABA are institutions of law — and now they’re clawing at each other like rival law school debate teams.
Winners so far?
Litigation attorneys billing by the hour.
Legal journalists with a deadline to hit.
Anyone who enjoys watching high-powered professionals get petty in court documents.
Losers?
Immigrants and vulnerable populations who might lose access to legal aid if the grant fight guts essential services.
The illusion that legal institutions work together for justice, not revenge.
Will the Drama Surpass Daytime Television?
Let’s assess:
Backstabbing? Check.
Allegations of retaliation? Check.
Federal agencies weaponizing paperwork? Big check.
A lawsuit about a lawsuit involving lawyers suing lawyers for lawyering too hard? You bet.
Honestly, this saga already outpaces your average episode of General Hospital. At least in soap operas, someone eventually gets amnesia and a dramatic reunion. Here? Just subpoenas.
What Are the Betting Odds?
For entertainment purposes only, of course…
DOJ walks it back quietly: 10 to 1 (Unlikely — this DOJ doesn’t exactly do “quiet.”)
ABA gets a partial win and a stern lecture: 3 to 1 (The “split the baby” outcome — classic.)
Supreme Court cameo down the line? 20 to 1 (Let’s not give SCOTUS more to do.)
Actual justice for the people stuck in the middle of this elite playground brawl? TBD.
Final Verdict: Nobody Wins in a Bar Fight (Except the Bartender)
This legal cage match is less about truth or justice and more about bureaucratic pride and institutional power. While the ABA and DOJ swing at each other like it’s a bar exam grudge match, the real victims are those in need of legal aid — left in limbo as the titans bicker.
And if you're wondering who the bartender is in this metaphor?
It’s us. The public. Watching. Paying. Pouring the drinks. And silently judging.
Radio Icon Paul Harvey - Lawyers in Colonies in 1620
Now the rest of the story. If there is a stain on the record of our forefathers one dark hour in the earliest history of the American colonies, it would be the burning of the so called witches at Salem. But that was a pinpoint in place and time. That was a very brief lapse into hysteria.
For the most part, our seventeenth century colonists were scrupulously fair, even in fear, and there was one group of people they feared with reason, a society, you might say, who was often insidious craft had claimed a multitude of victims even since the Middle Ages. In Europe, one group of people hated and feared from Massachusetts Bay Colony to Virginia. The magistrates would not burn them at the state, although surely a great many of the colonists might have recommended such a solution. But this one group of people remained hated, perhaps more than any other in our earliest American colonies.
In the first place, our forefathers were baffled by them. Where did they come from? Of all who had sailed from England to Plymouth in sixteen twenty, not one of those, not one of those two legged vermin, was aboard. That's right, vermin that's what the colonists called them. Parasites who fed on human misery, that's what the colonists called them, Spreading sorrow and confusion wherever they went, destructive, that's what the colonists called them.
And still they were permitted to coexist with the colonists for a while. For a while, of course, there were colonial laws prohibiting the practice of their infamous craft, and somehow away was always found around the laws. In sixteen forty one, Massachusetts Bay Colony took a novel approach to the problem. The governor's attempted to starve these devils out of existence through economic exclusion.
They were denied wages. Thereby it was hoped that they would perish. Four years later, Virginia followed the example of Massachusetts Bay, and for a while it seemed that the dilemma was resolved, But it was not. Somehow the parasites managed to survive, and the mere nearness of them made the colonists skin crawl.
In sixteen fifty eight, in Virginia, the final solution banishment exile the treacherous ones. I'm quoting. The treacherous ones were cast out of the colony and at long last, after decades of enduring the psychological gloom, the sun came out and the birds sang, and all was right with the world. That elation continued for but one generation.
I am not sure why the Virginians eventually allowed the outcasts to return, but they did in sixteen eighty. After twenty two years they despised ones were readmitted to the colony on the condition that they be subjected to the strictest surveillance. Ah, how soon we forget. For indeed, over the next half century or so, their imposed restrictions were slowly, quietly swept away, and those whose treachery had been feared since the Middle Ages ultimately took their place in society.
Vermin is what they had been called. Parasites is what they had been called. Destructive is what they had been called. But these the vermin that once infested colonial America, the parasites that preyed on the misfortune of their neighbors, until finally they were officially banished from Virginia.
Those dreaded, despised, inevitably outcast masters of confusion were lawyers. And now you know the rest of the story.