A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw

By Diana Novak Jones, Mike Scarcella and Sara Merken

Good morning. Here’s the top news today: The dispute between the ABA and the Trump administration took a turn this week, as the ABA sued the DOJ and the White House said it may remove the ABA's ability to accredit law schools. Plus, Skadden was accused of limiting its lawyers’ ability to discuss the firm’s deal with President Trump; a judge partially blocked Trump’s efforts to overhaul the election system; and a filing mistake in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s case challenging New York’s congestion pricing causes major drama. Have a great Friday.

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REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

Things have gotten increasingly heated between the American Bar Association and the Trump administration, our colleague Karen Sloan reports.

President Trump said in an executive order that he is considering revoking the ABA’s status as the federally recognized accreditor of law schools, a change that could impact lawyer licensing, student loans and attorney mobility, legal education experts said.

President Trump said he was directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to assess whether to suspend or terminate the ABA as the government’s official law school accreditor, citing its "unlawful ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ requirements."

Meanwhile, the ABA sued the DOJ, claiming the department illegally terminated grants in retaliation for the ABA’s public criticism of the Trump administration. The canceled grants include $3.2 million used to train lawyers to represent victims of domestic and sexual violence. The ABA sought a temporary restraining order from the court to block the government from terminating the grants.

That’s the total value of the grants that the DOJ canceled this week, sources told Reuters exclusively. The money was for a wide range of services to crime victims, including trauma recovery centers and sign language interpretation. The grants were for that amount when they were awarded, but it was not immediately clear how much of this funding remained unspent when the cuts occurred.

When the U.S. Supreme Court next week hears arguments in a case that could reshape class action litigation, the justices will consider some lofty questions about constitutional standing and jurisdiction. But what about the practical effects if the high court sides with diagnostic-testing company Laboratory Corporation of America and holds that class actions can’t be certified if they include uninjured members? In On the Case, Jenna Greene looks at the potential impact on low-dollar cases, antitrust enforcement and corporate defendants seeking to resolve widespread liability.

—A spokesperson for Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who lashed out at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan after it filed with the court an internal government letter that cast doubt on the agency’s effort to stop New York's congestion pricing program. The Trump administration quickly said DOJ’s civil division will take over defending the agency in a lawsuit filed by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office said the filing was "an honest error” and was not intentional. The DOJ lawyers were replaced.