ABA rates Trump judicial nominee in Montana as 'not qualified'

By Nate Raymond

April 8 (Reuters) - The American Bar Association for the first time during President Donald Trump's second term in office has rated one of his judicial nominees as "not qualified," bestowing that label on Katie Lane, his pick to become a federal judge in Montana.

A majority of the members of the ABA's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary rated Lane not qualified, according to a new set of ratings for judicial nominees released by the bar association on Wednesday. A minority rated her qualified.

It released the ratings a week after Lane appeared before the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee. In a Tuesday letter to the committee, the chair of the ABA panel said its rating was based on her having less than nine years of experience as a practicing lawyer.

Pamela Roberts, a lawyer at Bowman and Brooke who chairs the ABA committee, said it had received feedback from about 200 members of the bench and bar about Lane, who "is viewed as a talented lawyer, indeed at the top of her peer group."

"Under the Committee's standards, however, these positive attributes do not compensate for the short time Ms. Lane has practiced law — less than nine years, including her clerkships — and her lack of substantial courtroom and trial experience," Roberts wrote.

The White House had no immediate comment.

The ABA has since 1953 evaluated the professional qualifications of federal judicial nominees.

Conservatives have long accused the ABA of bias against Republican judicial nominees, and the Trump administration last year moved to limit the group's role in rating his picks by restricting the organization's ability to vet them.

Yet despite the curtailed access, the ABA has continued to publish its ratings of Trump's judicial nominees. So far, 37 have received "qualified" or "well qualified" ratings, while four have received none due to "insufficient information."

In Trump's first term from 2017 to 2020, 10 of Trump's judicial nominees received a "not qualified" rating.

The ABA panel typically deems nominees qualified only if they had at least 12 years of experience, a length of time that Lane, who is in her 30s, did not meet, having graduated from George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School in 2017.

Lane went on to clerk for two federal judges and work as an associate at Jones Day before joining the Montana Department of Justice to work under Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen as deputy solicitor general from 2021 to 2023.

She also worked as an associate at the conservative law firm Consovoy McCarthy and as an intern for Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on the Senate Judiciary Committee before last year joining the Republican National Committee as senior counsel.