Alliance for Justice (AFJ)

AFJ opposes President Donald Trump and blames his Supreme Court nominees for ruling against AFJ’s left-of-center policy initiatives. It has criticized President Trump for appointing conservative justices, and AFJ has campaigned for “packing” the Supreme Court by adding additional justices to “dilute” conservative influence over the Court. ³

The Alliance for Justice (AFJ) has received funding from numerous prominent left-of-center funders, including the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation associated with billionaire investor Warren Buffett and his family, the Open Society Foundations associated with billionaire George Soros, the Ford Foundation, and the California Endowment. ⁴

Background

Alliance for Justice was founded in 1979 by Nan Aron, a former American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staff attorney. ⁵ In 1985, it launched the Judicial Selection Project to monitor judicial appointments. The project gathered opposition research in order to mount full-fledged campaigns against then-President Ronald Reagan’s judicial appointments. ⁶

In 1987, the group claimed its most famous scalp when it was part of the effort to defeat the Supreme Court nomination of then-D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Robert Bork. Aron claimed that the assault on Bork was “in triple gear” and that AFJ had constructed most of the case against him. ² Before the Bork confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominations were largely limited to the qualifications of the judges. The politics of the justices rarely played a role in the confirmation hearings. At the time, Aron told Time, “This battle won’t involve smoking guns or skeletons. It’s going to come down to philosophy.” ⁷

The AFJ led the fight against Clarence Thomas when he was appointed by President George H.W. Bush. When President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts and then Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, the AFJ also led the fight against their confirmations. ⁸

Alliance for Justice Action Campaign

Also see Alliance for Justice Action Campaign (Nonprofit)

The Alliance for Justice Action Campaign is the 501(c)(4) advocacy arm of the Alliance for Justice responsible for lobbying Congress. In 2017, it spent $13,311 on federal lobbying.⁹

Member Organizations

The AFJ claims it has over 135 member organizations. ¹ Those members include American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), Consumers Union, Drug Policy Alliance, Earthjustice, NARAL, National Education Association, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, and Transgender Law Center. ¹⁰

Activities

Bolder Advocacy

AFJ’s largest project by budget is its advocacy work, called Bolder Advocacy. It works on educating left-wing groups on how to promote liberal policies by offering guidance on what the IRS defines as “allowable lobbying.” It also provides help on everything from influencing ballot propositions to forming an organization. ¹¹

First Monday Documents

The organization also makes documentaries through its First Monday documentary series. These are documentaries that are targeted at law students, encouraging them to work on various left-wing causes. For example in 2001, the Surdna Foundation donated $100,000 to AFJ to help build a network to advance gun control efforts. That year, AFJ released a documentary called America Up In Arms and Deadly Business: How the Gun Industry and the NRA Market Mayhem. ¹¹

Building the Bench

Building the Bench is a project of Alliance for Justice that was launched in early 2019.¹²

The group works to develop “a professionally and demographically diverse pool of judicial candidates for the next President to consider.” ¹³ The project was designed to function as a ready-made magazine of judicial nominees to help a future Democratic president make a rapid barrage of judicial nominations after assuming office. The goal of this project was to fill as many judicial seats as possible with left-leaning judges after the Trump administration left office. ¹²

The project is led by a board of 31 advisors including Barbara Arnwine, founder of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Transformative Justice Coalition, and Alice O’Brien, general counsel for the National Education Association. ¹³

Another important board member is Herman Schwartz, author of Right Wing Justice: The Conservative Campaign to Take Over the Courts, founder of the ACLU National Prison Project, member of the executive committee of the board of the Open Society Institute Justice Initiative, and former chief counsel for the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee. ¹⁴

Also on the board is Mark Tushnet, a left-wing Harvard Law School professor and former clerk to the late former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. ¹⁵ Tushnet has written that his decisions, if he were a judge, would be explicitly political, even going so far as to say that he would make his decisions based on which result would be “likely to advance the cause of socialism.” ¹⁶

Supreme Court Structure

As of 2024, AFJ was campaigning in support of changes to the Supreme Court as it argued the Court had gotten “out-of-control.” It advocated term limits for Supreme Court justices and packing the Supreme Court to “dilute” the conservative majority. ³

AFJ’s judicial reform campaign also accused the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts’s leadership of “declaring itself royalty.” AFJ claimed that Roberts’s Supreme Court “invented” the major questions doctrine and that the Court’s use of it to justify the overturning of Chevron deference demonstrated how the Supreme Court is abusing its power. ³

Second Trump Administration

After President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, Alliance for Justice began publishing letters opposing the second Trump administration’s nominations. As of April 2025, AFJ had written letters expressing opposition to the nominations of Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Dean John Sauer, Aaron Reitz, and Harmeet Dhillon. ¹⁷

AFJ’s letter opposing Patel’s nomination for director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) accused Patel of being incompetent and unqualified for the position. It pointed to his calls for “dismantling” the FBI, opposition to the “deep state,” and “loyalty to Trump” as justifications for opposition. It also justifies its claims of Patel being incompetent by arguing he “falsely accused” the FBI of wrongfully obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Trump’s former foreign adviser Carter Page amid the Trump-Russia collusion claims controversy; Obama administration Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates stated in 2020 that she would not have signed the warrant due to its flaws. ^{18 19}

AFJ’s letter opposing Pam Bondi’s nomination for Attorney General argued that she was “ill-equipped” for the position due to her “zealous commitment to conservative ideology and loyalty to Donald Trump.” It outlined her previous roles in serving the first Trump administration and as President Trump’s personal lawyer, arguing that her loyalty and history of serving as his personal attorney “disqualifies” her from being Attorney General and rendered her harmful to America. ²⁰

Ad Campaign calling for Resignation of Justice Clarence Thomas

In May 2023, Alliance for Justice and its lobbying and advocacy arm, Alliance for Justice Action Campaign (AFJAC), launched a $400,000 media campaign with ads calling for the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The ad cited ProPublica and Slate reports that alleged Thomas had previously accepted “gifts” from billionaire Harlan Crow that included “luxury vacations, real estate deals and free tuition for a relative.”  ²¹

The media campaign included digital ads released to news outlets including CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. A press release by AFJ president Rakim H.D Brooks stated, “No one should turn a blind eye to that level of corruption, particularly those sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” ²¹

Opposition to Judges Appointed by Trump

AFJ promotes the concept that President Donald Trump during his first term “stacked the courts” by appointing judges. It also argues that, while fulfilling his Constitutional authority to nominate judges,  Trump “shift[ed] the judiciary sharply to the right” and criticizes him for appointing judges who are affiliated with the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. It claims that the judges’ rulings have been to the detriment of ordinary Americans, which it categorizes as “workers, consumers, LGBTQ+ communities, people of color, women, and immigrants.” ²²

During the second term of President Donald Trump, AFJ campaigned in opposition to the JUDGES Act, which would add 66 judgeships, because it argues that Trump is trying to create a “conservative supermajority” on the Supreme Court and pack the Supreme Court with additional seats. Additionally, AFJ calls Trump’s Supreme Court nominees “far-right” and accuses them of eliminating Constitutionally protected rights. ²²

AFJ uses its expressed opposition to Trump-nominated Justices to support its policy advocacy. It uses data from the left-of-center Constitutional Accountability Center and publishes select cases to support its claims that Trump’s Justices have made rulings in favor of companies and to the detriment of employees. It criticizes court decisions for not raising the salary threshold to be mandated to be eligible for overtime pay rates, for ruling in favor of allowing companies to sue unions for economic losses as a result of strikes, and for ruling in favor of allowing employers to have written agreements with employees that would require disputes to be handled through arbitration. ²³

In addition to opposing rulings on employer authorities, AFJ uses its opposition to Trump-nominated Supreme Court justices to support left-of-center immigration and racial advocacy. AFJ argues that white judges are the main demographic responsible for what it ees as unfavorable rulings regarding race and immigration. It highlights cases where the justices ruled in favor of immigration laws that would take into consideration the economic contributions and welfare dependency rates of immigrants on a case-by-case basis,, where the justices ruled in opposition to affirmative action policies, and where the justices ruled in favor of upholding Arizona laws that required votes to be cast in the precinct in which the voter lives. ²⁴

AFJ accuses Trump’s Justices of being chosen to “dismantle anti-discrimination laws and policies,” citing their opposition to affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. ²⁴

Leadership

As of 2025, Betsy Miller Kittredge was interim co-president, vice president of operations, and chief staff for Alliance for Justice. Prior to AFJ, she was senior vice president of human resources and operations for Bonterra, a nonprofit development and consulting firm. Kittredge also worked as managing director of PowerSwitch Action, worked in communications for the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor, performed research for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the AFL-CIO, and as research director and operations director for Carol/Trevelyan Strategy Group. ²⁵

As of 2025, Keith Thirion was an interim co-president and vice president of strategy for AFJ. He previously served as director of advocacy and programs for Equality Maryland and the Virginia field director for Chesapeake Climate Action Network. ²⁶

Nan Aron, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney, founded AFJ and worked as its president until 2021. ¹

Abby Levine was the former director of the Bolder Advocacy Project. Levine was the Public Policy Analyst for the National Council of Nonprofit Associations. ²⁷

Funding

AFJ has received money from several left-of-center foundations and labor unions. The Ford Foundation had donated $3.36 million, the Atlantic Foundation had donated $2.45 million, and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations had donated $1.6 million. ¹¹

In 2023, AFJ reported $7.3 million in total revenue, which included $146,582 in membership dues. ²⁸ It also reported $8.8 million in total expenses, including $5.9 million in salaries and compensation of employees. ²⁹