August 13, 2014
(WASHINGTON, DC) The Obama administration on Tuesday rolled back part of its ban on lobbyists serving in government, narrowing one of the president’s signature policies in the face of a legal challenge.
Under a new rule, registered lobbyists whom Mr. Obama had previously barred from serving on government advisory boards may now participate if they are representing companies or groups and not acting on their own behalf.
The change was published in the Federal Register and took effect immediately, the administration said. It comes after the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected the Obama administration’s efforts to dismiss a lawsuit by six lobbyists who challenged the ban’s constitutionality after being excluded from a trade advisory committee. The lobbyists said their First Amendment rights to petition the government had been violated.
Charles A. Rothfeld, the lawyer who handled the suit, said the change was gratifying. “The ban as it stood originally was irrational, because the point of these committees is to give private-sector entities the mechanism to present their views to the government,” he said, “and it made no sense to say you could pick anybody to represent you except for your lobbyist.”
The change is the latest example of the limits of the president’s effort to rein in the influence of special interests in government. Mr. Obama barred lobbyists from contributing to his campaign and signed an order on his first day in office in 2009 prohibiting them from serving in his administration.
But Mr. Obama has made a number of exceptions to that rule and has hired lobbyists for several important jobs. Critics argue that the president’s position has led to unintended consequences, prompting some operatives to refrain from registering as lobbyists merely to preserve the option of working with the administration while they are essentially doing the same thing as a lobbyist.
The administration said the rules were never intended to infringe on First Amendment rights.
“The purpose of the prohibition is to restrict the undue influence of lobbyists on the federal government through their membership on federal advisory committees,” a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement. “The prohibition is not designed to prevent lobbyists or others from petitioning their government.”