The District of Columbia’s Board on Professional Responsibility filed charges against US Justice Department (DOJ) Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, which were made public Tuesday.

In a rebuke of Martin’s conduct in his interactions with Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) through a series of letters dated February and March of 2025, the board alleged that Martin violated his oath of office as an attorney admitted to the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, as he “knew or should have known” the communications and threats made to the university regarding its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and programs violated the First and Fifth amendments to the US Constitution.

“Acting in his official capacity and speaking on behalf of the government, he used coercion to punish or suppress a disfavored viewpoint, the teaching and promotion of ‘DEI,'” disciplinary counsel Hamilton P. Fox III wrote. 

The filings, received March 6, focus on a letter Martin wrote to GULC on February 17, 2025, in which he said the DOJ would no longer consider any current or former students of the law school for employment with the office until it discontinues teaching and promoting DEI.

Going a step further, Martin wrote a letter dated March 17, 2025, to the interim president and Georgetown University board of directors chairman, threatening the school’s “receipt of nearly $1 billion of federal tax money in recent years.”

At the time of the February 2025 letter, Georgetown Law School’s dean rejected the DOJ warning, writing in a letter dated March 6, 2025, that the school’s Catholic and Jesuit principles welcomed discourse “among people of different faiths, cultures and beliefs,” adding the First Amendment guarantees the university’s right to “determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it,” an argument with which the professional responsibility board later agreed.

Fox added that Martin’s letters sought to have Georgetown Law “relinquish its free speech and religious rights in order to continue to obtain a benefit”—the benefit being employment or its federal funding.

Other schools, including the University of Virginia, have faced similar threats regarding policies related to DEI programs that aim to reduce discrimination based on factors such as race, sex or national origin, predominantly in admissions and hiring. One of the first actions in President Donald Trump’s second administration was to ban federal government DEI initiatives.