Please join DPLI on Wednesday, February 26, 12:10 p.m., for a lunch workshop with Michael H. Ullmann ’83, retired Executive Vice President, General Counsel at Johnson & Johnson, and current member of the Board of Directors of Americares. Mike will facilitate an interactive workshop on the timely topic of how private and non-profit organizations respond to changes in government administration, and how they make decisions on whether to bring lawsuits against the federal government. More details below. Lunch will be served.
This event is open to current Columbia Law School students. Please RSVP here by Monday, February 24.
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Over the last month, an unprecedented number of non-profit organizations (including NGOs, universities, and the American Bar Association) have filed lawsuits against the Trump Administration for, among other things, withdrawing funding through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The decision of any organization (non-profit or for-profit) to sue the federal government is not taken lightly. There are clearly risks in filing lawsuits against the federal government for organizations that are dependent on the federal government for funding or are regulated by the federal government, especially when concerns of retaliation are present. Yet there can also be significant risks in not taking legal or other responsive action.
In this DPLI workshop, we will discuss the factors that organizations are weighing when deciding whether to sue the federal government over these funding cuts. Workshop participants will discuss the situations facing some of these organizations and be asked whether they would recommend to sue or attempt other strategies if they were the Chief Counsel of these organizations.
This interactive workshop will be led by Michael Ullmann, former Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Johnson & Johnson, and current member of the Board of Directors of Americares, the global healthcare and disaster relief organization (which has received USAID support to operate clinics in Latin America).
https://www.law.columbia.edu/events/suing-federal-government-organizational-perspective-2025-02-26
