Lobbying Contact Under the LDA: Covered Officials and Thresholds

A lobbying contact under the LDA is any oral, written, or electronic communication made to a covered federal official, on behalf of a client, about federal legislation, federal rules or executive orders, the administration of a federal program, or the nomination or confirmation of someone whose appointment requires Senate approval. The form of the communication does not matter. What matters is who received it, what it was about, and whether it was made on someone else’s behalf. Whether a single contact turns into a registration obligation depends on separate time and money thresholds that the statute sets deliberately low.

The Four Subjects That Make a Communication a Contact

The Lobbying Disclosure Act defines a lobbying contact by reference to four categories of subject matter.¹ The first is federal legislation, including proposals that have not yet been formally introduced. The second is federal rules, regulations, executive orders, or any other policy position of the U.S. government. The third is the administration of federal programs, which reaches the negotiation or award of contracts, grants, loans, permits, and licenses. The fourth is the nomination or confirmation of anyone whose appointment requires Senate approval, and this one often catches people off guard because they associate lobbying with legislation alone.

An email, a text message, a phone call, and a meeting all qualify equally. The test is substance: did the communication attempt to influence a covered official’s position on one of those four subjects? A pitch to a senior agency official about why a client deserves a federal grant is a lobbying contact. So is a call to a senator’s chief of staff urging support for a particular judicial nominee.

Contact Versus Activity

Two terms in the statute do different work, and confusing them is the single most common reason people miscount their obligations. A lobbying contact is the communication itself. Lobbying activity is broader: it includes the contact plus the work that supports it, such as research, strategy sessions, drafting talking points, and coordinating with allies.²

The qualifier is intent at the time the work is done. If a consultant researches a regulatory issue because a lobbying contact is planned or anticipated, that research counts as lobbying activity. If the same consultant researches the same issue for a white paper with no contact in view, it does not. Monitoring and client updates follow the same rule. When the reporting feeds a lobbying strategy, it is lobbying activity; a status update on a completed effort with no future contacts planned generally is not.²

The distinction matters because the threshold for becoming a “lobbyist” under the Act is measured in lobbying activity, not just contacts.

Who Is a Covered Official

A communication is a lobbying contact only if it reaches a covered official. The LDA divides these into legislative and executive branch officials, and both lists sweep more broadly than most people expect.

Legislative Branch

Every Member of Congress qualifies, along with every elected officer of the House or Senate. Coverage extends to any employee of a Member, a congressional committee, a joint committee, a leadership office, or a working group organized to provide legislative services to Members.³ A meeting with a first-year legislative assistant carries the same disclosure weight as a meeting with the Speaker of the House.

Executive Branch

The executive branch list starts with the President and Vice President and includes any officer or employee in the Executive Office of the President. It extends to anyone serving at Executive Schedule Levels I through V, which covers cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, and similar senior appointees. Members of the uniformed services at pay grade O-7 and above, meaning brigadier generals and rear admirals and up, are covered. The final category picks up officials in positions that are confidential, policy-determining, or policy-advocating in nature.¹⁴

As a working rule: if you are communicating with a political appointee in the executive branch or virtually any employee on Capitol Hill, treat the person as potentially covered.

Communications That Do Not Count

The statute lists 19 categories of communication that do not qualify as lobbying contacts even when they involve covered subjects and covered officials.¹ The ones that come up most in practice:

Administrative requests. Asking for the time and location of a hearing, requesting a meeting, or checking the status of a pending action does not count, provided the request itself contains no attempt to influence the official’s position. Sliding into substance (“we’d like to meet to discuss why the proposed rule should be withdrawn”) crosses the line.²
Congressional testimony before a committee, subcommittee, or task force, whether delivered orally or submitted for the record.⁵
Public comments on proposed rules, when submitted in response to a Federal Register notice and directed to the official named in the notice.⁵
Communications compelled by subpoena, civil investigative demand, or statute.
Communications by state and local government employees acting in their official capacity.
Media activity, including news gathering and speeches, articles, and broadcasts available to the general public.
Written responses to written or oral requests from a covered official for specific information.
Communications made on behalf of a foreign government or foreign political party that are already disclosed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

One trap in the exemption list is worth flagging. A communication that qualifies as an exempt administrative request can still be counted as lobbying activity when it supports a later lobbying contact. The exemption keeps the communication out of the “contact” column; it does not necessarily keep the underlying time out of the 20% calculation.²

When a Contact Triggers Registration

Making a single lobbying contact does not automatically require registration. Two thresholds have to be crossed, and they operate together.

The 20% Time Rule

An individual becomes a “lobbyist” under the Act only if lobbying activities for a particular client account for 20% or more of the time the person spends serving that client in any three-month period, and the individual makes more than one lobbying contact.⁶ Because “lobbying activities” sweeps in preparation and research, the calculation is not limited to time spent on the phone or in meetings. Two days a month of legislative research plus an hour of calls to Hill staffers is 20%-rule territory long before the contacts alone would be.

Dollar Thresholds

Even when an individual meets the time test, the firm or organization that employs them can fall below registration if the money involved is small enough. A lobbying firm need not register for a particular client if income from that client for lobbying-related matters does not exceed $2,500 in a quarterly period. An organization using its own employees to lobby need not register if total lobbying expenses stay at or below $10,000 per quarter.⁷

These figures are adjusted for inflation every four years using the Consumer Price Index, rounded to the nearest $500.⁷ The most recent adjustment took effect January 1, 2025. The Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House publish the current adjusted amounts.⁸

Put the pieces together and the picture is this: a communication becomes a lobbying contact based on subject, audience, and whose behalf it was made on. Registration follows only when contacts, supporting activity, and dollars all cross their respective lines within the same quarter.

A Note on Foreign Clients

If the client is a foreign government or a foreign political party, the relevant statute is not the LDA but the Foreign Agents Registration Act, administered by the Department of Justice. If the foreign client is a private company or organization, registration can proceed under the LDA instead of FARA, provided the LDA’s own requirements are met. The LDA specifically exempts communications already disclosed under FARA to avoid duplicate reporting.¹ FARA reaches beyond lobbying to political consulting, public relations, and fundraising on behalf of foreign principals, and registering under the wrong statute is not a safe harbor for the one that should have been used.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 2 USC 1602 – Definitions
2
Congress.gov. Lobbying Disclosure Act Guidance
3
U.S. Senate. Lobbying Disclosure Act – Definitions
4
Lobbying Disclosure. Lobbying Disclosure – Covered Executive Branch Official
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 2 USC Ch 26 – Disclosure of Lobbying Activities
6
Lobbying Disclosure. Lobbying Disclosure Act Guidance
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 2 USC 1603 – Registration of Lobbyists
8
U.S. Senate. Registration Thresholds