The Justice Department released a memo this week concluding the government should pay ACORN for contracts that were in place before Congress banned the community organizing group from receiving federal funds.

Legislation signed by President Barack Obama in October prohibits the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now from receiving federal funds.

Acting Assistant Attorney General David Barron, who oversees the Office of Legal Counsel, stated in an opinion dated Oct. 23 that the language of the law is ambiguous and that the government should honor contracts with Acorn that predated the law. The ban on funding for ACORN came after two conservative activists videotaped employees of the group giving advice on how to launder money and evade taxes.

The deputy general counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development had asked the Justice Department for its legal opinion about the pre-existing contracts it had with ACORN. The group has gotten around $53 million from the federal government since 1994, much in the form of grants from HUD, according to the New York Times.

The OLC memo states that the law “should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to ACORN or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability.”

ACORN got around $200,000 from the Department of Justice through affiliates and subcontracts between 2002 and 2009, according to a report issued last week by the department’s inspector general. Acorn also registers minority and low-income voters – who tend to vote Democratic. It has been a long-time target of conservatives.

Republicans are not reacting well to the legal opinion, writes Jake Tapper on ABC’s Political Punch blog:

The ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., blasted the DOJ opinion as “political cronyism.”

“The bipartisan intent of Congress was clear – no more federal dollars should flow to ACORN,” Issa said. “It is telling that this administration continues to look for every excuse possible to circumvent the intent of Congress.  Taxpayers should not have to continue subsidizing a criminal enterprise that helped Barack Obama get elected president.  The politicization of the Justice Department to pay back one of the president’s political allies is shameful and amounts to nothing more than old-fashioned cronyism.”