In win for rule of law, DOJ drops defense of Trump orders targeting prominent law firms

The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.

The DOJ dropped its appeals of four lower court rulings that found Trump’s executive orders sanctioning Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie* and Susman Godfrey were unlawful and issued specifically to punish the firms for exercising their constitutional rights.

Last year, Trump attempted to paralyze the firms’ ability to represent clients in dealings with the federal government by signing a series of orders that terminated contracts and stripped their lawyers of security clearances and access to government buildings. 

In addition to firms, Trump also targeted individual lawyers through his orders.

The DOJ dropping its defense of the orders represents a major win for the rule of law. By targeting firms based on the clients they represented, Trump’s orders represented a direct assault on the country’s adversarial system of justice. 

Some law firms — including Paul, Weiss — folded in the face of the orders and pledged tens of millions of dollars worth of pro bono legal work for causes favored by the White House in order to get Trump’s sanctions lifted.

Other firms successfully sued. The first to do so was Perkins Coie, which argued that it was being illegally targeted because it challenged the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and for its work on voting rights cases.

“The government’s decision to dismiss its appeal is clearly the right one,” WilmerHale said in a statement. “As we said from the outset, our challenge to the unlawful Executive Order was about defending our clients’ constitutional right to retain the counsel of their choosing and defending the rule of law. We are pleased these foundational principles were vindicated.”

Several district court judges overseeing the suits gave impassioned defenses of the rule of law and warned that Trump’s orders risked intimidating attorneys or law firms that might represent the president’s political opponents.

In a March hearing on Perkins Coie’s complaint, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said the government’s defense of Trump’s order sent “chills” down her spine. A DOJ attorney had claimed that the president could also issue a retaliatory order against Williams & Connolly, a major law firm that was representing Perkins Coie in its suit.

*Democracy Docket Founder Marc Elias served as chair of the Political Law Group at Perkins Coie until 2021 and played a role in some of the work that the White House cited as justification for its executive order against Perkins Coie.