A federal judge ruled Friday that President Trump’s March executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie is unconstitutional and the government can’t enforce it. The order had threatened to destroy the firm’s business. This is the first time a court has permanently stopped Mr. Trump from trying to punish a law firm he doesn’t like.
A federal judge ruled Friday that President Trump’s March executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie is unconstitutional and the government can’t enforce it. The order had threatened to destroy the firm’s business.
This is the first time a court has permanently stopped Mr. Trump from trying to punish a law firm he doesn’t like.
They argued, and Judge Howell agreed, that the order violated the First and Fifth Amendments, denying Perkins Coie and other firms like it the freedom “to think and speak as they wish” and equal protection under the law.
“This ruling affirms fundamental constitutional rights all Americans hold dear – free speech, due process and the right to choose counsel without fear of retribution,” the firm said in a statement. “We are pleased with this decision and grateful to those who spoke up on our behalf.”
In March, Mr. Trump issued a series of executive orders branding at least six major firms as national security risks because they had represented political opponents or had lawyers involved in investigations into the president during his first term.
The one targeting Perkins Coie mentioned its work with liberal donor George Soros, whom conservatives hate. A similar order targeting WilmerHale complained that it had hired Robert S. Mueller III after he retired from his role as special counsel in the Russia investigation during Mr. Trump’s first term.
As a result of that work the orders called a threat to the “national interest” Mr. Trump told the government to bar those firms’ lawyers from federal buildings, suspend active security clearances held by their staff and cancel any government contracts that could funnel taxpayer dollars their way.
Facing sudden exile firms began to scramble to make deals with the president and agreed to take on hundreds of millions of dollars of pro bono work to get out of the punishment. Mr. Trump touted the concessions saying he had gotten almost $1 billion of free legal work for his causes all as “penance for what they’ve done”.
But the president’s public bullying of the elite law firms to get concessions came as a windfall for the few firms that decided to fight back in court.
Lawyers for Perkins Coie and WilmerHale told the judges in their cases last week to look no further than the Paul Weiss firm for proof of the White House’s true intentions with the orders.
They pointed out how the national security concerns and the need for immediate reviews of security clearances in the orders seemed to disappear the moment Paul Weiss made a deal.
Paul Clement, a WilmerHale lawyer, told Judge Richard J. Leon in a hearing that the sudden retraction of those orders against Paul Weiss and others exposed just how far Mr. Trump was willing to go. That unstated message from the White House was so blatant-it practically screamed its intentions.
“You get the message: watch your step. We’re watching. If you’re litigating against the government or not, your behavior can be punished,” Clement said. “And there’s just no way to practice law like that—that’s a fundamental problem.”
Other firms targeted, including Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey, are also asking judges in their cases to fast-track decisions.
Clement warned that those deals the White House was cutting were undermining the whole profession. “If I have to argue in front of this court with one eye on what the executive branch thinks of me-and how that’s going to influence my other clients’ interests—then I might as well just sit down. That’s not how you practice law,” he said.
At the hearing in Perkins’s case, Judge Howell kept asking Richard Lawson, the government’s lawyer, about an expert opinion filed by J. William Leonard—a former Defense Department official who spent decades overseeing security clearances. Leonard compared Mr. Trump’s orders to the tactics Senator Joseph R. McCarthy used during the Red Scare. On Friday, Judge Howell wrote that the order “stigmatizes and punishes a particular law firm and its employees — from its partners to its associate attorneys, secretaries and mailroom attendants — because of the firm’s representation, past and present, of clients who are pursuing claims and taking positions with which the current president disagrees.”
“In a cringeworthy twist on the old phrase ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers,’” she added, “it’s ‘Let’s kill the lawyers I don’t like,’ and the message is clear: Lawyers must toe the party line or else.”
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