Trump Administration Abandons Efforts To Impose Orders On Law Firms

The Trump administration on Monday abandoned its attempts to impose potentially crippling executive orders against law firms that refused to capitulate to the president, walking away from its appeal of victories the firms had won against the White House.

With a brief due this week, Justice Department lawyers told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that they were no longer interested in pursuing the cases and were voluntarily asking the court to dismiss them.

The decision is the White House’s most significant acknowledgment that the executive orders cannot be successfully defended in court. The move is particularly striking given that some firms opted to reach deals in a bid to head off executive orders that President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said it would no longer stand behind.

The battle over the executive orders had roiled the legal establishment and led many firms to submit to Trump rather than face the existential threat his directives represented. The orders barred the firms from government business and suggested that their clients could lose government contracts, spurring widespread panic in the legal profession.

Four firms — Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey — fought the orders, quickly receiving favorable rulings from district court judges. Nine others struck deals with Trump, most notably Paul Weiss, drawing sharp criticism.

Already, the Justice Department acknowledged in court that a parallel effort to use the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to scrutinize the hiring practices of some of the country’s biggest law firms amounted to very little. The commission has said that most of the firms did not provide any of the requested information and that it now considers the matter closed.

The firms contesting the orders welcomed the administration’s request for dismissal.

Jenner & Block said that its partners were “proud to have stood firm on behalf of its clients.” WilmerHale added that its challenge was based in part on “defending the rule of law.”

Susman Godfrey, in its statement, gestured at the larger implication of the orders. “We fought for ourselves, but we fought for bigger things, too,” it said. “For a Constitution that protects our freedoms; for a legal profession that depends on equal justice under the law; and for the people across this country who refuse to back down in the face of an administration that seeks to silence and intimidate them.”

Trump’s attacks on law firms were one of the early gambits in the shock-and-awe retribution campaign he mounted upon returning to the White House last year. In February 2025, he issued executive orders against two firms associated with his perceived enemies.

The first firm Trump targeted, Covington & Burling, had given free legal advice to Jack Smith, who as special counsel led investigations into Trump. The second, Perkins Coie, did work for Democrats during the 2016 presidential campaign and had hired a research firm that ultimately led to the creation of an unsubstantiated dossier about the ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

The judge overseeing Perkins Coie’s case, Beryl Howell, said the executive order “sends little chills down my spine,” later writing that the administration had sent a clear message, “Lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.” The orders, she wrote, were “an unprecedented attack” on foundational constitutional principles.

Regardless, Trump signed a third executive order against the law firm Paul Weiss, which employed a litigator who as a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office led an investigation into Trump. The firm was widely expected to fight because its chair, Brad S. Karp, had helped galvanize the legal world to stand up to Trump during his first term.

But instead, Paul Weiss entered into negotiations with the White House.

Paul Weiss and other firms were particularly vulnerable to the orders because of a basic structural shift. While it was known for its litigation attorneys — the fast-talking, brief-writing lawyers who appear in court — the firm increasingly relied on highly paid corporate lawyers, who often bring in the most money. The firm’s litigators determined the executive order was illegal, but its top corporate rainmaker, Scott A. Barshay, said the firm could not even be perceived as adverse to Trump because it would hurt their business and clients.

Karp, fearing Barshay would leave the firm and take many partners and clients with him, went along with his desires, striking a deal in which the firm essentially agreed to represent clients no matter their political beliefs and do pro bono legal work for largely uncontroversial causes.

But the deal led to an uproar inside the firm, the legal community and among Democrats, who considered it a capitulation. And it appeared to embolden Trump, who went on to make similar deals with eight other firms.

In June, the administration appealed Howell’s ruling, and the four cases were consolidated to be heard as one by a panel of appeals judges in the District of Columbia. Last month, the court ordered the Justice Department to file its appeal by Friday.

The Justice Department’s surrender is the latest example of the White House pushing the limits of the law, benefiting from the lag time between the use of its power and the courts’ response. The administration has deployed the tactic in its efforts to keep its chosen U.S. attorneys in place and the prosecution of some of Trump’s adversaries. In some instances, even when the administration has walked away from its initial legal position, it has still been able to impose its will.

Despite its legal losses, the administration continues to take an unusually muscular approach with businesses. Last week, after talks between the Trump administration and the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic blew up, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth formally designated the company a “supply-chain risk to national security,” meaning that no contractor or supplier with military ties can do business with the firm.

The legal designation is highly unusual for an American company. Anthropic has vowed to fight it in court.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.