Doj Briefly Abandons Trump's Unconstitutional Orders Targeting Law Firms

Last year in a series of executive orders, President Donald Trump targeted numerous law firms that had represented Democrats. Several of the firms fought back, and this week, his administration decided to drop its appeals, before apparently changing its mind within 24 hours.

While dropping the case would be a welcome development, it would do nothing to address the underlying abuse of power.

"The Trump administration plans to abandon its defense of the president's executive orders sanctioning several law firms," Erin Mulvaney and C. Ryan Barber reported Monday at The Wall Street Journal. "The Justice Department as soon as Monday was expected to drop its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down President Trump's actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey."

Later that day, the administration filed a motion to "voluntarily dismiss" its appeals in all four cases. But the following morning, "in an email to the four firms contesting the orders, a [Department of Justice] official apologized for the short notice and said it would file a motion to withdraw its voluntary dismissal," according to The New York Times.

The capricious nature of the case, with the government reversing and then unreversing course, underlies the inherent problem with imbuing so much power in a single person.

After reentering office last year, Trump issued executive orders against more than a dozen law firms favored by Democrats. The orders imposed unworkable restrictions that would have prevented the firms from representing any clients in federal cases—namely, revoking the security clearances of all of the firms' attorneys, banning them from federal buildings, and barring any federal agencies or contractors from retaining their services.

In many of the orders, Trump claimed these firms presented a grave threat to the country: In a March 2025 order, he claimed law firms such as Jenner & Block "engage in conduct detrimental to critical American interests" and "take actions that threaten public safety and national security, limit constitutional freedoms, degrade the quality of American elections, or undermine bedrock American principles."

But within the text, the order noted that Jenner had represented clients challenging Trump's orders on immigration. Whether those orders were right or wrong, everyone is entitled to legal representation under the U.S. Constitution—in fact, that's one of the "bedrock American principles" Trump alluded to.

It also singled out attorney Andrew Weissman, who served as a lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, during Trump's first term. "Jenner was 'thrilled' to re-hire the unethical Andrew Weissmann after his time engaging in partisan prosecution as part of Robert Mueller's entirely unjustified investigation," the order complained.

Put another way, Trump punished a multinational law firm with over 500 attorneys, based on a job one employee took while he didn't work there.

Ultimately, despite claiming the law firms were engaged in acts injurious to the country, the orders simply recycled Trump's grievances at facing any sort of opposition. The administration's order targeting Perkins Coie said it "worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification."

Some law firms sued, and federal judges struck down four of the executive orders for the clearly unconstitutional speech infringements they were. These were the still-pending cases the administration chose this week to drop (before apparently reconsidering).

Of course, as with many of Trump's initiatives, the purpose was not to achieve a policy outcome but to send a message while extracting a measure of pain. Even if the law firms prevail in the end, the victory would only come after a year or more spent defending themselves and their livelihoods from a clearly unconstitutional check on their free speech from the highest levels of the federal government.

Nine targeted law firms acceded to the president's extortive demands, agreeing to provide a collective $940 million in free legal services to Trump's favored causes. One firm—Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison—garnered Trump's ire for employing Mark Pomerantz, who left in 2021 to oversee the Manhattan District Attorney's Office investigation into Trump. He later rejoined Paul Weiss but left again in 2022.

But according to Trump's executive order, the firm's choice to briefly rehire the "unethical" Pomerantz—who had worked on the Manhattan investigation "solely to manufacture a prosecution against [Trump]"—constituted a grave threat to the nation. ("I engaged in no wrongdoing by working as a prosecutor to uphold the rule of law," Pomerantz said in a statement.)

And yet just days later, Trump rescinded the order, apparently deciding the threat had been mitigated when the firm agreed to contribute $40 million of pro bono legal work to Trump-approved causes.

In the end, it would be a positive sign for law firms to no longer be subject to the punitive whims of the executive branch simply as a result of representing clients or employing individuals the president doesn't like. But that would still do nothing to address the original problem: The president, with a stroke of his pen, enacted ruinous penalties on private companies simply for displeasing him. In the end, nothing would stop him from doing so again, and the only ones who have suffered any reprisal are the companies themselves.

"Even if you share the president's dim view of Big Law, consider that his actions set a dangerous precedent that will outlast his administration," Aaron Terr of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote last year. "In the future, perhaps lawyers who represented Republican politicians, challenged mail-in voting procedures, or defended abortion restrictions will face retribution instead."

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