A federal judge in Washington ruled on Friday that an executive order President Trump signed imposing penalties against the law firm Susman Godfrey was unconstitutional, permanently barring the government from enforcing its terms.
The decision by Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia effectively ended, at least for now, the president’s campaign to subjugate several of the nation’s top law firms.
It also completed a perfect record among those firms that risked fighting the administration in court, notching four decisive rulings from four separate judges, none of which the Trump administration has, so far, tried to appeal.
Like three of her colleagues in Washington, Judge AliKhan found that the Trump administration had tried to crush a law firm that had represented groups opposing Mr. Trump.
“The order was one in a series attacking firms that had taken positions with which President Trump disagreed,” she wrote. “In the ensuing months, every court to have considered a challenge to one of these orders has found grave constitutional violations and permanently enjoined enforcement of the order in full.”
Two of the judges who ruled against the Trump administration were nominated by George W. Bush, and the other two by Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“The Court’s ruling is a resounding victory for the rule of law and the right of every American to be represented by legal counsel without fear of retaliation,” Susman Godfrey said in a statement.
In April, Mr. Trump went after Susman Godfrey with an order claiming the firm “spearheads efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections” — an apparent reference to its work representing Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine manufacturer, in a major defamation case against Fox News.
Around the same time, Mr. Trump lobbed nearly identical orders at other firms, including Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, all of which had ties to prominent Democrats or employed lawyers who clashed with Mr. Trump during his first term.
The executive orders imposed a variety of tough penalties, using the full force of the federal government, such as suspending security clearances for some of the firms’ lawyers or directing agencies to review and cancel any contracts made with those firms. In all the cases to date, judges have described those terms as onerous enough, by design, to substantially harm those firms’ business.
Other firms that found themselves at odds with the president, such as Paul Weiss and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom took the opposite approach, offering millions of dollars in pro bono work for the White House in a bid to dodge a similar executive order.
With nine firms taking that route, the White House boasted in April that it secured nearly $1 billion in free work from elite law firms, in service of causes important to Mr. Trump.
But while some firms may have been reluctant to fight back, Judge AliKhan’s ruling on Friday appeared to further validate the strategy.
In four separate cases, federal judges have not only moved to a final judgment with minimal deliberation but wholeheartedly rejected Mr. Trump’s orders in scathing terms, describing them as a blatant intimidation tactic intended to scare much of the country’s top legal talent from working against the president’s agenda.
Echoing those concerns on Friday, Judge AliKhan warned that the orders, beyond being clearly illegal, also aimed to stamp out any opposition to the president by minimizing access to legal representation.
“Here, the Order goes beyond violating the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” Judge AliKhan wrote. “The Order threatens the independence of the bar — a necessity for the rule of law.”
Zach Montague covers the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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