The Trump administration filed an appeal on Monday challenging its loss in federal court to Perkins Coie, in a signal that it intends to prolong its fight in trying to force some of the nation’s top law firms to capitulate.
Earlier this year, fearing President Trump, a number of prominent firms shocked some of their peers and clients by agreeing to take on hundreds of millions of dollars of free legal work on causes of shared concern with the White House in exchange for the right to continue operating as usual.
But a handful of firms declined to strike a deal and were singled out by Mr. Trump for punishment through executive orders that exiled them from work with the federal government. Those firms, including Perkins Coie, sued in March. The courts have found Mr. Trump’s actions unambiguously illegal, and have blocked the government from following the orders.
The filing on Monday was the first indication so far that Mr. Trump has not been deterred.
The appeal follows the fourth straight ruling against the Trump administration on Friday, when a judge struck down an order targeting the firm Susman Godfrey.
The decision in that case struck many of the same notes that Judge Beryl Howell of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia did when she declared the order targeting Perkins Coie illegal on May 2.
“The courts have permanently blocked all four unlawful executive orders targeting law firms because those orders violate core constitutional freedoms,” a spokesman for Perkins Coie said in a statement about the Trump administration’s appeal. “We look forward to presenting our case to the D.C. Circuit and remain committed to ensuring that the unconstitutional executive order targeting our firm is never enforced.”
In her ruling, Judge Howell used some of the harshest language of all the judges in similar cases so far, describing Mr. Trump’s conduct as retaliatory and clearly designed to intimidate firms into aligning themselves with the president’s agenda.
She observed that the firms being singled out by the White House were all associated with past legal opposition to Mr. Trump during his first term. The executive order that Mr. Trump signed targeting Perkins Coie explicitly cited its past work with the liberal donor George Soros and Mr. Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton.
But in a scathing opinion, Judge Howell concluded that the larger purpose of the attacks on top law firms appeared to be to illegitimately force them into accepting Mr. Trump’s goals — or at least not opposing them — by using the power of the federal government to rein in any would-be resistance.
“Absent their crucial independence, lawyers would ‘become nothing more than parrots of the views of whatever group wields governmental power at the moment,’” she wrote, quoting a past Supreme Court opinion.
Three other judges in Washington have since reached the same conclusion, striking down orders targeting the firms WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey.
In each case, lawyers representing the law firms have asked for a final decision from the outset, reasoning that none of the facts in their cases were ever in dispute and that the court’s role was simply to determine whether or not Mr. Trump’s orders were legal.
In each case, judges have determined that they were not, nullifying the orders and their terms, which included repercussions like terminating any federal contracts with those firms and banning employees from federal buildings.
Even while judges were still considering whether the orders were lawful, the Trump administration continued to enforce them, at one point beginning the process of suspending security clearances for attorneys at WilmerHale and Jenner & Block in the middle of litigation.
But while the government indicated that it had not ruled out an appeal shortly after Judge Howell’s decision in May, it set the option aside for almost two months while other cases proceeded.
The decision on Friday regarding Susman Godfrey essentially concluded the first round of lawsuits brought by major firms that were subjected to individualized executive orders and decided to file suit.
While the Trump administration has also hurled attacks at the law firm run by Marc Elias and others, spawning some pushback, the successful legal challenges by those four firms left the administration faced with the choice to either begin a secondary round of appeals or to drop the fight entirely and move on.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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