It is a cornerstone of American democracy, enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution: People have the right to challenge the actions of their leaders. Countless citizens, companies and others have exercised that right by filing lawsuits against the U.S. government.
This has been happening for more than 200 years. But the barrage of at least 150 lawsuits against the second Trump administration, challenging many of its policies and personnel decisions, is perhaps unmatched in U.S. history. And in dozens of cases, judges have ordered the administration to pause or reverse actions at the heart of President Trump’s agenda.
Mr. Trump and his administration’s lawyers are fighting in court, but they are also pursuing a much more ambitious and consequential goal: deterring lawyers from suing his administration in the first place.
In a series of recent executive orders, Mr. Trump has restricted the ability of some major law firms, including those that employed his perceived political enemies, to interact with the federal government. Among the president’s stated rationales was that some of the work done by the firms gets in the way of his administration’s immigration and other policies.
Mr. Trump went even further in a memo this month. Claiming that many firms have filed abusive lawsuits, he directed the attorney general “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States.”
Those adjectives are fuzzy. But the threats are clear. Giant law firms tend to have lucrative businesses helping corporate clients get their way with the federal government, whether it is winning contracts or defusing investigations or minimizing the impact of regulations. Being penalized by the government would be bad for business.
Mr. Trump’s recent broadsides have stunned the legal industry, many of whose practitioners pride themselves on pursuing cases against perceived overreach by both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The orders have revealed stark differences in how powerful law firms want to handle an aggressive and unpredictable president. Three firms have sued to block Mr. Trump’s orders, calling them blatantly unconstitutional. (On Friday evening, federal judges in Washington issued temporary restraining orders granting two of the firms, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, relief from the executive orders.)
Two others, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, struck deals with the president to avoid or rescind such orders.
Regardless, Mr. Trump’s moves have the potential — and perhaps the goal — to undermine people’s ability to challenge their government. “It is the president’s deliberate intent to chill the nation’s largest law firms from representing cases that he dislikes,” said Cecillia D. Wang, the national legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, which has joined with major firms to bring cases against the administration. “I think you will see some law firms starting to back away.”
Deepak Gupta, the founder of the law firm Gupta Wessler, said he knew of lawyers at top corporate law firms who recently informed some pro bono clients that they could no longer represent them because their firms were scared by Mr. Trump’s executive orders and memo.
“It is already having an effect,” said Mr. Gupta, who has sued the Trump administration on behalf of a fired member of the National Labor Relations Board and a union representing employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “This isn’t about something that might happen in the future.”
There are parallels between Mr. Trump’s attacks on the legal industry and his campaign to constrain or weaken other pillars of civic society. Mr. Trump and his aides are suing or investigating media outlets that have produced critical coverage. And his administration is threatening to withhold huge sums of federal money from universities that don’t hew to his demands.
Even before Mr. Trump’s orders against law firms, the legal community was struggling to keep up with his administration’s heavy volume of legally questionable actions. Many smaller law firms and public interest groups have the desire and expertise to represent clients taking on the administration, but they often rely on larger firms’ resources — including nationwide armies of associates and paralegals who can be dispatched at a moment’s notice — to help with the workload.
Large firms often handle such cases on a pro bono basis, meaning they generally don’t get paid for the work. It was not a coincidence that Mr. Trump blasted major firms for conducting “harmful activity through their powerful pro bono practices.” As part of their recent deals with Mr. Trump, Paul Weiss and Skadden agreed to perform tens of millions of dollars of pro bono legal work for causes and clients, such as veterans, that Mr. Trump supports.
“The point is to intimidate people,” said Andrew G. Celli Jr., a partner at Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff, Abady, Ward & Maazel whose clients have included prominent Democrats. As large firms get cold feet, “there will be cases that fall through the cracks or do not get litigated the right way.”
It is ironic that a Republican like Mr. Trump is seeking to crack down on litigation against the U.S. government. Such lawsuits have been among the most popular and powerful tools that conservatives have used to attack what they see as overzealous regulations and misguided policies by Democrats.
For example, litigation hobbled the Biden administration’s ability to forgive billions of dollars in student loans. In the Obama administration, Republicans and their lawyers used such suits in an unsuccessful effort to cripple the Affordable Care Act.
Mr. Trump has recently bemoaned how “Big Law” is in the pocket of Democrats. But his real grievance appeared to be that the firms he targeted with executive orders employed lawyers who worked on investigations or legal cases against him. And, while some law firms lean left, other big ones specialize in serving Republicans.
Jones Day, one of the country’s largest firms by some measures, built a reputation in Washington in part by representing Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and then staffing his first administration with its lawyers. It was among the firms spearheading legal challenges against Obama and Biden policies.
Mr. Trump has not publicly threatened Jones Day.
While many of the firm’s leaders are conservative, it has also embraced liberal initiatives, including building a formidable pro bono practice helping undocumented migrants along Texas’ border with Mexico.
That is the type of work that Mr. Trump has recently assailed at other major law firms.
Laura K. Tuell, the partner in charge of Jones Day’s pro bono activities and an outspoken champion of the assistance for migrants, declined to comment on whether the firm was reconsidering that work in light of the Trump administration’s threats against law firms.
Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.
