Since President Donald Trump issued executive orders in 2025 punishing major law firms for representing clients and causes he opposed, four federal judges have issued injunctions permanently blocking those orders.
Now, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is set to hear arguments from the government that the trial court judges overstepped their authority in preventing Trump from penalizing the firms. On May 14, a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel is expected to hear oral arguments in a single case that consolidates the government’s appeals of injunctions won by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey.
The appeal has drawn a flood of amicus interest from across the legal profession. Law firms, academics, the American Bar Association, state and international bar associations, advocacy groups and members of Congress have all weighed in, mostly in support of the injunctions.
“If the President can punish lawyers for the clients they choose or the positions they advance on behalf of those clients, it distorts the competitive market for sophisticated legal services,” the pro-business Washington Legal Foundation wrote in an amicus brief. “This, in turn, raises transaction costs for every business that relies on legal counsel and signals that a successful law practice turns on political favor rather than merit. That’s economic poison.”
Four Firms in the Crosshairs
Shortly after returning to the White House in January 2025, President Trump issued executive orders barring federal officials from engaging with WilmerHale, Jenner, Perkins Coie and Susman, or hiring any of their employees. The order directed agency heads to end contracts with businesses that used the firms, revoked security clearances held by lawyers and staff and blocked the firms’ employees from accessing federal buildings.
The firms said the orders were designed to damage their businesses and to intimidate and silence them. Each had represented clients opposed to Trump, or his political allies. Susman, for instance, was accused in an April 9, 2025, executive order of spearheading “efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections.”
The orders also took aim at the firms for donating to civil rights and diversity-oriented groups, sponsoring scholarships and mentoring programs for students of color, maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion programs, all of which the Trump administration has deemed a form of racial discrimination.
Nine other Big Law firms targeted with similar executive orders chose to settle, making deals with Trump to retool or scrap diversity initiatives, hire lawyers from across the political spectrum and offer nearly $1 billion in free legal services to fund pro-administration legal causes. By contrast, WilmerHale, Jenner, Perkins Coie and Susman sued and all won permanent injunctions, which the government is now appealing.
A Conservative Star
To argue their case, the law firms have hired Paul Clement, a former solicitor general under President George W. Bush and an appellate star who has argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. A name partner at the 22-lawyer litigation firm Clement & Murphy, Clement specializes in appellate, strategic and Supreme Court cases and has often argued on behalf of conservative and Republican causes.
In 2011, for instance, Clement represented the GOP-controlled House of Representatives in its failed attempt to halt federal recognition of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages. He won a landmark 2022 Supreme Court decision curtailing the power of federal agencies to interpret statutes and another in 2024 that curbed state and local government laws restricting gun ownership.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year, however, that Clement has become something of a go-to lawyer for clients facing off against the Trump administration, citing his work on behalf of WilmerHale in its case over Trump’s executive order and his defense of a Wisconsin state court judge prosecuted for allegedly helping an immigrant escape arrest by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Clement, the Journal noted, “has been admired across the legal spectrum as among the most gifted Supreme Court advocates of his generation.” That reputation and his successful track record at the high court could signal that the law firms are not entirely confident that the DOJ will let their case end at the D.C. Circuit.
Arguing for the Government
The Justice Department lawyer handling arguments for the government is Abhishek Kambli. Kambli has served as a deputy associate attorney general since February 2025. Prior to that, he was deputy attorney general of Kansas and was point person for the state’s challenge to the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan.
Kambli is the second lawyer to handle the case. He took over arguments in the appeals last October from Richard Lawson, a deputy associate attorney general who defended the government at the trial court level. Lawson left the DOJ late last year to become vice chair of litigation at the America First Policy Institute, an advocacy group aligned with Trump.
Kambli, too, will soon depart the DOJ. On May 7, he announced on LinkedIn that he was leaving the agency at the end of May. The Washington Examiner said that Kambli is still expected to argue in the law firm case and in a similar case involving Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer also targeted by a Trump executive order.
Lawyers for the firms and the government will face a three-judge panel that includes Judges Sri Srinivasan and Cornelia Pillard, both appointed by President Barack Obama and Neomi Rao, appointed by Trump during his first term.
The Firms’ Argument
Susman & Godfrey’s brief distills the law firms’ essential arguments. It states that Trump’s actions “constitute a grave abuse of presidential power” and threaten “the essential postulates of our Constitution and the rule of law itself.” The executive orders “would make it impossible” for the law firms to practice law in a way that “zealously advances its clients’ interests.”
The president, the brief argues, is not exempt from the “bedrock First Amendment principle that government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.” By targeting the firms in an “unconstitutionally retaliatory” fashion, Susman said Trump has engaged in “odious viewpoint discrimination.”
This has, in turn, disrupted the firms’ rights to associate with clients and petition the courts for redress of grievances. The orders were “as blatant a violation of due process as one could imagine” and afforded the firms “no notice or opportunity whatsoever to contest the factual and legal bases” for its “crippling sanctions,” Susman’s brief said.
Government’s Appeal
The government, in its reply brief, derides the firms’ arguments as “full of constitutional platitudes that fall flat.” The First Amendment, the Justice Department argues, “is not a shield to prevent the government from exercising its authority” and that Trump was fighting “the unprotected conduct of racial discrimination in hiring or litigation misconduct by former government attorneys and others.”
“Beyond their First Amendment arguments, all plaintiffs muster are thin arguments based on scattershot constitutional provisions ranging from due process to separation of powers to right to counsel,” the DOJ said.
The courts “may not interfere, let alone compel” the president to “continue giving lawyers access to classified information,” the DOJ argues. “Nor may courts enjoin or otherwise interfere with routine directives requiring Executive Branch officials to investigate and enforce existing anti-discrimination laws.”
An About-Face
While the government’s appellate briefs lash the firms and the trial courts, Department of Justice officials at first appeared willing to forgo an appeal. None of the trial court judges, a mix of Democratic and Republican appointees, gave the government arguments much credence in their opinions.
An opinion by Judge Loren Alikhan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was typical. Alikhan noted that “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.” She found that Trump’s executive order targeting Susman Godfrey went “beyond violating the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The order threatens the independence of the bar—a necessity for the rule of law.”
In March, just ahead of the deadline to file an appeal, the administration asked the D.C. Circuit to dismiss the case. A day later, after news of the government’s decision became public, the DOJ abruptly reversed course and asked the court to proceed. The law firms’ briefs note that the government reversed course “without explanation.”
International Interest
Amicus interest in the case has ranged across the legal profession, both inside and outside the United States.
European bar associations filed a joint amicus brief in support of the law firms. This included bar associations in Germany, England and Wales, Finland, France, Norway, Scotland, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Poland, as well as the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents a million lawyers in 45 countries. The brief referred to pre-World War II Germany, noting that “dismantling the independent bar was an early step in subordinating the legal system” to the government. “Preserving the profession’s independence is critical to the integrity of the judicial system and the survival of democratic institutions,” the groups wrote.
The American Bar Association, in its brief, highlighted its separate lawsuit against the administration, which accuses the Trump administration of deploying an unconstitutional “intimidation policy” against law firms. “The ABA has a strong interest in ensuring that lawyers charged with misconduct face discipline in fair proceedings under the authority of the courts, rather than sanctions imposed by the Executive Branch, which has its own litigation interests,” the group’s amicus brief said.
Among other groups and organizations filing briefs in support of the firms were 813 small and solo law firms, a group of 842 other law firms, 239 former state and federal judges, 1,224 law students and 50 law student organizations, several Democratic members of Congress, 595 law professors, former senior government officials (including former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and National Security Adviser Susan Rice), groups of partners from large law firms and boutiques, a large contingent of litigation firms, the Washington, Oregon and California state bars, legal ethics scholars, several current and former general counsel and the governments of 21 states and the District of Columbia.
One amicus supporting the government was filed by conservative advocacy groups, including America’s Future, Gun Owners of America, Inc., the Gun Owners Foundation, the Judicial Action Group and the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund.
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David L. Brown is a legal affairs writer and consultant, who has served as head of editorial at ALM Media, editor-in-chief of The National Law Journal and Legal Times and executive editor of The American Lawyer. He consults on thought leadership strategy and creates in-depth content for legal industry clients and works closely with Best Law Firms® as senior content consultant.