Federal Judge Right to Issue a TRO on Executive Order Sanctioning Perkins Coie

​Federal Judge Beryl Howell made a necessary call Wednesday when she issued a temporary restraining order blocking parts of the March 6 executive order that sanctioned the entire Perkins Coie law firm.
 
“We can’t recall a similar White House order from any president,” The Wall Street Journal opinion editors wrote. We can’t either. If the massive enforcement powers of the federal government can be used for such blunderbuss political retaliation, it would violate the First Amendment rights of law firm personnel and harm the due process rights of their clients. It would also set a precedent that conservatives and MAGA supporters would surely live to regret whenever a progressive administration returns to office.
 
To be fair to the White House, some former Perkins Coie lawyers attracted justifiable criticism for facilitating the dubious dossier and false reports to the FBI general counsel that cast then-candidate Donald Trump as a Russian agent. An investigation by the Justice Department Inspector found that the dossier was a sloppy, gossip-laden compendium of misstatements, used by the FBI (which knew the dossier was unreliable) to obtain four warrants to surveil Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, and through him, the campaign itself.
 
Still, this doesn’t begin to justify an executive order that bars more than 1,000 Perkins Coie lawyers from entering federal buildings and restricts government contractors from working with their firm. The vast majority (if not all) of the current Perkins Coie attorneys working on thousands of cases today had nothing to do with the controversies surrounding the Trump-Russia accusations. And the two Perkins-Coie partners who were responsible for the creation and spreading of these accusations left the firm in 2021. So the executive order plainly overreaches.
 
Indeed, if the full executive order had been kept in place, Perkins Coie lawyers would have been barred from all federal buildings, harming their ability to represent clients. And if the order included courthouses, it would have essentially disbarred them as litigators – all without any legal process to determine whether any particular lawyer merited such punishment. Such orders harm not just the firm’s lawyers, but also their thousands of clients who depend on them for effective representation.
 
All Americans deserve representation. And law firms – even if you detest their politics – have a First Amendment right to lean woke, MAGA, libertarian, or vegetarian.
 
This controversy brings to mind Paul Giamatti’s portrayal of John Adams, in HBO’s magnificent series of the same name. Giamatti portrayed Adams stepping forward to defend British soldiers standing trial for murder after the Boston massacre. When challenged by Sam Adams that “this is a time for choosing sides,” John Adams replied, “I am for the law, cousin. Is there another side?”

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