A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14230, which had targeted the law firm Perkins Coie LLP with sweeping federal penalties.
In a 102-page opinion, Judge Beryl Howell condemned the order as a flagrant abuse of executive power and an unconstitutional assault on the independence of the legal profession, likening it to the authoritarian instincts of Shakespeare’s rebel leader in the play Henry VI, who famously declared, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Howell’s ruling described the executive order as a “cringe-worthy twist” on that infamous line and characterized it as an overt act of retaliation against Perkins Coie for its prior representation of Democratic interests and its involvement in legal matters that the former president found politically inconvenient. The judge said, “Eliminating lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law removes a major impediment to the path to more power.” The judge called the executive order, “an overt attempt to suppress and punish” a disfavored law firm for its associations and protected speech.
That tactic, the court warned, is echoed in the Trump administration’s effort to weaponize federal authority against a law firm because of its past representation of political opponents and engagement in disfavored speech.
Trump issued the executive order on March 6 and directed all federal agencies to suspend Perkins Coie’s security clearances, terminate government contracts, restrict the firm’s personnel access to federal sites, and subject its internal employment practices to review. The justification offered in the order accused the firm of engaging in “dishonest and dangerous activity,” though it offered no concrete evidence. The court found the claims not only unsupported but manufactured after the fact in a failed effort to obscure the order’s true retaliatory motive.
Howell found the executive order violated multiple constitutional protections, including the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. The court granted summary judgment in favor of Perkins Coie and issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the order’s enforcement. The court also ruled that the executive order constituted impermissible viewpoint discrimination, compelled speech, and a denial of due process. The executive order also threatened clients’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel by interfering with attorney-client relationships.
The opinion rejected the government’s attempts to justify the order under the guise of national security, concluding that the administration’s explanation “simply is not credible” that the firm posed any such risk. Instead, the court emphasized that the order had chilled the firm’s ability to represent clients, interfered with attorney access to federal agencies, and damaged long-standing client relationships.
The ruling repeatedly affirmed the central role lawyers play in upholding the rule of law, especially when they represent unpopular or politically controversial clients. Drawing historical comparisons from John Adams’ defense of British soldiers after the Boston Massacre to Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations about the American legal profession, Howell warned that undermining the independence of lawyers threatens the foundations of a free society.
The case drew a rare degree of consensus across the legal community. Amicus briefs supporting Perkins Coie included hundreds of law professors, retired judges, and legal associations from across the ideological spectrum. All shared the same concern that the executive order was a dangerous escalation in the politicization of legal advocacy and a direct attack on the adversarial system.
Howell emphasized that the government should respond to dissenting or unpopular speech or ideas with “tolerance, not coercion.” She said that government officials may neither “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,” nor engage in the use of “purely personal and arbitrary power.”
