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A federal judge on Tuesday placed on hold much of Donald Trump’s order forbidding the federal government from doing business with anyone who hires the law firm Susman Godfrey, making it the fourth time a judge has found the president’s targeting of law firms is likely unconstitutional.
“The framers of our constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power,” District Court Judge Loren AliKhan said as she entered the temporary restraining order on behalf of Susman, which represented a voting machine firm that won a $787 billion settlement from Fox News over its airing of lies about Trump's 2020 loss.
Trump’s executive order cited the firm’s election work as a reason it was targeted. Several other firms that have been targeted by Trump entered into settlements, promising to provide hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free legal work for the president’s favored causes. Susman and at least three others have chosen to fight, and all have so far won in court.
Don Verrilli, who represented Susman in court on Tuesday, urged the judge to continue that winning streak. “We’re sliding very fast into an abyss here,” he said. “There’s only one way to stop that slide, it’s for courts to act decisively, and to act decisively now.”
Though the restraining order technically is only good for 14 days, the judge left little doubt as to her views on the constitutionality of Trump's order. She found it likely violates the first and fifth amendments of the U.S. Constitution, saying that "the government cannot hold lawyers hostage to force them to agree with it.”
Richard Lawson, who argued against the order for the Department of Justice, contended it fell squarely in the tradition of presidential decisions regarding contracting and federal facilities that date back to President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s requiring federal contractors to not discriminate. Lawson was unable to convince the judge to wait until federal agencies develop guidance about how to implement Trump's order.
AliKhan put on hold provisions in the order that ban federal contractors to companies that hire Susman Godfrey and forbids its employees from entering federal buildings. Verrilli said Susman Godfrey received no warning or explanation of the federal order, but noted that Trump signed it a few weeks before the start of another libel trial over his 2020 election lies, this time targeting the conservative network Newsmax, owned by a prominent Trump ally.
Though other firms have also won rulings putting orders targeting them on hold, Attorney General Pam Bondi has sharply criticized at least one of them and told federal agencies they retain the authority to “decide with whom they will work.”
