A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump dealt a blow to the president’s efforts to limit the power of the judiciary, issuing a stern rebuke on Tuesday of his lawsuit against Maryland’s federal judges.
The Trump administration took an extraordinary step in June when it decided to sue all federal district judges in Maryland after the chief judge blocked the government from rushing deportations of certain migrants who are detained in the state. It was an unprecedented move by an administration that has continuously sought to diminish the federal judiciary’s power.
Federal District Judge Thomas T. Cullen, who was overseeing the case, dismissed the lawsuit, concluding that siding with Trump and allowing the case to continue would “run counter to overwhelming precedent, depart from longstanding constitutional tradition, and offend the rule of law.”
The lawsuit, Cullen said, is nothing more than a “concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it” that is “both unprecedented and unfortunate.”
Cullen wrote in his opinion that “under normal circumstances,” the Trump administration could have instead opposed the initial orders blocking the government’s deportation policies “through the channels Congress prescribed — that is, by challenging the orders as applied to a particular habeas proceeding through a direct appeal to the Fourth Circuit.”
“But as events over the past several months have revealed, these are not normal times,” Cullen continued. “It’s not surprising that the Executive chose a different, and more confrontational, path entirely. Instead, … the Executive decided to sue — and in a big way.”
In a footnote, Cullen said that the federal government’s decision to sue the Maryland federal bench was “not surprising” considering how “over the past several months, principal officers of the Executive (and their spokespersons) have described federal district judges across the country as ‘left-wing,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘activists,’ ‘radical,’ ‘politically minded,’ ‘rogue,’ ‘unhinged,’ ‘outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,’ ‘[c]rooked,’ and worse.”
The Trump administration sued the entire Maryland federal bench after Chief District Judge George L. Russell III ruled in two “standing orders” that the government cannot rush to deport people who are challenging their detention with a habeas corpus lawsuit. Russell’s orders slowed some removals by requiring the administration to give migrants time to bring their cases before a judge to decide whether their detention is lawful.
In its original lawsuit against Russell and all other federal judges in the Maryland U.S. District Court, Justice Department lawyers argued that Russell’s orders "[rob] the Executive Branch of its most scarce resource: time to put its policies into effect.”
“In the process, such orders diminish the voters of the citizens who elected the head of the Executive Branch,” the lawyers wrote.
Paul D. Clement, the former solicitor general in George W. Bush’s administration who represents the judges in the lawsuit, called the government’s legal challenge an “unprecedented lawsuit” that “is fundamentally incompatible with the separation of powers,” per a court filing.
“If allowed to proceed, the tensions between the branches produced by such a suit would only escalate,” Clement wrote.
While the lawsuit was filed in the Maryland U.S. District Court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sent Cullen, a federal judge from Virginia, to preside over the case to avoid a conflict of interest.
Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, told NOTUS the ruling “upholds a direct assault on the President’s ability to enforce immigration laws.”
“This will not be the final say on the matter, and the Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on this issue,” she added.
The Trump administration is expected to appeal Cullen’s ruling, and the case could reach the Supreme Court, which already this year dramatically limited federal judges’ power by restricting their ability to issue nationwide injunctions.
This story has been updated with a comment from the White House.