Justice Dept. abandons defense of orders targeting law firms

The Trump administration on Monday abandoned its effort to punish several law firms that hired President Donald Trump’s perceived foes or took on cases he disliked, effectively admitting defeat and allowing sanctions on the firms to remain blocked by judges.

Trump last year issued executive orders targeting multiple law firms, saying they should lose government contracts and their employees must be blocked from government buildings and excluded from government jobs.

His actions sparked immense upheaval within the legal industry. Nine law firms reached agreements with Trump to avoid similar penalties, leading some of their attorneys to quit in protest and enraging many others across the profession.

While those firms made deals with Trump, four others – WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey – sued to challenge Trump’s actions after he took aim at them. Judges sided with all four, blocking Trump’s orders targeting them and lambasting those orders as unconstitutional and retaliatory. The Trump administration had appealed all four rulings.

On Monday, the administration moved to end its effort to challenge the rulings. In a brief filing that did not explain why the administration had reversed course, government attorneys wrote that they “respectfully move to voluntarily dismiss these consolidated appeals.”

The executive orders targeting law firms were all issued during the initial months of Trump’s second term. When U.S. District Judge John D. Bates struck down Trump’s executive order targeting Jenner & Block in May 2025, he wrote that it “makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed.”

Trump’s order focused on Jenner singled out the firm’s employment of Andrew Weissman, who had been a deputy to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Trump during his first term. Weissman left the firm in 2021.

Trump also targeted WilmerHale and highlighted that Mueller and two of his deputies had gone on to work there after the special counsel probe ended. Mueller and one of the deputies also retired from that firm in 2021.

He also singled out Perkins Coie’s work representing the campaign of Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 presidential election, and said Susman Godfrey “spearheads efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections.” Susman Godfrey represented Dominion Voting Systems in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News related to untrue claims it aired about the 2020 election, which Trump and his allies have falsely claimed he won.

The firms that sued to fight Trump’s orders hailed the administration’s decision Monday.

“The Government has capitulated, which is a fitting end to its plainly unconstitutional attack on Susman Godfrey and the rule of law,” Susman Godfrey said in a statement. “In doing so, it has abandoned any attempt to defend the indefensible executive order against our firm.”

WilmerHale said the administration’s “decision to dismiss its appeal is clearly the right one.” Jenner & Block said the move “makes permanent the rulings of four federal judges that the executive orders targeting law firms, including Jenner & Block, were unconstitutional,” while Perkins Coie thanked those who had supported the firm since it was targeted nearly a year ago “and all who stand for the rule of law.”

The Trump administration has defended the president’s executive orders, describing them as needed to rein in “rogue law firms” and saying in court that they were not meant as punishments. Trump has not issued any new executive orders aimed at law firms since targeting Susman Godfrey last April.

The administration has criticized the rulings striking down Trump’s executive orders regarding the law firms, calling them “erroneous” and describing the president’s actions as lawful. The White House referred a request for comment on the abandoned appeals to the Justice Department. Spokespeople for the department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the decision Monday evening.

The Trump administration had faced a looming deadline in the appeal cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Justice Department’s opening brief in the case was due by Friday, while the four law firms’ briefs were due at the end of the month.

The Wall Street Journal first reported Monday that the administration planned to drop the appeals. Legal experts have expressed deep skepticism of the executive orders, with some saying they doubted appeals would be successful.

Trump’s campaign against specific law firms prompted hundreds of others across the industry to speak out, warning that his actions would intimidate attorneys and firms and scare them out of challenging the administration.

Many attorneys also expressed deep alarm at the agreements Trump reached with some of the country’s most prominent and wealthiest law firms. The firms pledged a combined nearly $1 billion in pro bono work for causes the administration said it supports, including helping veterans.

Firms that made these deals defended them as needed to stay in business, but they prompted outrage within their own offices. Attorneys have left some of these firms in protest, and others have moved from places that made deals with Trump to offices that challenged him.

“This episode will be remembered as demonstrating the difference between institutions that had the ethical courage to uphold the Constitution and fight bullying and then won, and those that compromised their ethics and gained nothing,” Vanita Gupta, who served as associate attorney general during the Biden administration, said in a statement.