Sunday, May 25, 2025

Judge enjoins Trump demands v. Jenner & Block - Chicago law firm

Judge John D. Bates, D.D.C.


Senior Judge John D. Bates has since his 2001 appointment by George W. Bush,  made hundreds of decisions but none more consequential than the challege posed by Donald Trump.  A Trump Executive Order targeted the firm with csrippling restraints. Undeterred by the Chief Justice whose opinion in DOJ v. Trump exonerated Trump for crimes performed as part of his preseidential duties,  Thus freed, Trump has embarked on a rampage of Executive Orders and Proclamations.

Bates in his MEMORANDUM OPINION explains that in our constitutional order, few stars are as fixed as the principle that no official “can prescribe what shall be orthodox.  And in our constitutional order, few actors are as central to fixing that star odox in politics.”  as lawyers. 

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us

This case arises from one of a series of executive orders targeting law firms that, in one way or another, did not bow to the current presidential administration’s political orthodoxy. Like the others in the series, this order—which takes aim at the global law firm Jenner & Block— 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. 

Going after law firms in this way is doubly violative of the Constitution. Most obviously, retaliating against firms for the views embodied in their legal work—and thereby seeking to muzzle them going forward—violates the First Amendment’s central command that government may not “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.” Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of Am. v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 188 (2024). More subtle but perhaps more pernicious is the message the order sends to the lawyers whose unalloyed advocacy protects against governmental viewpoint discrimination.

- GWC


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