Amicus Brief: Executive Orders Targeting Law Firms Threaten Critics of Every Administration  

Perkins Coie LLP v. U.S. Department of Justice, et al.,  

Beginning in March 2025, President Trump issued a series of executive orders targeting specific law firms—Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, and Susman Godfrey. The orders suspended security clearances for firm employees, barred them from federal buildings, directed agencies to terminate contracts with the firms’ clients, and discouraged hiring individuals who had worked there —measures designed to put the targeted firms out of business.  

In separate challenges involving these law firms, four federal trial judges found that the executive orders were issued in retaliation for the firms’ past legal work and representation of clients the President opposed—including, in some cases, their employment of lawyers who had previously investigated him or his allies. 

Consequently, the district courts struck down the executive orders under the First and Fifth Amendments and the separation of powers. The government appealed the consolidated cases to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

CIR joined an amicus brief in support of the law firms’ position, arguing that the government may not use executive power to punish lawyers and law firms for the clients they represent, the causes they advocate, or the legal positions they take. CIR’s Board Member Erik Jaffe is primarily responsible for the brief, which focuses on the original public meaning of the First Amendment and executive power.  

Why This Case Matters: 

This case is about something more fundamental than the fate of these four law firms. It is about whether the executive branch can use its levers of power—security clearances, federal contracts, access to federal buildings—to retaliate against lawyers who represent disfavored clients or challenge administration policies.  

This goes to the core of CIR’s mission as a nonpartisan, public-interest law firm. CIR has itself spent decades opposing many of the legal positions advanced by some of the targeted firms—including race-based admissions practices that CIR challenged in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger.  

But CIR knows from experience that a precedent permitting such executive retaliation could just as easily be turned against firms like CIR, which regularly brings litigation challenging the policies of every administration. If these executive orders are permitted to stand, the mission of every public-interest law firm is imperiled. 

The threat extends beyond the legal profession. When the government can punish lawyers for who they represent, it deters representation of unpopular clients and causes, undermines access to the courts, and erodes the constitutional checks that courts depend on to function. That is not a partisan concern. It is a structural one. 

Background: The First Amendment and Executive Power 

The amicus brief makes two core constitutional arguments grounded in the original public meaning of the Constitution. 

First, the Founding Generation was deeply familiar with—and vocally hostile toward—unchecked government discretion to reward favored speakers and punish disfavored ones. The Star Chamber, repressive licensing regimes, the viewpoint-discriminatory Stamp Acts, prosecutions for seditious libel during America’s colonial period, and colonial governors’ removal of judges and disbarment of lawyers who challenged their authority were all understood as abridgments of the freedoms of speech, press, and petition. The challenged executive orders echo those historical abuses—and the original public meaning of the First Amendment was intentionally designed to guard against them. 

Second, the executive power under the Constitution is narrow, limited to faithfully executing the laws Congress enacts, not the broad prerogative authority exercised by the Crown. The Founders designed the Presidency specifically to deny the executive the kind of freewheeling discretion that had been abused by the King. The government’s claim of unreviewable authority to punish lawyers for their speech and advocacy is contrary to this original understanding.