Law firm partners condemn Trump orders

REUTERS/ Denis Balibouse

An association of partners at major U.S. law firms submitted a court brief supporting Susman Godfrey in its federal lawsuit challenging President Trump's executive order against the firm, Sara Merken reports. At least 110 partners signed the brief.

Trump's orders targeting Susman and other law firms "threaten the legal profession, the judiciary, and the rule of law itself," the filing said. The friend-of-the-court brief by the nonprofit Law Firm Partners United comes as some lawyers have split with their firms over the response to Trump's intensifying crackdown on the legal profession.

>>> Read the brief

Today, U.S. District Judge John Bates in D.C. will hear arguments from Jenner & Block in its lawsuit challenging the executive order issued against it by the Trump administration. Bates earlier issued a temporary directive blocking key provisions of the White House order.

More top news

The buzz

The University of Chicago Law School sent the highest percentage of 2024 graduates into federal clerkships, marking the fourth time in five years that the school was tops for those coveted positions, ABA data shows. Here are the other schools that had the most students go on to federal law clerks.
A DOJ unit of about 215 people that handles criminal and civil enforcement of U.S. food and drug safety laws is being disbanded as part of an ongoing cost-cutting campaign by the Trump administration.
A spokeperson for arrested Milwaukee judge Hannah Dugan said she will "defend herself vigorously" against U.S. charges that she helped a man evade immigration authorities. Dugan's arrest marked an escalating dispute between the Trump administration and local officials over immigration enforcement.

"Market participants engaging in this technology deserve clear regulatory rules of the road."

—Paul Atkins, the new chairman of the SEC, who said in his first remarks since he was sworn in that the agency has stifled innovation for the cryptocurrency sector by fostering "regulatory uncertainty" in prior years. Atkins, who has worked with crypto firms, has widely been expected to take a softer tack with the industry.

Coming up this week

Today, lawyers for Harvard will head to federal court in Boston for the first hearing in the university’s lawsuit against the Trump administration's multibillion-dollar funding freeze against it. Harvard’s legal team includes Quinn Emanuel’s William Burck and lawyers from the boutique Lehotsky Keller Cohn.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could upend class action litigation. The justices are weighing whether class actions can be certified when they include uninjured members. Jones Day’s Noel Francisco will represent business interests, against consumer advocate Deepak Gupta of Gupta Wessler.
On Wednesday, the justices will take up a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case testing the separation of church and state. Latham’s Greg Garre represents Oklahoma’s attorney general, who opposed the school.
On Thursday, Meta and a group of authors, including comedian Sarah Silverman, will try to convince U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria to rule in their favor in their copyright dispute over Meta's alleged unauthorized use of the authors' books in AI training.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, will hear from the DOJ about what remedies it thinks she should impose on Google to restore competition in the digital advertising market, the next phase in blockbuster antitrust litigation against the technology giant.

In the courts