Court filings show that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has abandoned its legal defense of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that sanctioned several high-profile law firms.
In proceedings filed with the U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C., the Trump administration said it would voluntarily dismiss its appeals of four trial-court decisions that struck down President Trump’s executive orders punishing law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey, deeming them unconstitutional.
"The government's decision to withdraw its appeals makes permanent the rulings of four federal judges that the executive orders targeting law firms, including Jenner & Block, were unconstitutional,” Jenner & Block wrote in a statement. “This chapter has once again confirmed what has been true of Jenner for more than  a  century — we  will  always zealously advocate for our clients and put them first, without compromise."
The cases follow a series of executive orders signed by President Trump in March and April of 2025 that aimed to punish several law firms and individual attorneys by removing security clearances, prohibiting access to federal buildings and officials, and ordering federal agencies to end contracts with the firms and their clients.
President Trump had previously cited the law firms’ connections to his perceived political rivals, additionally pushing back against their diversity programs and pro bono work, which sought to protect transgender rights, immigrants, and voting rights, when issuing the proclamations.
Despite the DOJ’s decision to withdraw from its legal defense of the executive orders, the Trump administration successfully secured hundreds of millions of dollars in pro bono work from nine large firms in deals with the White House that would rescind the directives targeting them, in exchange for cases that favored the administration.
"We fought for ourselves, but we fought for bigger things, too: for a Constitution that protects our freedoms; for a legal profession that depends on equal justice under the law; and for the people across this country who refuse to back down in the face of an Administration that seeks to silence and intimidate them — lawyers and non-lawyers alike," Susman Gofrey issued. "We did not seek this fight, but neither did we run from it. And we won."
