A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump from punishing the Northern Arapaho Tribe’s law firm for a series of actions and associations the president claimed were un-American.
The president’s order sought an “egregious” violation of the law firm’s freedom of speech, the judge wrote.
U.S. District Court Judge John Bates didn’t hesitate to rule in favor of the 900-person law firm Jenner & Block, which represents the Northern Arapaho Tribe through myriad lobbying efforts in Washington D.C.
Trump’s March 25 order attempting to freeze the firm out of federal buildings (which could include the courthouses in which its employees serve), block its federal contracts and investigate its work and associations violates the Constitution many times over, Bates concluded in his Friday decision.
“We deal here with lawyers. In this context, the forward-looking censorship scheme threatens not only the First Amendment but also the right to counsel’s promise of a conflict-free attorney ‘devoted solely to the interests of his client,’” wrote Bates. Law firms living in fear under presidential orders struggle to “serve two masters” and can’t give their attention to their clients as needed, he added.
Society trusts lawyers to translate real-world harm into courtroom argument, wrote Bates.
“Sometimes they live up to that trust; sometimes they don’t,” continued the judge. “But in all events, their independence is essential lest they shrink into ‘nothing more than parrots of the views of whatever group wields governmental power at the moment.’”
When They Capitulate …
Trump’s order was partly tied to the firm’s re-hiring of a former federal prosecutor who worked on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Many law firms the president targeted with other orders chose to settle with Trump and commit to per morning millions of dollars' worth of free work on Trump-endorsed causes rather than sue.
Jenner, rather, sued immediately.
Bates took a swing at the capitulating firms.
Watching some law firms buckle under Trump’s ire because of their associations with people who prosecuted him or their backing of causes with which the president disagrees has been “something of an organic experiment, control group and all, for how firms react to the orders and how they might escape them,” wrote Bates.
“Several firms of – presumably – ordinary firmness have folded rather than face similar executive orders,” the judge wrote. “Indeed, it appears to take extraordinary firmness to resist. And the experiment has shown what folding entails: compromising speech.”
The first law firm to settle, Paul Weiss, did so by dedicating $40 million in free services to causes of which the president approves.
Subsequent settlers had it worse, with some pledging $100 million to Trump-backed causes.
“I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong,” said Trump at a recent event, according to the judge’s order. “But what the hell, they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.”
Because Of This
Jenner & Block started working for the Northern Arapaho Tribe in 2020, according to the firm’s federal lobbying disclosure reports.
The law firm disclosed in those reports more than $580,000 in income from its federal lobbying efforts on the tribe’s behalf alone. The tribe has also hired the firm on litigation matters, including a 2021 challenge by an energy company.
Jenner & Block lobbies Congress and federal agencies on the tribe’s behalf with respect to Indian Health Service funding, housing funding, water infrastructure, Bureau of Indian affairs funding, public health, and other matters.
The tribe is still working with Jenner, its executive-branch government’s spokesman told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
The spokesman also said tribal leaders have not been to Washington D.C., themselves since Trump’s order was published but that its lawyers don’t report “any issues” from the order, relating to the tribe.
Jenner & Block has had some concerned clients and canceled meetings, however, court documents say.
The tribe's governing body did not provide additional comments on the judge's order by publication time.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
