A United States court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against the Maryland federal court system, accusing every federal judge in the system of having “used and abused” their powers.
District Judge Thomas Cullen, a Trump appointee, granted the Maryland judges’ request to have the case dismissed, expressing skepticism about the Trump administration’s case early on.
Cullen questioned what might happen to the government’s separation of powers if Trump and his officials decided to sue an appellate court or even the Supreme Court for disagreeing with his policies.
“I think you probably picked up on the fact that I have some skepticism,” Cullen told lawyers for Trump’s Department of Justice. He described the lawsuit against all of Maryland’s federal judges as an escalation in Trump’s fight with the judiciary: “taking it up about six notches,” he said.
The lawsuit was a highly unusual, broad-strokes attack on the federal judicial system in Maryland, where Trump’s immigration agenda has faced several high-profile setbacks.
Critics say the lawsuit is yet another indication of Trump’s adversarial approach to the judicial branch of the government, which he has repeatedly accused of over-stepping its authority in the wake of unfavorable rulings.
Cullen suggested that the Trump administration would have been better served by appealing the specific court injunctions it disagreed with, rather than suing an entire district court system.
“It would have been more expeditious than, you know, the two months we’ve spent on this,” he said. The lawsuit was filed on June 25, with the Justice Department objecting to the “automatic injunctions” that the court system “issued for federal immigration enforcement actions.”
Trump has been leading a campaign of mass deportation since taking office for a second term in January, prompting a slew of legal challenges over immigrants’ right to a court hearing, among other issues.
The complaint cited a May 20 order from Chief Judge George Russell of the Maryland district court system, which barred the Trump administration from immediately deporting immigrants who had filed a habeas corpus petition.
In justifying the order, Russell explained that the Trump administration’s deportation push had resulted in “hurried and frustrating hearings” that lacked “clear and concrete” information.
He added that his order would ensure access to the court, allowing both the government and immigrants “fulsome opportunity” to present their cases. Maryland has also been the site of other court hurdles for the Trump administration’s agenda.
The Trump administration maintained that the judges’ court orders amount to the “unlawful restraint” of the president’s powers.
“Injunctions against the Executive Branch are particularly extraordinary because they interfere with that democratically accountable branch’s exercise of its constitutional powers,” the complaint said.
In an August 13 hearing, lawyers for the Justice Department presented those arguments before Judge Cullen.
“Every single time one of these orders gets entered, our sovereign interests in enforcing duly-enacted immigration law are being inhibited,” Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Hedges argued.
The extraordinary nature of an entire court system being sued required Maryland’s 15 federal judges to hire their own legal team in their defense.
Paul Clement, a conservative lawyer who previously served under former President George W Bush, represented them at the hearing and called the Trump administration’s attacks “no ordinary matter.”
Clement pointed out that the lawsuit disrupted the everyday business of the court system, including by requiring Judge Cullen to travel from Virginia to oversee the case.
“All of the alternatives that are available avoid that kind of nightmare scenario,” Clement said. “That nightmare scenario is part of the reason that we don’t have a tradition of suits that are executive versus judiciary.”
Clement also argued that the Trump administration aimed to limit the power of the judiciary to weigh constitutional matters related to immigration.