President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting Susman Godfrey “violates the First Amendment many times over,” is “odious viewpoint discrimination” and should be declared unconstitutional and illegally unenforceable.
With that opening argument, lawyers for Susman Godfrey filed a new brief Friday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to uphold a lower court ruling permanently restraining President Trump’s executive order issued last spring targeting the Houston litigation powerhouse from being enforced.
“It is unconstitutionally retaliatory; it is odious viewpoint discrimination; it disrupts Susman’s right to associate with its clients; and it denies Susman the right to petition the courts for redress of grievances,” Susman Godfrey states in a 53-page brief. “Indeed, its objectives are especially pernicious. Its very point is to prevent courts from hearing the best arguments from the best lawyers challenging executive actions, to shut down challenges puncturing the myth that the 2020 election was rigged, and more broadly to intimidate not just Susman but the entire legal profession from disseminating ideas that the president finds anathema. The order thus aims at nothing short of silence coerced by law — the argument of force in its worst form.”
Two other corporate law firms that were the targets of President Trump’s EOs — WilmerHale and Jenner & Block — also filed briefs in their respective cases, which have been consolidated before the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
The EOs claim the law firms pose a national security risk and order that their lawyers not be able to enter federal buildings or do business with clients that have federal government contracts.
The law firms sued the White House, claiming that the executive orders are nothing more than retaliatory actions because the firms either represented clients or causes opposed by President Trump. In June, a federal judge agreed and issued a permanent injunction against the federal government.
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“President Trump’s Executive Order attacking Susman Godfrey constitutes a grave abuse of presidential power that threatens the essential postulates of our Constitution and the rule of law itself,” Susman Godfrey’s brief filed Friday states. “The order purports to subject Susman to punishing disabilities that would make it impossible for the firm to conduct a law practice that zealously advances its clients’ interests.”
In the brief, Susman Godfrey states that “the undisputed factual record establishes that the president singled out Susman for those punishments because of the firm’s speech.”
Susman Godfrey specifically said President Trump is angry at the law firm “because the firm successfully advocated in court for Dominion Voting Systems and for state officials defending the integrity of the 2020 presidential election” and “because the firm is committed to the principles that women and men should receive equal pay for equal work, and that opportunities in the legal profession should be equally available to all irrespective of race, religion, gender, or national origin.”
The president’s EO is also “as blatant a violation of due process as one could imagine.”
“Susman was afforded no notice or opportunity whatsoever to contest the factual and legal bases for the order’s crippling sanctions,” the brief states. “Defendants barely defend the order’s brazen unconstitutionality, offering only halfhearted technical objections to the district court’s ruling. In fact, as this court knows, defendants initially dropped their appeal altogether, only to reverse course without offering Susman or this court any explanation.”
Earlier Friday, lawyers for WilmerHale argued in court documents that the executive order “strikes at the heart of these bedrock principles.”
“It unabashedly proclaims the president’s desire to retaliate against the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr for representing clients and causes he dislikes and expressing viewpoints with which he disagrees,” Paul Clement, a highly respected conservative constitutional law expert, wrote on behalf of the law firm. “And it imposes draconian punishments on WilmerHale for engaging in these expressive activities, restricting WilmerHale employees’ access to federal buildings (including courthouses), directing federal employees not to engage with them, and transparently attempting to pressure WilmerHale’s clients to stop doing business with it.”
Clement said President Trump’s EOs are “equally brazen in flouting the prohibition on viewpoint discrimination.”
“It openly declares that WilmerHale is being punished for its perceived ‘partisan’ and ‘political’ views, including its decision to ‘welcome’ Robert Mueller back to the firm following his work as special counsel” in leading the investigation into President Trump in 2021, according to Clement. “These egregious First Amendment violations pose a severe threat to the legal profession and the rule of law. In fact, the threat of similar sanctions induced nine of the country’s largest law firms to pledge nearly a billion dollars in legal services towards causes the President favors.”
The case is Susman Godfrey v. Executive Office of the President, No. 25-5310.