Trump Didn’t Like a Federal Order. So He Sued Entire Court. Judge Schooled Him.

A federal judge Tuesday threw out what he called a “novel and potentially calamitous” attempt by the Trump administration to sue the entire federal court in Maryland over an order that put a two-day pause on deportations.

When a party disagrees with a court action, there is “a tried-and-true recourse,” wrote Judge Thomas Cullen of the Western District of Virginia — file an appeal. But the Trump administration, when faced with a standing immigration order it didn’t like, instead sued all 15 federal district court judges in Maryland, the court clerk, and the court itself.

Given recent conflicts between the White House and the courts, “it’s no surprise that the Executive chose a different, and more confrontational, path entirely,” wrote Cullen, who was nominated by Trump in 2019. “Instead of appealing any one of the affected habeas cases or filing a rules challenge with the Judicial Council, the Executive decided to sue—and in a big way.”

But judges enjoy broad immunity for judicial acts, wrote Cullen in a 37-page ruling, adding that when co-equal branches of government are involved, “there is no right — express or implied — to litigate that grievance in this manner.”

“Whatever the merits of its grievance with the judges of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the Executive must find a proper way to raise those concerns,” wrote Cullen, who was assigned the case because of the conflict of Maryland judges hearing it.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Judge George L. Russell III, chief judge of the Maryland district and the prime target of the administration’s lawsuit.

It was Russell’s order in May that sparked the lawsuit. Faced with a flood of habeas corpus petitions from immigrants facing deportation under the administration’s amped-up immigration enforcement, Russell ordered that deportations of those petitioning the court would be put on hold for at least two days, so that judges could schedule and review their cases.

On June 25, the Justice Department announced that it filed a complaint against the Maryland District Court judges, arguing that they had exceeded their authority with the 48-hour freeze on deportations because it interfered with the administration’s exclusive right to enforce immigration law.

“President Trump’s executive authority has been undermined since the first hours of his presidency by an endless barrage of injunctions designed to halt his agenda,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a written statement at the time. “The American people elected President Trump to carry out his policy agenda: this pattern of judicial overreach undermines the democratic process and cannot be allowed to stand.”

But Cullen agreed with the Maryland judges that the Trump administration chose the wrong avenue to raise its issues with Russell’s order.

“If these arguments were made in the proper forum, they might well get some traction,” Cullen said. “And under normal circumstances, it would not be surprising if the Executive raised these concerns through the channels Congress prescribed — that is, by challenging the orders as applied to a particular habeas proceeding through a direct appeal to the Fourth Circuit or, as expressly authorized by federal statute, by petitioning the Judicial Council of the Fourth Circuit, which has the authority to rescind or modify local court rules.”

“All of this isn’t to say that the Executive is without any recourse; far from it,” Cullen wrote. “If the Executive truly believes that Defendants’ standing orders violate the law, it should avail itself of the tried-and-true recourse available to all federal litigants: It should appeal.”

Stunt?

Mark Graber, regents professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, believes that the case was more of a stunt than an earnest legal challenge from the Trump administration.

“Issuing an injunction against judges is a guaranteed loser,” he said. “What the Trump people were trying to accomplish may simply to have been noise and publicity …  Whether they really thought they could ever win this case is doubtful — and if somebody thought that they should ever win that case, that person should be fired for incompetence.”

Graber said that allowing the case to move forward would have “fundamentally changed the way our judicial system works.”

“The implications would be startling,” he said. “This is the executive branch suing the federal judges in Maryland because they don’t like a decision. That’s not the way the separation of powers works. There’s a judicial system; it has a way of correcting errors – it’s called appeals.”

Graber compared the case to being charged for a crime in Maryland and then asking a judge in another state to issue an injunction against the judge who handed down the sentence.

“This is Law 101 — it is Law 101 to the point where virtually all non-lawyers know this,” he said.

Ironically, he noted, the Trump administration could appeal the decision to dismiss, or could go back and appeal the original standing order.

“What the Trump administration is claiming – and this is not a horrible legal argument – is that the court could only issue orders with respect to the people before the court,” Graber said.

“There’s a legitimate debate on this, and if they appealed it, who knows what the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court would have done?” he said. “The problem is they didn’t appeal it in the normal way.”

–Danielle J. Brown, Florida Phoenix