Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in Washington, as President Donald Trump looks on (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A whole Maryland court and the federal judges appointed to serve on it have had enough of the Trump administration”s “rather rich” lawsuit and have asked a judge appointed by the president to dismiss the “first of its kind” case once and for all, lest the government try this tactic again — perhaps against an appellate court.
The Trump administration attempted to move its sweeping immigration enforcement and deportation agenda forward by suing the entire U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and its judges in June, claiming that the court’s “standing orders” issuing two-day administrative stays against the government when potential deportees file habeas corpus petitions were evidence of “judicial overreach” purporting to thwart President Donald Trump’s “executive authority” and his 2024 election mandate.
In late May, defendant Chief Judge George Russell III said an “influx of habeas petitions,” due to the Trump administration’s own Alien Enemies Act removal actions “filed after normal court hours and on weekends and holidays,” led to “hurried and frustrated hearings,” making the two-day stay a common-sense tool to manage the district court’s calendar and ensure due process in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings.
The judges are now asking U.S. District Judge Thomas T. Cullen — a Trump appointee in the Western District of Virginia sitting by designation in the case since July due to the administration’s whole-court recusal push — to “dismiss this unprecedented and uniquely disruptive lawsuit” in its entirety.
“This suit is not just novel, but deeply flawed. It is non-justiciable; the Plaintiffs lack a cause of action; and the Defendants have immunity. And even if the Executive could clear all those hurdles, the suit would fail on the merits,” the defendants summarized, through conservative lawyer Paul Clement.
The reply emphasized that the court needs to be able to manage its calendar to “ensure that it can do its job” and that “temporary relief” preserving the “status quo” is a “modest” and “entirely lawful” exercise of its “inherent authority” which should not and cannot be encroached upon by the executive.
“The exercise of that inherent authority here—a modest, two-business-day hold to allow the court to open a case and assess its jurisdiction—is eminently reasonable, entirely lawful, and far less of an imposition on the Executive than comparable appellate-court stays,” the filing continued. “In short, there is no basis for the extraordinary remedy the Executive seeks, and there is every reason to deny it.”
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The defendants then wondered if the DOJ would back another lawsuit attempting to sue an entire federal appellate court, not taking the administration’s “Trust us” approach at face value and citing the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia along the way.
“The Executive denies any present intention to file such a suit, but nothing in its theory limits it to suing district courts, and ‘Trust us’ is not a comforting response when it comes to broad assertions of executive power. See Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 727 (1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting),” the reply went on, with a warning. “If this suit is allowed to be the first of its kind, it will not be the last.”
For good measure, the judges called it “rather rich” that the administration has sued, claiming the executive’s “immediate need” to carry out deportations trumps the coequal judicial branch’s role in responding to that alleged “urgency.”
“And the entire premise of this suit is that the Executive has an ‘immediate need’ to remove certain aliens, which makes it rather rich for the Executive to insist that courts must undergo a full-blown notice-and-comment proceeding before they can take even modest steps to respond to that professed urgency in kind,” the filing said.
The Trump administration’s most recent filing, from Aug. 1, stated the judges’ immunity arguments were “unsupported by precedent,” and that the government is “likely to succeed on the merits” in arguing that the two-day stay standing orders are unjustifiable, “procedurally invalid” affronts to the executive’s authority over “immigration matters.”
“The Court should enter a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Defendants as well as their successors, agents, and employees from implementing or effectuating the Standing Order and Amended Standing Order going forward,” the DOJ said. “And the Court should deny Defendants’ motion to dismiss.”
In late July, the judges said the DOJ was treating the court like a Denny’s diner, ordering up anything and everything at any hour of the day or night and expecting rapid satisfaction.
“[J]udges need some modicum of time and adverse presentation to properly assess their jurisdiction and make an informed decision, while also giving aliens a reasonable opportunity to request emergency relief,” the filing said.
The defendants, as in the latest reply, stated that the administration’s lawsuit is “fundamentally incompatible with the separation of powers” — a case that is “neither justiciable nor meritorious” but nonetheless promotes gamesmanship to force the recusals of the entire court and put the matter before a judge from another jurisdiction.
