March 13 (UPI) — A federal judge on Wednesday issued a temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump‘s executive order targeting a law firm over its work for Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 election campaign.
Trump on Thursday signed the executive order to impose restrictions on Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based law firm that had hired a third party to conduct opposition research on Trump ahead of the 2016 election, which the New York real estate mogul won.
Among the punitive measures were suspending security clearances for the law firm’s lawyers, denying them access to government buildings and canceling federal contracts with the firm.
The order issued Wednesday by Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocks the enforcement of executive order sections barring the lawyers access to government buildings and terminating federal contracts with the firm.
The order does not address the directive to strip the lawyers of security clearances nor a section that directs the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate large law firms for civil rights violations. Neither of those sections were challenged by Perkins Coie.
“Today’s decision granting our motion for a temporary restraining order is an important first step in ensuring this unconstitutional Executive Order is never enforced,” Perkins Coie said in a statement on its website.
“We will follow the court’s direction regarding next steps and will continue to challenge the Executive Order, which threatens our firm, clients and core constitutional protections important to all Americans.”
Trump ran on a platform promising to retaliate against his political opponents and has issued several executive orders and directives since returning to the White House targeting them.
Perkins Coie has drawn Trump’s criticism for years as it had hired Fusion GPS during the 2016 election campaign to create what has since become known as the Steele Dossier for the Clinton camp, which alleged connections between Trump and Russia.
“This is an absolute honor to sign,” Trump said moments before signing the punitive executive order last week, which describes Perkins Coie as having conducted “dishonest and dangerous activity.”
Perkins Coie on Tuesday filed a motion seeking a temporary restraining order against sections one, three and five of Trump’s executive order, which the complaint described as “an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice.”
“Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse to the views of his Administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients,” it said in the filing.
“Perkins Coie brings this case reluctantly. The firm is comprised of lawyers who advocate for clients; its attorneys and employees are not activists or partisans. But Perkins Coie’s ability to represent the interests of its clients — and its ability to operate as a legal-services business at all — are under direct and imminent threat.
“Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied.”
Howell, a Barack Obama appointee, read her opinion in court on Wednesday, stating Trump’s order likely violates the First Amendment of the Constitution protects by retaliating against protected speech and the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel.
“Regardless of whether the president dislikes the firm’s clients, dislikes the litigation positions the law firm takes in vigorous representation of those clients or dislikes the results Perkins Coie achieved for its clients, issuing an executive order targeting the firm based on the president’s dislike of the political positions of the firm’s clients or the firm’s litigation positions is retaliatory and runs head-on into the role of First Amendment protections,” Howell said.