Trump administration drops lawsuit against MD federal judges

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The Trump administration dropped its lawsuit against Maryland’s federal judges last week instead of challenging the lower court’s decision to dismiss the case.

The government on Jan. 16 was due to file its opening appeal brief after U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen dismissed the unprecedented lawsuit, calling it a “concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it.”

Instead, lawyers for the Department of Justice moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it is moot because the standing order it originally challenged had been superseded in December by another order that is “materially different.”

In addition to dismissing the case as moot, they asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to vacate Cullen’s order.

The Trump administration sued all 15 of Maryland’s federal judges, the court clerk and the court itself last June after George Russell III, the chief judge of the Maryland U.S. District Court, issued a standing order pausing the removal of immigrants in Maryland for about two days after the filing of a petition for writ of habeas corpus. The standing order was amended a week later.

A writ of habeas corpus forces the government to go before a judge to justify the imprisonment or removal of a detainee.

The order, which was not tied to any individual case, was intended to preserve due process and the court’s jurisdiction. It was seen as a response to the administration’s removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and hundreds of Venezuelans to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process.

The administration claimed the order hurt the ability of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce immigration law and “rob(bed) the Executive Branch of its most scarce resource: time to put its policies into effect.”

Because of limited detention capacity in Maryland, ICE often sent people to other states quickly, before they could file a habeas petition, the motion states.

Hundreds of attorneys and pro-democracy groups from across the political spectrum filed amicus briefs in support of the judges, arguing the independence of the judiciary was at stake.

Cullen, a Trump-appointed judge in the Western District of Virginia, was brought in to hear the case because all of Maryland’s federal judges were named as defendants. He wrote that a lawsuit against the judiciary was the wrong way to challenge Russell’s order, and wrote that the two-day pause “appears considerably more modest” than similar two-week pauses ordered in certain cases by several federal appellate courts.

The court and the judges, furthermore, are immune to lawsuits challenging orders, he wrote.

After the government appealed, Russell in September proposed a second amended standing order, offering a notice-and-comment period, unlike he did for the prior orders. Part of the government’s complaint had been that the order functioned as a local rule that required notice and comment.

The second amended order, entered Dec. 1, requires a detainee to certify that they are detained in Maryland and that “emergency relief is necessary.” It allows a judge to dissolve the order in an individual’s case if the government shows “good cause.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security opposed the amended order.

The government was originally due to file its opening appeal brief in October, but the shutdown prevented DOJ employees from working on most civil matters. A deadline was set for December, but the DOJ asked for an extension days after Russell issued the second amended standing order.