Perkins Coie Lawsuit: Executive Order, Ruling, and Appeal

The Perkins Coie lawsuit is a First Amendment case the firm filed on March 11, 2025, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order stripping its lawyers of security clearances and cutting off its access to federal buildings, contracts, and business with government contractors. Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck the order down as unconstitutional on May 2, 2025, and issued a permanent injunction blocking it in full.¹ The Department of Justice appealed, and the case is now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which heard oral argument on May 14, 2026.²

What the Executive Order Did

Executive Order 14230, “Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP,” was signed on March 6, 2025.³ Its operative sections instructed federal agencies to:

Suspend every active security clearance held by a Perkins Coie employee.
Cut off the firm’s access to federal buildings, government property, and government services.
Begin terminating existing federal contracts involving the firm.
Require federal contractors to disclose any business dealings with Perkins Coie.
Refrain from hiring anyone from the firm absent a special waiver.

A separate section directed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate large law firms’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for compliance with anti-discrimination laws.³

Why the Administration Said It Targeted the Firm

The order accused Perkins Coie of “dishonest and dangerous activity.” It cited the firm’s representation of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign and its role in commissioning what became known as the Steele dossier; its voting-rights litigation, which the order described as work “with activist donors including George Soros” to challenge voter identification laws; a 2021 Fifth Circuit sanction against Perkins Coie attorneys in a Texas straight-ticket-voting case for “submitting redundant and misleading supplemental filings”; and race- and sex-based hiring practices the order attributed to the firm’s diversity programs.³⁴

Marc Elias, the attorney most closely associated with the Clinton-era work and the voting-rights litigation, had left Perkins Coie in August 2021 to found the Elias Law Group, taking 13 partners and 36 associates with him.⁵ He had not been at the firm for more than three years when the executive order was signed.

The Court Ruling

Perkins Coie filed suit five days after the order and won a temporary restraining order from Judge Howell the following day, March 12, 2025, halting the key provisions.⁶⁷⁸

On May 2, 2025, Judge Howell granted summary judgment to the firm, denied the government’s motion to dismiss, and issued a permanent injunction against the order in its entirety.¹ She found the order unconstitutional on several grounds. It amounted to First Amendment retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, punishing the firm for its past client work and its election-law advocacy, and compelled disclosure of confidential client relationships. It denied due process by imposing sanctions without notice or a hearing, violated equal protection by singling out a single firm, and was unconstitutionally vague in its treatment of DEI activity. And it interfered with the Sixth Amendment right of the firm’s clients to choose their own counsel.

Howell called the order an “unprecedented attack” on the independence of the legal profession and a “flagrant abuse of executive power” that was an “overt attempt to suppress and punish” the firm for disfavored expression. She rejected the government’s national security rationale as “not credible” and said the order’s findings of “dishonest and dangerous activity” were “manufactured after the fact.”⁹ She also rejected the government’s claim that presidential discretion over security clearances shielded the order from judicial review, calling that a “breathtaking expansion of executive power at the expense of the constitutionally mandated role of the judicial branch.”¹⁰

On May 20, 2025, Howell clarified that the injunction applied to Perkins Coie only and did not extend to other firms or the profession at large.¹¹

The Appeal and Where the Case Stands

The Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal on June 30, 2025, and the D.C. Circuit consolidated the Perkins Coie appeal with those of three other targeted firms.¹¹

The appeal took an odd turn in early March 2026. On March 2, the DOJ filed an unopposed motion to voluntarily dismiss its consolidated appeals. Less than 24 hours later, the department moved to withdraw the dismissal, stating only that “it is the prerogative of the Defendant-Appellants to pursue this appeal.”¹² The government filed its opening brief on March 6, 2026, arguing that presidential security-clearance decisions are unreviewable, that the contracting and building-access provisions had never been implemented and were not ripe, that the EEOC provisions merely set enforcement priorities under existing law, and that the order’s findings section was protected presidential speech.¹³ The firms filed responsive briefs on March 27, 2026.¹⁴

Oral argument took place on May 14, 2026, before Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judges Cornelia Pillard and Neomi Rao. It ran roughly two hours, well past the scheduled 40 minutes.² Paul Clement argued for the firms and told the panel that “there are certain things that even the unitary executive cannot do.”¹⁵ DOJ attorney Abhishek Kambli argued that security-clearance decisions are discretionary national security actions courts cannot second-guess. Srinivasan and Pillard pressed the government on whether that discretion still holds when clearance revocations are driven by political bias rather than genuine security concerns. Judge Rao acknowledged that the case runs “smack into” existing precedent limiting judicial review of clearance decisions. Coverage of the argument described the panel as skeptical of the government’s position, with much of the discussion focused on remedy and severability of the security-clearance provisions.

As of mid-2026, the D.C. Circuit has not issued a decision. The permanent injunction remains in force.¹⁶

What the Order Cost the Firm

Although the temporary restraining order arrived within days and blocked most of the sanctions from taking full effect, Judge Howell found that Perkins Coie had already suffered “monetary damages from the loss of clients because of its inability to represent them in proceedings against the government” and that “the mere threat of limited access” was itself unconstitutional retaliation.¹⁰ In June 2025, the firm laid off 5% of its U.S.-based professional staff. Reporting from The American Lawyer in November 2025 said the firm “still faced client concerns about its ‘ability to interact with regulators.'”¹⁷

On April 13, 2026, the partnerships of Perkins Coie and Ashurst, a firm based in London and Sydney, voted to combine, forming Ashurst Perkins Coie. The merged firm is projected to have around $2.8 billion in revenue and roughly 3,000 lawyers across more than 50 offices, with flagship hubs in Seattle, London, Sydney, and New York. The combination is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026.¹⁸

The Other Law Firms Named by Executive Orders

Perkins Coie was the first firm sanctioned by executive order, but not the only one. Similar orders targeted Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey. Each firm sued separately, and each won. Judge John D. Bates struck down the Jenner & Block order on May 23, 2025; Judge Richard J. Leon did the same for WilmerHale on May 27, 2025; and Judge Loren AliKhan called the Susman Godfrey order “unconstitutional from beginning to end” on June 27, 2025.¹⁹²⁰ Those appeals are consolidated with Perkins Coie’s at the D.C. Circuit.¹¹

Two other firms took a different route. Paul Weiss reached an agreement with the administration on March 20, 2025, pledging $40 million in pro bono work for administration-supported causes, adopting “merit-based” hiring, and abandoning its DEI policies, in exchange for the White House rescinding the executive order against it.²¹ Skadden Arps reached a preemptive deal on March 28, 2025, pledging $100 million in pro bono services and committing to “merit based hiring, promotion and retention” to head off a threatened order.²²

1
Courthouse News Service. Beryl Howell Perkins Coie Summary Judgment Opinion
2
Courthouse News Service. DC Circuit Signals Trump’s Law Firm Sanctions Likely Unlawful
3
The White House. Addressing Risks From Perkins Coie LLP
4
Texas Attorney General. AG Paxton: Fifth Circuit Issues Sanctions Against Perkins Coie
5
Bloomberg Law. Democrat Elections Lawyer Elias Leaves Perkins Coie, Starts Firm
6
Washington Post. Perkins Coie Trump Judge Restraining Order TRO
7
ABC News. Judge Appears Inclined to Permanently Block Trump Order Targeting Perkins Coie
8
Courthouse News Service. Perkins Coie Sues Trump, Retaliation Order
9
Jurist. US Judge Rules Trump Order Against Law Firm Perkins Coie Unconstitutional
10
First Amendment Encyclopedia, MTSU. Perkins Coie v. U.S. Department of Justice
11
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Perkins Coie LLP v. U.S. Department of Justice
12
Bloomberg Law. Trump Signals He Will Continue Court War on Targeted Law Firms
13
ALM. DOJ Appeal Brief
14
ACLU of the District of Columbia. Perkins Coie LLP v. U.S. Department of Justice
15
Washington Legal Foundation. Perkins Coie v. DOJ Oral Argument
16
ACLU. ACLU Comment on the Trump Administration Dropping Its Defense of Law Firm Sanctions
17
Best Law Firms. Law Firm Merger Boom 2026
18
Perkins Coie. Perkins Coie and Ashurst Partnerships Approve Combination to Form Ashurst Perkins Coie
19
NPR. Trump Law Firm Susman Godfrey Ruling
20
NBC News. DOJ Drops Suits Against Law Firms After Judges Find Executive Orders Unconstitutional
21
BBC. Paul Weiss and Trump Administration Agreement
22
Politico. Skadden Arps Trump Law Deal