order Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

Vacation, mistaken filing led to order to show cause, lawyers for MyPillow CEO say

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 23:50:23 +0000

Trials & Litigation

Vacation, mistaken filing led to order to show cause, lawyers for MyPillow CEO say

April 29, 2025, 2:29 pm CDT

MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell on April 4, 2023, in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Wilfredo Lee/The Associated Press)

Human error led lawyers representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to file a draft document with incorrect case citations instead of the final version, according to a response to a federal judge’s order to show cause.

The lawyers didn’t realize that they had filed the wrong document, an early draft without corrections, until questioning 55 days later by the judge, according to their April 25 response.

Law360 has the story.

U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang of the District of Colorado had ordered the lawyers on April 23 to show cause why they shouldn’t be referred for discipline. Wang said she identified “nearly 30 defective citations” of cases, including citations to cases that don’t exist, in the lawyers’ Feb. 10 brief.

Lawyer Christopher I. Kachouroff said in a declaration his co-counsel filed the draft document instead of the final version that they “had carefully cite-checked and edited.” At the time, Kachouroff was on a one-week vacation to Mexico, where there were “limitations on internet service.”

But what happened wasn’t clear, Kachouroff said, when he was questioned in court by Wang. Kachouroff was “taken by complete surprise” because he was unaware of the mistake, he said in the declaration.

“In the face of the court’s detailed questioning, I was utterly flustered and embarrassed, and due to my ignorance of what was going on, found myself at a loss for words,” Kachouroff said.

Kachouroff said he routinely uses artificial intelligence to analyze the structure and the logic of legal arguments. He does not, however, rely on AI to do legal research or find cases.

“Regardless of whether I use AI in a particular pleading,” he wrote, “I always conduct verification of citations before filing.”

Kachouroff and his co-counsel, Jennifer T. DeMaster, are seeking leave to replace the draft document with the correct one.

Lindell is being sued for defamation by Eric Coomer, a former executive with Dominion Voting Systems. He alleges that Lindell and his related companies are “among the most prolific vectors of baseless conspiracy theories claiming election fraud in the 2020 election.”

Lindell allegedly amplified false allegations that Coomer may have been involved in a rigged election and a criminal conspiracy, leading to “credible death threats” against him and banishment from the elections industry, Coomer’s second amended complaint alleges.

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SCOTUS deportation order was ‘fatally premature’: Trump DOJ

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 22:46:28 +0000

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s weekend order that blocked the Trump administration from carrying out certain deportations under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) has been flamed by the Justice Department as an “unprecedented injunction” that is “fatally premature,” according to the DOJ, as the applicants have “improperly skipped over the lower courts before asking this one for relief,” it says.

“This Court is ‘a court of review, not first view,”” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer in the DOJ’s response to the Supreme Court order, which was handed down early Saturday morning.

“Yet the application insists on judicial review in reverse,” Sauer said. “It calls for this Court to be the first to resolve due-process challenges to the adequacy of notice that designated enemy aliens receive, on behalf of a putative class that no court below has certified, on a nonexistent record.”

The Saturday order and deportations case comes in the aftermath of an April 7 Supreme Court ruling, which dissolved a nationwide injunction barring summary deportations under the auspices of the obscure wartime law. All nine justices voted against the government’s use of the AEA without due process.

Last week, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a petition for the writ of habeas corpus in Texas federal court, challenging the “AEA Process” as a whole. The plaintiffs also filed for a temporary restraining order and class certification.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix — a Donald Trump appointee — denied the motion for a restraining order. The court credited a statement from Department of Justice attorneys that none of the plaintiffs faced “imminent risk of summary removal” under the AEA. Hendrix reserved ruling on the class certification motion. The ACLU quickly filed an interlocutory appeal on Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, stylized as an emergency request for a temporary restraining order.

That appeal was still pending when the plaintiffs filed their emergency application for an emergency injunction with the Supreme Court.

In a blistering dissent Saturday, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that he believed the Supreme Court’s order was “hastily and prematurely granted” — nor was it “necessary or appropriate,” he said.

“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order,” Alito wrote in a five-page rebuke.

“I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate,” Alito said, noting how Justice Clarence Thomas also dissented.

“Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law,” Alito added. “The Executive must proceed under the terms of our order … and this Court should follow established procedures.”

Trump’s DOJ echoed much of what Alito said in its response filing Saturday, with two major points of contention being whether the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction to make such a ruling in the AEA deportations case and how accurate the claims being made were about deportations being imminent.

“Applicants gave the district court only 42 minutes to rule on their motion before immediately proceeding to the court of appeals, thus divesting the district court of jurisdiction,” Sauer said. “That maneuvering left the district court ‘unable to complete its review of the filings’ and actually rule on applicants’ claims.”

While the Trump administration was unable to respond to the allegations being made about deportations happening before the Supreme Court issued its ruling, Alito said that a DOJ lawyer in a different case told the U.S. District Court judge who is overseeing it on Friday that “no such deportations” were being carried out by the government or “planned to occur.”

“The government has committed to not removing the named petitioners pursuant to the AEA until their habeas proceedings have concluded,” Sauer alleged.

“Applicants dismiss those problems by speculating that AEA detainees will be removed imminently, before their claims can be further tested,” he said. “But applicants ignore that the government has provided advance notice to AEA detainees (including the named petitioners) prior to commencing AEA removals. Detainees receiving such notices have had adequate time to file habeas claims — indeed, the putative class representatives and others have filed such claims. And the government has agreed not to remove pursuant the AEA those AEA detainees who do file habeas claims (including the putative class representatives).”

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Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.

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Experts analyze SCOTUS order barring summary deportations

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 06:24:07 +0000

President Donald Trump speaks as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

Legal experts were quick to parse the U.S. Supreme Court’s “massively significant” order barring the Trump administration from carrying out deportations using the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).

In a highly unusual early Saturday morning ruling — the first and only Saturday order issued this term — the nation’s high court tersely ordered the government “not to remove” any immigrant detainees subject to deportation flights in the Northern District of Texas.

“[T]he Court didn’t wait at all,” Georgetown University Law Prof. Steve Vladeck wrote on his blog. “This may seem like a technical point, but it underscores how seriously the Court, or at least a majority of it, took the urgency of the matter.”

The law professor noted that the justices waited neither for an appellate court to rule on the issue nor gave the government a chance to respond to the emergency request before issuing the order.

The order comes as the next step in a parry-and-thrust sequence involving the Trump administration’s use of the obscure wartime law.

In mid-March, the government invoked the AEA. Though immediately enjoined by U.S. District Court Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, officials ignored that court order and promptly flew two planes full of immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. One of the men on one of those flights, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, had an explicit — and separate — court order barring him from being deported to El Salvador.

While the justices dissolved Boasberg’s national injunction, the court also forbade the government from conducting any further deportation flights under the AEA without due process. To that end, the court prescribed writs of habeas corpus in relevant district courts as the way forward for detainees challenging putative AEA deportation.

Then, a few days later, in a separate case, the justices unanimously directed the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from the torture-plagued Salvadoran lockup facility.

But in the past week, President Donald Trump and high-ranking White House officials have misconstrued — and arguably mocked — the high court’s ruling as a 9-0 victory for the government. Meanwhile, at least two other courts, one appellate and one district, pointed out that those rulings were actually defeats for the government, albeit limited ones.

Simultaneously, attorneys across the country have been following the high court’s guidance by filing class-action-seeking habeas petitions in jurisdictions where it is believed immigrants are being housed in anticipation of potential third-country deportations under the AEA.

Such a filing came in Texas on Wednesday; quick work from the court system got the emergency application before the Supreme Court on Friday. Within hours, at least five — and as many as seven — justices voted to stay pending AEA removals of immigrants in North Texas.

The plaintiffs in the case, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), saw fit and were able to avail themselves of the extraordinary intervention because the district court judge denied the original request for a temporary restraining order in the case.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, denied the motion for a restraining order, crediting a statement from Department of Justice attorneys that none of the detained plaintiffs faced “imminent risk of summary removal” under the AEA.

That promise may not be worth much to the high court, according to legal commentator and attorney Ed Whelan, a former clerk for late Justice Antonin Scalia who helped advise Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings.

Calling the order “extraordinary” in a post on X (formerly Twitter), Whelan suggested there was only one explanation for the order.

“[T]he Court does not trust the Trump administration to abide by its promise to the district court,” he wrote. “And given how unworthy of trust the Trump administration has proven to be, that’s an ample explanation.”

Vladeck appeared to more or less agree with this estimation.

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As news of renewed AEA flights circulated this week, the ACLU returned to Boasberg on Friday — the original AEA case — and asked for another temporary restraining order.

During a hastily called hearing, the DOJ hedged its bets.

“I’ve spoken with DHS, they are not aware of any current plans for flights tomorrow,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said. “I have also been told to say that they reserve the right to remove people tomorrow.”

Boasberg declined to grant relief, but Vladeck said the justices were likely keenly aware of the government’s position.

“In a world in which a majority of the justices were willing to take these kinds of representations at face value, there might’ve been no need to intervene overnight Friday evening; the justices could’ve taken at least all day Saturday to try to sort things out before handing down their decision,” the law professor wrote. “The Court appears to be finally getting the message — and, in turn, handing down rulings with none of the wiggle room we saw in the J.G.G. and Abrego Garcia decisions last week. That’s a massively significant development unto itself — especially if it turns out to be more than a one-off.”

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DOJ asks judge to pause order mandating DOGE discovery

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 05:39:57 +0000

President-elect Donald Trump listens to Elon Musk as he arrives to watch SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship lift off for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Nov. 19, 2024 (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP, File).

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will quickly appeal a court order aimed at prying open the internal structure of the beleaguered pseudo-agency helmed by Elon Musk, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a late Thursday court filing.

In a 13-page ruling handed down on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, a Barack Obama appointee, directed titular U.S. DOGE Service Administrator Amy Gleason to sit for a deposition. The group was also ordered to provide certain documents and answer limited questions issued by nonpartisan government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

The underlying lawsuit is an effort to enforce Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests against the Trump administration’s intra-governmental fraud-and-waste-focused organization. DOGE, in turn, has maintained “it is not an agency subject to FOIA,” Cooper noted.

The court disagreed and entered an injunction requiring expedited processing of CREW’s FOIA requests against DOGE. The plaintiffs then moved for summary judgment on the lawsuit and, seeking a quick bit of finality, moved for expedited discovery.

Cooper’s Tuesday order largely gave CREW what they wanted – while denying one deposition request. The defendants, in a motion to stay, insist that even the limited relief is far too much to bear.

“First, [DOGE’s] Administrator would be diverted from her significant duties and burdened in both preparing and sitting for a deposition, all of which may ultimately prove to be unnecessary,” the government’s filing reads. “The same is true of the discovery more generally.”

To that end, DOGE says they will, on Friday, use the somewhat unusual method of filing a petition for a writ of mandamus with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit “requesting that the Court of Appeals vacate” the lower court’s discovery order.

A mandamus petition is, however, not exactly an appeal. It is an attempt to have one court force another entity within the government to do something – or to force itself to correct a mistake.

“[DOGE] thus hereby moves this Court to stay the Discovery Order pending the D.C. Circuit’s disposition of the mandamus petition [DOGE] expects to file tomorrow,” the government’s motion reads. “CREW opposes this requested relief. Should the Court not grant a stay of the Order by 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, [DOGE] intend to also seek a stay from the D.C. Circuit, as well as an immediate administrative stay.”

The government’s motion does not explicitly say why the defendants are seeking the unusual form of relief but hints that they expect to be able to win their case quickly due to the nature of the tool.

“CREW will not suffer any irreparable harm from the minor delay of a stay pending highly expedited mandamus review,” the motion argues.

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Unheard of and improper’: Trump admin refuses to produce high-ranking official to testify about controversial use of ‘death master file’ in pressuring migrants to self-deport

In response to Gleason’s deposition, the government says the court’s order “intrudes substantially” on the executive branch.

“Gleason is not only the head of an Executive Branch component, but head of an Executive Office of the President component,” the motion continues. “Expedited discovery itself is an exception to the ordinary rules of civil litigation, and the depositions of high-ranking government officials are an exception even beyond that.”

In regard to some of those court-ordered document productions, DOGE complained their staff would be more or less overwhelmed.

“Absent a stay [DOGE] would be required, within the next five days to, among other things, attempt to identify every recommendation it or any of its employees has made on broad subjects and either disclose the substance of those recommendations to CREW, or analyze and assert privilege as to a potentially broad swathe of material,” the motion goes on. “And it must do so, while also processing 1,000 pages of documents to comply with the Court’s attendant order directing processing of FOIA records, while the Court considers whether [DOGE] is actually subject to FOIA in the first place.”

The government also says their compliance with the court order would lead to “irreparable harm” while CREW has nothing to lose from a brief stay of the discovery demands.

“To the extent [DOGE] is required to undertake this burdensome search process (or produce any documents or information) pursuant to the Court’s Discovery Order, it would likewise be impossible to reverse the resulting harm if the Court of Appeals vacates that order or narrows the discovery this Court has directed,” the motion continues.

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In a quick response placed on the federal court docket, Cooper ordered CREW to respond to the government’s arguments by Friday.

Jerry Lambe and Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.

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Which firms, legal groups, law profs signed briefs supporting Perkins Coie in challenge to punitive Trump order?

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 15:18:59 +0000

Law Firms

Which firms, legal groups, law profs signed briefs supporting Perkins Coie in challenge to punitive Trump order?

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 8, 2025, 8:52 am CDT

Amicus briefs supporting Perkins Coie are piling up in its challenge to a punitive order against the law firm signed by President Donald Trump. (Image from Shutterstock)

Amicus briefs supporting Perkins Coie are piling up in its challenge to a punitive order against the law firm signed by President Donald Trump.

The briefs have been filed by more than 500 firms, more than 360 law professors, nearly 350 former judges and a “cross-ideological group” that includes the American Civil Liberties Union and the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest firm, report Law.com (here and here); Bloomberg Law; Reuters (here and here); Law360; and press releases by Law Forward, a nonprofit organization, and the ACLU.

The firm brief is mostly signed by smaller and midsize firms. According to Law.com, larger and well-known firms that signed are:

• Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer

• Covington & Burling

• Crowell & Moring

• Davis Wright Tremaine

• Fenwick & West

• Foley Hoag

• Freshfields US

• Hanson Bridgett

• Jenner & Block

• Manatt, Phelps & Phillips

• Munger, Tolles & Olson

• Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler

• Stoel Rives

• Susman Godfrey

• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr

Perkins Coie sued after Trump issued an executive order that suspended Perkins Coie’s security clearance, limited access to federal buildings by its lawyers, blocked government hiring of firm employees, and required federal agencies to take steps to terminate contracts with the firms and their clients—if the firm provided services in connection with the client contract.

WilmerHale and Jenner & Block also sued after they were targeted with executive orders. Covington & Burling was also targeted in a more limited executive order; it has not filed suit.

As of April 3, four other firms reached deals with Trump to avoid punitive measures. The deals included pledges of pro bono support on issues supported by Trump and the firms.

A Perkins Coie spokesperson told Reuters that the firm was grateful to the firms that signed the amicus brief “in our challenge to the unconstitutional executive order and the threat it poses to the rule of law.”

Above the Law is compiling firms’ reactions to actions by the Trump administration in its “BigLaw Spine Index.” Law.com has published a timeline of the executive orders and firms’ response to them.

The legal advocacy groups that signed the ACLU brief are:

• The ACLU

• The ACLU of the District of Columbia

• The Cato Institute

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation

• The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

• The Institute for Justice

• The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University

• The National Coalition Against Censorship

• The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press

• The Rutherford Institute

• The Society for the Rule of Law Institute

Judges who signed an amicus brief include retired state supreme court and appellate justices and former federal judges. Among them are:

• Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond, Virginia

• Retired Judge Diana Gribbon Motz of the 4th Circuit at Richmond, Virginia

• Retired Judge Kathleen M. O’Malley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

• Retired Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie of the 3rd Circuit at Philadelphia

• Retired U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York

Law professors who signed the professor brief are from law schools that include Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, the University of California, the Georgetown University Law Center, the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Cornell Law School, the New York University School of Law, the University of Chicago Law School, Columbia Law School and the University of Michigan Law School.

Professors who signed the brief include Michael C. Dorf of Cornell Law School, Mark A. Lemley of Stanford Law School, Owen Fiss of Yale Law School, Harold Hongju Koh of Yale Law School, Leah Litman of the University of Michigan Law School, Eugene Volokh of the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law and Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School.

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Nonprofits that challenged mass firings didn’t have standing, Supreme Court says while staying rehiring order

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 07:10:14 +0000

U.S. Supreme Court

Nonprofits that challenged mass firings didn’t have standing, Supreme Court says while staying rehiring order

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 8, 2025, 1:31 pm CDT

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed a federal judge’s preliminary injunction that required the federal government to rehire as many as 16,000 fired probationary employees. (Image from Shutterstock)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed a federal judge’s preliminary injunction that required the federal government to rehire as many as 16,000 fired probationary employees.

In its April 8 order, the Supreme Court said the injunction entered by Senior U.S. District Judge William H. Alsup of the Northern District of California was based solely on claims by nine nonprofit plaintiffs. But those groups did not have standing, the Supreme Court said.

The injunction was not based on claims by other plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Alsup. Alsup didn’t rule on claims by the labor union plaintiffs because he found that he probably didn’t have the power to hear them, according to SCOTUSblog.

The Supreme Court stay will remain in place throughout the litigation.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

SCOTUSblog, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico are among the publications with coverage.

According to Politico, “the decision’s ultimate impact is murky because another federal judge has issued a separate order reinstating many of the same probationary workers.”

Alsup had granted the preliminary injunction in a March 13 ruling from the bench, he said in a March 14 memorandum opinion. He ordered the employees’ reinstatement based on a finding that the Office of Personnel Management had no authority to fire employees of another agency. That authority belongs to each agency, he said.

Alsup’s injunction reinstated probationary workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the Department of the Treasury, according to a March 13 press release.

The government has contended that the firings can only be contested by individual employees before the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The case is Office of Personnel Management v. American Federation of Government Employees.

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‘There is no question that we will fight,’ says latest law firm targeted in Trump executive order

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 21:40:16 +0000

Law Firms

‘There is no question that we will fight,’ says latest law firm targeted in Trump executive order

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 10, 2025, 10:26 am CDT

The latest law firm targeted by the Trump administration, Susman Godfrey, won’t be the last, President Donald Trump said Wednesday. (Photo from Shutterstock)

The latest law firm targeted by the Trump administration, Susman Godfrey, won’t be the last, President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

Trump said the administration had signed deals with many targeted firms, and, “We have another five to go,” Bloomberg Law reports.

Other publications with coverage include Law.com and Reuters.

Susman plans to fight the executive order signed by Trump on Wednesday. It is the sixth firm targeted by Trump in punitive orders because of their representation of clients and causes adverse to Trump.

One of the targeted firms—Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison—is no longer subject to an order because of a deal that it reached with Trump that included an agreement to provide $40 million in pro bono services to mutually supported pro bono projects.

Three other firms also reached deals with Trump to avoid future executive orders targeting them.

Susman vowed to fight in a statement published on its website.

“Anyone who knows Susman Godfrey knows we believe in the rule of law, and we take seriously our duty to uphold it,” the statement said. “This principle guides us now. There is no question that we will fight this unconstitutional order.”

The Susman order seeks the suspension of security clearances issued to any of the firm’s lawyers; restricts access to government buildings for firm employees; bans the government from providing resources to Susman, including compartmentalized information facilities; bans government hiring of Susman employees; and calls for termination of government contracts for which Susman has been hired to provide services, including contracts retained by its clients.

Susman was one of the firms that filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News for false claims that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were used to help former President Joe Biden win the 2020 election. The case settled for $787.5 million.

The executive order alleged that Susman “spearheads efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections.”

According to Bloomberg Law, “Susman is home to some of the country’s top trial lawyers and is well-known for taking major contingency fee cases.” It has profits of nearly $7 million per partner in fiscal year 2023.

Executive orders that targeted Paul Weiss and three other firms included provisions similar to the Susman executive order. A memo targeting Covington & Burling was more limited.

In addition to Paul Weiss, the firms that reached deals with Trump are Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Each of those three firms agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono services to mutually agreeable pro bono projects.

Firms that sued over the executive orders are Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, Jenner & Block and Perkins Coie. They have all obtained temporary restraining orders blocking many sections of the executive orders.

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Judge will not pause order allowing AP back into press pool

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 02:49:15 +0000

President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter before signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, March 31, 2025 (Pool via AP).

A federal judge on Friday refused to stay his own order allowing The Associated Press back into the White House press pool, dealing the Trump administration its second loss in the case this week.

In a relatively terse 5-page memorandum order, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term, denied a request to stay the injunction pending appeal.

But there is time yet for the appellate court to grant a stay of its own. The Department of Justice filed for such relief on April 10 — two days after the lower court entered its order in the AP’s favor. McFadden took note of the leeway granted in his Friday ruling.

“The Court has already stayed its injunction, on its own motion, until April 13, 2025, to allow the Government time to appeal,” McFadden wrote. “The Court will not extend that stay further.”

The day before filing their appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the government filed a motion with McFadden, pleading for the stay to last as long as the appeals process itself.

In the lower court motion, the DOJ complained that McFadden’s order purports “to control access to the President’s most intimate spaces: his personal workspace (the Oval Office), his means of transportation (Air Force One), and his personal home (the Mar-a-Lago Club).”

The district judge was not taken by this argument.

“Most importantly, the Government has not shown it is likely to succeed on the merits,” the judge observes. “The Government sidesteps traditional forum analysis by invoking an ‘intimate spaces’ exception to the First Amendment. But this label is untethered from precedent, which is likely why the Government did not advance this notion at all in its merits arguments for the injunction briefing. To the contrary, the D.C. Circuit suggests that government offices fit squarely into the definition of nonpublic fora.”

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘That means they’ve done nothing’: Judge lashes out at Trump admin for refusing to comply with SCOTUS orders, demands daily updates on status of wrongly deported dad

McFadden writes that the government’s motion “misconstrues the facts” and briefly analyzes each of the three claimed “intimate” spaces one-by-one. In sum, the judge noted that the Oval Office, Air Force One, and even Mar-a-Lago are often beset by reporters and other members of the public.

“The President has other personal workspaces to which Defendants do not routinely invite a gaggle of reporters,” McFadden muses. “Those are truly ‘intimate spaces,’ and they are so precisely because Defendants do not regularly invite in prying reporters and the like.”

In his order enjoining the ban, McFadden said the Trump administration is not permanently barred from stripping the AP’s access to certain places, so long as all journalists are banned as well.

“The Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” the order reads. “The Constitution requires no less.”

On Friday, the judge also chastised the government over the First Amendment retaliation claim that formed an entirely separate basis for the order in the media organization’s favor. This section is considerably short, however, because the DOJ itself ignored that part of the injunction in their motion for a stay.

“[T]he Government’s motion does not begin to address First Amendment retaliation caselaw, an independent justification for the Court’s decision,” the judge’s order goes on. “So the motion fails on the law.”

Where the government did bother to argue was unavailing.

The DOJ complained that “profound separation of powers issues” implicate the executive branch’s “right to dictate who is permitted” where.

The judge noted this was a brand new argument — and one asserting too much power in light of the First Amendment issues at stake.

“[I]nvoking a vague separation-of-powers argument for the first time in a motion to stay does not help the Government’s case,” the order continues. “It cites no precedent that would allow this Court to overcome the clear commands of First Amendment precedent in the interest of a greater separation-of-powers concern. Constitutional protections would be worth little indeed if they wilt in the face of presidential incursion.”

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Meanwhile, the appeal itself is moving forward with speed; the court ordered both parties to brief addressing the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal by Friday afternoon.

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Judge debates contempt for Trump admin ignoring court order

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 07:32:36 +0000

Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, in June 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: U.S. District Judge James Boasberg (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia).

The federal judge who has been going back and forth with the Trump administration over its mass deportations of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 (AEA) — and whether administration officials blatantly ignored orders he gave to shut them down — took a Justice Department lawyer to task on Thursday with an hourlong onslaught of questions and comments about the case, including warnings about holding people in contempt.

At one point during the hearing, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg flat-out called the Justice Department’s actions “pretty sketchy” as it continued to try and say certain information about the Trump deportation flights couldn’t be shared with Boasberg, even in a classified facility and under seal.

“If I don’t agree, if I don’t find your legal arguments convincing and I believe there’s probable cause to find contempt, what I’m asking is how should I determine who the contemnor or contemnors are?” Boasberg asked Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Immigration Litigation Drew Ensign, who was arguing on behalf of the DOJ.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has asserted in court filings that the Trump administration’s deportation of more than 100 Venezuelans under the obscure 18th-century wartime AEA power last month directly violated federal court orders, and the government’s subsequent invocation of the state secrets privilege to withhold information from Boasberg — who has simply been inquiring as to whether his orders were followed — is based on assertions that are not even “remotely true” and should be rejected.

The Trump administration, so far, has invoked the AEA to justify its mass deportations of members of one particular Venezuelan gang. In the executive order underlying the litigation, Trump called for the removal of “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members” of Tren de Aragua (TdA), which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization since January.

On March 15, the ACLU sued for and won a temporary restraining order. Action has since been quick, steady, and tense. Boasberg’s original oral bench ruling to stop the removals under the auspices of the AEA, which included a directive to turn planes around containing Venezuelan immigrants, was allegedly ignored, with the government claiming that the flights had already left U.S. airspace and were therefore outside of the court’s jurisdiction.

On Monday, the ACLU urged Boasberg to deny the Trump administration’s invocation of the privilege, contending that it has never been invoked to stymie a court’s inquiry into whether its own orders had been followed. Should the privilege be permitted to stand, the ACLU alleges, it would effectively give the administration free rein to conceal evidence from courts at will.

The court demanded additional details about the flights and was repeatedly stonewalled with filings that Boasberg described as “intemperate and disrespectful” before the administration invoked the state secrets privilege, asserting that the court did not need any additional information to make a decision.

At Thursday’s hearing, Boasberg assessed the government’s willingness to share information about the timing of the deportations.

“It’s pretty sketchy looking, mainly about why it couldn’t be shared with the public,” Boasberg said. “What I’m trying to figure out here is, is there any other inference that there was an expedited effort to get people on planes before my hearing at 5 p.m. or before I ruled?” the judge asked. “Is that the inference you would draw from this?”

Tearing into Ensign repeatedly, Boasberg said, “It seems to me, there is a fair likelihood that … the government acted in bad faith throughout that day. If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and could survive a court challenge, I can’t believe you ever would have operated the way you did.”

Going after the Trump administration’s alleged refusal to recognize his order, Boasberg told Ensign, “Let me ask you this: Why, when you knew that I was having a hearing at 5 p.m. that was going to relate to class certification, that was going to relate to the plaintiff’s attempt to join action against the larger class, why wouldn’t the prudent thing be to say, ‘Let’s slow down here. Let’s see what the judge says. He’s already enjoined the removal of five people, it’s certainly in the realm of possibility that he would enjoin further removals. Let’s see what he says and if he doesn’t enjoin it we can go ahead, but sure better to be safe than to risk violating the order.’ Why wouldn’t the prudent, considered route be that?”

Ensign insisted that the Trump administration didn’t have notice that the 5 p.m. hearing on March 15 was going to be on anything other than class certification; he said he didn’t have any other “operational” details besides that.

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Committed the same error recently’: Trump DOJ using recent court win over fired Biden ethics enforcer in appeals bid to get civil service board chair axed, too

“So what you were willing to do, by trying to do this as quickly as possible and avoid being enjoined by the court, was to risk putting people on those planes who shouldn’t have been on the planes in the first place,” Boasberg said. “We have the example of Mr. Kilmar Abrego Garcia and you’ve admitted, haven’t you — not you personally, but the administration — has admitted that he was removed based on error, right?”

Ensign confirmed the wrongful removal of Garcia, a Maryland resident who was sent to El Salvador, but tried justifying it by claiming Garcia was on the third plane in question, “for which there are no compliance issues that have been raised by plaintiffs.”

Boasberg said, “On the contrary, they’ve raised them, we haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of the third (plane) yet.”

Circling back to the removal of Garcia, Boasberg said: “In that group of passengers for three planes that you’re rushing to get out of the country before a judge can act, and low and behold, at least one — that we know of — shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

What seemed to have Boasberg taken back most Thursday was how Ensign and the DOJ claimed to have no knowledge of what the Trump administration was doing with the flights when he asked them at the 5 p.m. hearing on March 15.

“I asked you point blank whether there were any removal under this proclamation planned in the next 24 or 48 hours, remember that?” Boasberg asked Ensign, to which he said he did.

“And you said you didn’t know, but that you could investigate and report back … So I recessed the hearing from 5:22 p.m. to 6 p.m. and when we came back you still couldn’t give me any information about the plane,” Boasberg recalled. “So what I want to know here, as an officer of the court, you’re telling me that you had no knowledge whatsoever between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. on that day that planes were in the air or shortly would be in the air? With no knowledge whatsoever?”

Ensign claimed that he had “no knowledge from my clients” but said he did have information from plaintiffs’ submissions to the court that it may be occurring. “I can assure you, as an officer of the court, I diligently tried to obtain that information,” Ensign said.

“They told you nothing?” Boasberg fired back. “You’re arguing on behalf of the government and they told you nothing?”

Ensign repeatedly pointed to attorney-client privilege as a reason for not being able to say what was discussed between him and the Trump administration. Boasberg felt it was an unsturdy argument that didn’t apply, but Ensign pushed on anyway.

“No one told you from the administration that planes were in the air or would be within the next 24 or 48 hours, that’s what you’re telling me?” Boasberg asked.

“Yes, your honor,” Ensign said.

Boasberg spent a good chunk of time asking the DOJ lawyer who he told in the Trump administration about his verbal order on March 15 after it was given, with Ensign providing several names of officials at Homeland Security and the State Department. But when pressed on who decided not to turn the planes around with the people being deported, Ensign refused to answer, once again citing attorney-client privilege.

Boasberg noted how the Justice Department has insisted in filings and at past hearings that the decision was “perfectly appropriate” for the Trump administration to make, so he was confused as to why Ensign couldn’t talk about it.

“So who made that perfectly appropriate decision?” Boasberg asked, to which Ensign admitted: “I don’t know that.” It was here that the judge began floating the idea of holding people in contempt.

Ensign said he believed the matter should be resolved based on the arguments presented so far, not additional briefings and proceedings.

“Your honor … assuming that you have rejected all our arguments … then I think that additional briefing, in particular … would be a better way to proceed,” Ensign told Boasberg.

The judge said that if he finds there’s probable cause for contempt, “there’s a good chance we’ll have hearings” with people being forced to testify under oath related to who will be punished and how.

Boasberg ended Thursday’s hearing by scheduling another for Tuesday, April 8, at which he’s expected to deliver his final order on whether the Trump administration unlawfully ignored him last month.

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Jerry Lambe and Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.

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Federal judge who sought female attorneys among class counsel has acknowledged sex-bias concerns, order says

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 08:50:08 +0000

Judiciary

Federal judge who sought female attorneys among class counsel has acknowledged sex-bias concerns, order says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 25, 2025, 9:21 am CDT

A federal judge who called for female attorneys to be “adequately represented” on the leadership team for plaintiffs in multidistrict contraceptive litigation has “acknowledged the concerns created by her statements.” (Image from Shutterstock)

U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers of the Northern District of Florida “has taken appropriate voluntary corrective action that acknowledges and remedies the problems created by her statements,” wrote Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Atlanta in the March 20 order.

Conservative activist Mike Davis, the founder of the Article III Project—a conservative group—filed a complaint against Rodgers after she said during a Feb. 21 case management conference and in a Feb. 23 order that she thinks that female attorneys have to be “adequately represented” on the leadership team given the female plaintiffs in the contraceptive drug Depo-Provera litigation.

Davis had released the complaint and his organization, the Article III Project, published online articles about it. He alleged that Rodgers’ statements amounted to discrimination based on sex and constituted judicial misconduct.

Rodgers omitted references to sex when she invited applications for leadership positions in a Feb. 28 order. All applicants would be considered based on merit, she said in the order. Then, in a March 13 hearing allowing nearly 70 applicants to give presentations, Rodgers said she would not give preferences to women to avoid the appearance of impermissible sex discrimination.

Pryor said Rodgers’ voluntary corrective action was sufficient while warning that judges can’t discriminate based on sex when selecting class counsel.

Pryor noted a 2013 statement by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in a cert denial in which he criticized a judge’s “unique” requirement that class counsel fairly reflect the composition of plaintiffs.

What Alito described as a unique practice “has been touted as a ‘best practice’ in multidistrict litigation,” Pryor said. “Commentators openly encourage judges who preside over these actions to consider impermissible characteristics like sex or race when they appoint leadership counsel.”

Notions about a lawyer’s ability to fairly and adequately represent class interests “must exist within the bounds of the rules that govern judicial conduct, and those bounds prohibit discrimination based on sex,” Pryor said.

Law360 and Reuters are among the publications with coverage of the order, noted by How Appealing.

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