A federal judge on Tuesday threw out an aggressive, unusual lawsuit the Trump administration brought earlier this year against all 15 federal judges in Maryland, rejecting a bid by the Justice Department to limit court power in fast-moving immigration cases.
The opinion on Tuesday framed the lawsuit as a major constitutional standoff, with Judge Thomas Cullen writing the Justice Department couldn’t pursue a “constitutional free-for-all.”
The ruling from Cullen, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump during his first term and brought in from another district to handle the case in Maryland, said the government lacked the legal right — known as standing — to bring the challenge and that the judges are immune from such suits brought by the executive branch.
“Any fair reading of the legal authorities cited by Defendants leads to the ineluctable conclusion that this court has no alternative but to dismiss. To hold otherwise would run counter to overwhelming precedent, depart from longstanding constitutional tradition, and offend the rule of law,” Cullen wrote in the 39-page decision.
The Justice Department sued all federal judges on the lower-level District Court of Maryland in late June, after the court’s chief judge put in place a rule that would automatically and temporarily block the Trump administration from removing an immigration detainee from the US if the detainee had gone to court to challenge their removal.
That rule was on full display Monday in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador in mid-March and eventually returned to the US. The Trump administration has indicated it was to deport him immediately, but Abrego Garcia filed a new case in Maryland that triggered the protection from the court against immediate deportation.
Tuesday, Cullen found he wouldn’t have the authority the Trump administration wanted from him to immediately block the Maryland judges it sued, and that the executive branch doesn’t have a reason within the law where it can sue the judges as it did.
“Dismissal of the Executive’s suit is appropriate because it has not pointed to a cause of action that permits this court to entertain a lawsuit between two coordinate branches of government, and this court will not be the first to create one,” he wrote.
The Justice Department had argued that the automatic orders from the Maryland court in certain immigration cases were unlawful because they didn’t involve the usual analysis by a judge to determine whether such a temporary block against a removal was warranted.
In finishing his opinion, Cullen underscored the unusual nature of the lawsuit, which came as the Trump administration faced a slew of immigration-related cases amid its effort to deport an unprecedented number of undocumented immigrants from Maryland and elsewhere.
“Much as the Executive fights the characterization, a lawsuit by the executive branch of government against the judicial branch for the exercise of judicial power is not ordinary,” he wrote. “Whatever the merits of its grievance with the judges of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the Executive must find a proper way to raise those concerns.”
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