A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed an unprecedented lawsuit filed by the Trump administration earlier in the summer against all 15 judges serving on Maryland’s federal district court – a case that opposed pausing some deportations from the state.
In a 37-page ruling, US district judge Thomas Cullen of Virginia’s western district – who was nominated and confirmed to his position during Donald Trump’s first presidency – wrote that “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,” Cullen added, “would run counter to overwhelming precedent, depart from longstanding constitutional tradition, and offend the rule of law.”
The Trump administration had challenged an order issued by Maryland’s chief district judge that temporarily barred the government from deporting undocumented immigrants for two business days if they filed challenges to their detention. Trump’s justice department argued that the order exceeded the court’s authority and violated federal law.
But Cullen, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020 and was assigned the case because all Maryland district judges were named as defendants, wrote that the judges were “absolutely immune” from lawsuits over their judicial actions. And Cullen said that instead of suing, the administration should have challenged the order though other legal channels, such as appealing against the order.
“As 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,” Cullen wrote.
“In their wisdom, the constitution’s framers joined three coordinate branches to establish a single sovereign. That structure may occasionally engender clashes between two branches and encroachment by one branch on another’s authority. But mediating those disputes must occur in a manner that respects the judiciary’s constitutional role.”
He added that if the administrations’s arguments “were made in the proper forum, they might well get some traction”. But he said that “as events over the past several months have revealed, these are not normal times – at least regarding the interplay between the executive and this coordinate branch of government”.
It was “no surprise that the executive chose a different, and more confrontational, path entirely”, Cullen’s ruling said.
“Instead of appealing any one of the affected … cases or filing a rules challenge with the judicial Council, the executive decided to sue – in a big way.”
In a footnote, Cullen also criticized the Trump administration’s attacks on judges across the country throughout his second presidency, which began in January.
“Over the past several months,” he said, Trump administration officials had described federal district judges around the country as “left-wing”, “liberal” “activists”, “radical”, “politically minded”, “rogue”, “unhinged”, “outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional”, “[c]rooked,” and worse.
“Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system, this concerted effort by the executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate,” Cullen wrote.
Among the judges named in the lawsuit was US district judge Paula Xinis, who ruled in April that the Trump administration had unlawfully deported Kilmar Ábrego García to El Salvador and ordered the US to return him.
