On Friday, US District Judge Beryl Howell permanently blocked President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14230.
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In a 102-page opinion, Howell lays out this takedown in painstaking, unequivocal detail many of us already knew instinctively: that using the power of the presidency to punish lawyers for representing political opponents is not only unethical—it’s flagrantly unconstitutional.
But let’s talk about what’s really at stake here.
This ruling isn’t just a one-time judicial rebuke of an out-of-control executive. It’s a mirror held up to Big Law, the largest, most prestigious, and highest-grossing law firms in the nation. And what it reflects is damning. The fact that so many of these ultra-powerful firms sat on their hands—or worse, quietly folded—while Trump signed an executive order targeting Perkins Coie, should deeply concern anyone who cares about the independence of the legal profession and the rule of law. Big Law should have seen this coming and every one of them should have stood up.
Instead, they blinked.
Let’s be clear: Perkins Coie was not targeted for any misconduct. They were targeted because they dared to represent Hillary Clinton and were involved in litigation Trump politically opposed—specifically, voting rights cases that didn’t align with his agenda. That is a textbook abuse of power. The executive order went after the firm’s ability to maintain security clearances, access federal officials, and continue working with government contractors—essentially, an attempt to destroy their ability to function in the legal ecosystem simply because of who they represented.
It was political payback. Petty. Dangerous. And, as Judge Howell confirmed, absurdly and transparently unconstitutional.
This should have triggered an immediate, thunderous response from the legal community. Every firm that believes in the adversarial system—where lawyers are ethically bound to represent clients, regardless of popularity—should have rallied around Perkins Coie. But that’s not what happened. For the most part, Big Law firms remained silent, issuing carefully worded statements (if they said anything at all), while quietly hoping the storm would pass without affecting their own government work or bottom line.
By not pushing back hard against this executive overreach, the country’s most powerful firms set a chilling precedent.
This isn’t about defending one law firm. It’s about defending the principle that no lawyer—regardless of who they represent—should be punished by the state for doing their job.
And this is where Big Law failed itself.
Because by not pushing back hard against this executive overreach, the country’s most powerful firms set a chilling precedent: that the president can use the machinery of the federal government to retaliate against lawyers and firms for taking politically inconvenient cases—and that the legal industry will look the other way.
Imagine what this means going forward. If this tactic had succeeded, it would have opened the door for future administrations—of either party—to blacklist, threaten, or cripple law firms that take up causes they disagree with. Today it’s voting rights. Tomorrow, it could be environmental groups. Or whistleblowers. Or gun rights activists. Or immigrant families. The danger isn’t on which side of the political spectrum you’re on—the danger is in allowing any president to believe they can silence opposing voices by going after the lawyers who give them standing in court.
This strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a lawyer in a democracy.
Judge Howell’s opinion quoted Shakespeare’s “Let’s kill all the lawyers”—a line often misunderstood, but here used with bitter irony. Trump didn’t literally call for violence, but he tried to do something just as corrosive: send a signal that lawyers who challenge him will suffer professionally in a permanent and irrevocable way. The implication was unmistakable: if you’re not with me, you’re expendable. That’s not just bullying. That’s authoritarian.
Howell’s ruling, thankfully, was a powerful affirmation that our Constitution still has teeth. She rightly concluded that the order violated the First Amendment by punishing protected speech. That it trampled the Fifth by depriving people of due process. That it shredded the Sixth by interfering with a client’s right to choose their counsel. And that it was, in its conception and execution, an egregious abuse of executive power.
But let’s not pretend that this victory alone rights the ship. The damage is already done—not just to Perkins Coie, but to Big Law as a group. Because if law firms only find their backbone after the judiciary steps in, then they’ve already abdicated their role. The legal community is supposed to be the first line of defense against executive overreach. Not the last.
What this moment required was courage. Not just from judges, but from lawyers—from firms with influence and prestige who should have said, “This is unacceptable.” It required amicus briefs, op-eds, press conferences, and collective action. It required law firms putting their values above their federal contracts. It required the profession to put its collective foot down and say: “This crosses a line. We stand with any lawyer targeted for doing their job.”
Instead, most firms quietly calculated the risk and decided it wasn’t worth it. That calculation may have been good business, but it was terrible citizenship. And worse, it sent a message to future presidents that the legal profession can be intimidated. That if you target one firm, the rest will stay silent.
That should terrify every lawyer in America.
Because if lawyers can be silenced, so can the clients they represent. And if representation becomes a political liability, then justice becomes a partisan game.
So what then—when this case climbs the appellate ladder, and the DC Circuit or even the Supreme Court reverses Judge Howell’s ruling, as is entirely possible given the current makeup of the judiciary?
What will we say about the role of the legal profession in standing up to raw power—not after the fact, not once it’s safe, but in the moment when it matters most? If the courts fail to uphold these constitutional protections, then it falls even more squarely on lawyers and law firms to defend the line between representation and retribution.
That means refusing to fold, refusing to remain silent, and refusing to normalize the idea that political loyalty is a prerequisite for legal legitimacy. Howell’s ruling may be overturned, but the precedent set by the legal profession’s inaction will remain—and that should haunt everyone who works in Big Law and still believes in the rule of law.
