A federal judge tossed on Tuesday the Trump administration’s “unprecedented” lawsuit against the entire Maryland district court.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued all of Maryland’s federal district judges in June over a standing order that automatically placed a two-day hold on deportations for any illegal migrants who challenged their detention.
Judge Thomas Cullen, a Trump appointee, concluded his only choice was to dismiss the case, finding it “a nonjusticiable dispute between two co-equal branches of government.”
“To hold otherwise would run counter to overwhelming precedent, depart from longstanding constitutional tradition, and offend the rule of law,” he wrote.
“All of this isn’t to say that the Executive is without any recourse; far from it,” he continued. “If the Executive truly believes that Defendants’ standing orders violate the law, it should avail itself of the tried-and-true recourse available to all federal litigants: It should appeal.”
Cullen, a federal judge in the Western District of Virginia, took the case because the entire bench in the District of Maryland was named in the lawsuit and forced to recuse.
He wrote these are “not normal times” for the interplay between the executive and judiciary, issuing pointed warnings to the Trump administration in the footnotes.
“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, pointing to administration officials who have described judges using like “left-wing” and “rogue.”
If the lawsuit were to survive a motion to dismiss, discovery demands could involve depositions and document productions from top administration officials and judges that would “compound this constitutional standoff into epic proportions,” he wrote.
“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.
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