The law firm Perkins Coie on Tuesday sued the Trump administration to try to stop an executive order President Trump signed last week that essentially crippled the firm’s ability to represent its clients.
The suit, filed in federal court in Washington, was brought by Williams & Connolly, the elite Washington law firm that specializes in suing the federal government. A hearing in the matter has been set for Wednesday.
There had been deep concerns in the legal community that firms would want to avoid representing Perkins Coie, fearing retribution from Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump’s executive order, signed last Thursday, barred Perkins Coie’s lawyers from entering federal buildings and discouraged federal officials from interacting with the firm’s lawyers. Cutting off such communication would make it all but impossible for the firm to advocate for its clients.
In the suit filed on Tuesday, Perkins Coie argues the executive order is illegal because the president does not have the power he claims to have and the order violates the Constitution’s separation of powers as well as the First and Fifth Amendments.
Perkins Coie said that the implications for the executive order Mr. Trump signed had significance beyond one law firm, as it was “an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice.”
“Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the president perceives as adverse to the views of his administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients,” the suit said.
The suit added: “Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied.”
The firm stressed that political law accounted for a tiny fraction of its business, which focuses on representing major corporate clients that interact with the federal government on several fronts. The order has already hurt that business, resulting in “significant” lost revenue and harm to clients, it claimed in the complaint.
Since Mr. Trump signed the order, “government employees have already twice indicated that Perkins Coie attorneys should not, or could not, attend scheduled meetings,” lawyers wrote, adding that “several clients have already terminated, or have communicated that they are considering terminating, their legal engagements with Perkins Coie.”
The case was assigned to Judge Beryl Howell of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, who has handled some of the most contentious litigation involving Mr. Trump going back to his first term in office. She oversaw the grand jury investigation in a special counsel inquiry of his 2016 campaign’s ties with Russia as well as a grand jury investigation into the two cases brought against him by the special counsel Jack Smith. In both of those matters, Judge Howell granted prosecutors leeway in building their cases against Mr. Trump.
More recently, Judge Howell issued an order ruling that Mr. Trump did not have the authority to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board at will. In it, she attacked his view of himself as a monarch.
“A president who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role,” she wrote.
Judge Howell set a hearing for Wednesday afternoon to consider Perkins Coie’s request for an order temporarily restraining Mr. Trump’s executive order.
Alan Feuer and Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting.
