The Justice Department sued all 15 federal district court judges in Maryland on Tuesday over an order that pauses any deportations under legal challenge in the state for 48 hours. Legal experts described the move as an unprecedented attack on judicial independence, while government lawyers said it was necessary to preserve President Donald Trump’s constitutional authority over immigration.
Longtime court watchers said they could not recall another instance in which the Justice Department, which usually represents members of the judicial branch in court, sued the entire roster of judges in a district.
Courts across the country have slowed or stopped many of the president’s moves this year as they weigh legal challenges to his agenda, including plans for mass deportations and dismissing federal workers. Many of those challenges have played out in Maryland’s federal courthouses.
Administration officials have responded to adverse rulings by attacking judges — who have been nominated by presidents of both parties, including Trump — or by questioning the federal courts’ powers to second-guess executive branch decisions. But the legal complaint filed by lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil division marks an escalation from rhetorical attacks to a direct challenge of the courts’ authority, experts said.
“It is reckless and irresponsible and yet another direct frontal assault on the federal courts of this country,” said retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit from 1991 to 2006.
The complaint alleges that Chief Judge George L. Russell III of the U.S. District Court in Maryland issued an “unlawful, antidemocratic” order in May that grants a two-day stay of deportation to any detainee in immigration custody who files a petition for habeas corpus, which is a lawsuit alleging wrongful detention.
“The recent influx of habeas petitions concerning alien detainees … that have been filed after normal court hours and on weekends and holidays has created scheduling difficulties and resulted in hurried and frustrating hearings in that obtaining clear and concrete information about the location and status of the petitioners is elusive,” Russell wrote in the standing order, which applies not only to cases on his docket but also those before the 14 other district judges who sit in Maryland.
As the legal underpinnings of his order, which has been in place since May 21, Russell cited a federal statute, the All Writs Act, and a Supreme Court precedent from 1966 that gives judges “limited judicial power to preserve the court’s jurisdiction” by using injunctions to block government actions until the court can review them.
The Justice Department argued that under other Supreme Court precedents, judges must rule on each case individually, not in blanket fashion. Russell’s standing order does “precisely what the Supreme Court has forbidden,” according to the 22-page legal complaint filed Tuesday.
“A sense of frustration and a desire for greater convenience do not give Defendants license to flout the law,” Justice Department attorneys wrote. “Nor does their status within the judicial branch.”
A spokesman for Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on X Wednesday, “This is just the latest action by @AGPamBondi’s DOJ to rein in unlawful judicial overreach.” Justice Department officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit drew quick condemnation from Democrats, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
“After blatantly violating judicial orders, and directing personal attacks on individual judges, the White House is turning our Constitution on its head by suing judges themselves,” Moore said in a statement Wednesday. “Make no mistake: this unprecedented action is a transparent effort to intimidate judges and usurp the power of the courts.”
Luttig said the Trump administration created the chaotic circumstances that led Russell to put the standing order in place by rushing to deport waves of migrants without hearings. The Supreme Court ruled in April that one such group of deportees was “entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, described the Justice Department lawsuit as an extraordinary escalation in the ongoing battle Trump is waging with the courts. But he added that government lawyers also made some legally sound points. Courts are required to provide advance notice and a period to collect feedback on any significant changes to their rules, “and one claim is that they didn’t follow those rules,” Tobias said.
But he said the Maryland judges were trying to find a way to resolve cases fairly amid a breakneck schedule of deportations. “I think they’re trying to claw back their jurisdiction,” Tobias said. “There’s a performative aspect to all this stuff. It’s mind-boggling. … The American people don’t need to be manipulated, and certainly the federal courts don’t need that.”
The Maryland judges have ruled on a range of major cases this year, putting key Trump initiatives on hold while finding various violations of the law in the administration’s barrage of executive orders and agency moves on immigration, firing federal workers, stopping medical care for transgender youths and other issues.
Judge Paula Xinis presided over the
case of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man whom White House officials delayed returning to the U.S. after he was wrongfully removed to El Salvador earlier this year. Judge James K. Bredar is handling a lawsuit filed by Democratic attorneys general alleging the Trump administration broke the law when it
terminated probationary federal employees without warning local government officials in impacted states. Judge Stephanie Gallagher has been managing a case
involving the rights of unaccompanied minors who were sent to El Salvador when Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act against alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Judge Brendan A. Hurson ruled that Trump’s executive orders on gender were
illegally denying medical care to transgender youths.
Unlike other judicial districts with a mix of Democratic and Republican nominees serving on the bench, 13 of the 15 federal judges sitting in Maryland were nominated by presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Joe Biden, all Democrats. Two judges were nominated by Republicans, one by Trump and the other by President George W. Bush.
Representatives for Russell and the other 14 judges declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday, as did a spokesperson for the Judicial Conference of the United States, which may have to decide who would represent the judges named as defendants.
In legal filings, Justice Department attorneys requested that the 4th Circuit appeals court randomly select a judge from another district to hear the lawsuit in Maryland. All the judges in Maryland would have a conflict of interest, they argued, because they were named defendants in the case. Luttig, a former 4th Circuit judge who was nominated by Republican President George H.W. Bush, called that a “cynical” ploy the court should reject.
Luttig, who testified in 2022 to the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that Trump and his supporters presented a “clear and present danger to U.S. democracy,” described Tuesday’s filings in similar terms.
“The president and his attorney general will continue their ruthless attack on the federal Judiciary and the Rule of Law until the Supreme Court of the United States at least attempts to stop them, because they are winning their war,” Luttig said. “Until now, the Supreme Court has acquiesced in the president’s war, while the devastating toll on the Federal Courts and the Rule of Law has mounted by the day.”
