Judge Dismisses Trump Administration Suit Against Federal Bench in Maryland
The judge used the ruling to take President Trump and some of his top aides to task for having repeatedly attacked other judges who have dared to rule against the White House.
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Judge Thomas T. Cullen criticized the Trump administration’s assaults on the judiciary.Credit...Steve Helber/Associated Press
By Alan Feuer
Aug. 26, 2025, 12:00 p.m. ET
A federal judge on Tuesday threw out an extraordinary lawsuit that the Trump administration had filed against the entire federal bench in Maryland, challenging a standing order intended to briefly slow down the government’s ability to deport undocumented immigrants.
In a scathing 39-page ruling, the judge, Thomas T. Cullen, called the suit “novel and potentially calamitous,” saying that the administration had simpler — and clearly more legal — ways to contest the standing order aside from bringing a suit against all 15 federal judges who sit in Maryland.
Judge Cullen, who was appointed by President Trump, went out of his way to describe the complaint as extremely unusual, offering his own role in the case as a prime example of its unorthodox nature. Because the suit was filed against the state’s entire federal bench, all of the district judges there were forced to recuse themselves and Judge Cullen had to be brought in from his home courthouse in Roanoke, Va., to preside over the case.
Moreover, he used the ruling to take Mr. Trump and some of his top aides to task for having repeatedly attacked other judges who have dared to rule against the White House in a flurry of cases challenging aspects of its political agenda.
“Over the past several months, principal officers of the executive (and their spokespersons) have described federal district judges across the country as ‘left-wing,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘activists,’ ‘radical,’ ‘politically minded,’ ‘rogue,’ ‘unhinged,’ ‘outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional, [c]rooked,’ and worse,” Judge Cullen wrote.
“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,” he concluded.
Judge Cullen’s plaintive criticism of the Trump administration’s assaults on the judiciary was in many ways reminiscent of a ruling issued in April by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit — for which he once served as a clerk — in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant from Maryland who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador.
The ruling was written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, an icon of the conservative legal movement, who expressed deep concerns about the executive and judicial branches “grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both.”
“We yet cling to the hope,” Judge Wilkinson wrote, “that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the executive branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.”
The case in front of Judge Cullen began in June when the Trump administration filed suit challenging a standing order put in place the month before. The order said that immigrants who sought to contest their removal from the country in the Maryland federal courts by filing what is known as a habeas petition would automatically be granted a two-day reprieve from being expelled.
The order was intended to give judges time to sort through the complicated legal issues in a flurry of fast-paced cases being filed in Maryland contesting the White House’s aggressive deportation policies. The most prominent of those was a lawsuit brought in March by Mr. Abrego Garcia.
Judge Cullen pointed out in his ruling that the White House took “umbrage” with the standing order because Trump officials believed it hindered their ability “to police immigration matters and enforce the nation’s immigration laws.”
He admitted that such arguments might have gotten “traction” if the administration had made them “in the proper forum.” Trump officials, he said, could have appealed any individual cases where the standing order had actually slowed down an immigrant’s removal or could have contested the underlying validity of the blanket rule in front of the Judicial Council of the Fourth Circuit, which has the authority to rescind or modify such measures.
But instead, Judge Cullen maintained, the administration “chose a different, and more confrontational, path.”
“The executive decided to sue,” he wrote, “and in a big way.”
In dismissing the lawsuit, Judge Cullen agreed with almost of all the arguments put forward at a hearing two weeks ago by a lawyer for the judges, Paul Clement, a former solicitor general who has argued more than 100 cases in front of the Supreme Court.
The judge found that the defendants, as federal jurists, were immune from being sued and that the administration’s suit essentially violated the separation of powers laid out in the Constitution by having the executive branch attempt legal action against the judicial branch.
“Regrettably, this lawsuit effectively pits two of those branches against one another,” Judge Cullen wrote. “But it is important to remember that, at bottom, all branches — and the public officials who serve in them — share the same core sovereign interest: to support and defend the Constitution.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
See more on: U.S. Politics, Paul D Clement, Donald Trump
Our Coverage of U.S. Immigration- Detained Again:Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador and then brought back to face criminal charges, was detained again after the Trump administration indicated that it planned to re-deport him to Uganda.
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