Trump’s Not-So-Subtle Purpose in Fighting Big Law Firms

The president has attacked law firms for “frivolous” litigation. But his actions could undermine the basic right of Americans to sue their government.

It is a cornerstone of American democracy, enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution: People have the right to challenge the actions of their leaders. Countless citizens, companies and others have exercised that right by filing lawsuits against the U.S. government.

This has been happening for more than 200 years. But the barrage of at least 150 lawsuits against the second Trump administration, challenging many of its policies and personnel decisions, is perhaps unmatched in U.S. history. And in dozens of cases, judges have ordered the administration to pause or reverse actions at the heart of President Trump’s agenda.

Mr. Trump and his administration’s lawyers are fighting in court, but they are also pursuing a much more ambitious and consequential goal: deterring lawyers from suing his administration in the first place.

In a series of recent executive orders, Mr. Trump has restricted the ability of some major law firms, including those that employed his perceived political enemies, to interact with the federal government. Among the president’s stated rationales was that some of the work done by the firms gets in the way of his administration’s immigration and other policies.

Mr. Trump went even further in a memo this month. Claiming that many firms have filed abusive lawsuits, he directed the attorney general “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States.”

Those adjectives are fuzzy. But the threats are clear. Giant law firms tend to have lucrative businesses helping corporate clients get their way with the federal government, whether it is winning contracts or defusing investigations or minimizing the impact of regulations. Being penalized by the government would be bad for business.