Judge Tosses Trump Admin Lawsuit Against Maryland’s 15 Federal Judges

A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against all 15 federal judges in Maryland, rejecting the Justice Department’s attempt to rein in the court’s authority in fast-moving immigration disputes.

The decision framed the case as a serious constitutional clash between the executive branch and the judiciary, with Judge Thomas Cullen warning that the Justice Department could not turn the dispute into a “constitutional free-for-all.”

Cullen, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump during his first term and was brought in from another district to oversee the Maryland case, ruled that the federal government lacked standing to sue and that judges are protected by judicial immunity from lawsuits filed by the executive branch.

“Any fair reading of the legal authorities cited by Defendants leads to the ineluctable conclusion that this court has no alternative but to dismiss. To hold otherwise would run counter to overwhelming precedent, depart from longstanding constitutional tradition, and offend the rule of law,” Cullen wrote in the 39-page decision.

The Justice Department had sued every federal judge on the lower-level U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland after the court’s chief judge adopted a rule temporarily blocking the Trump administration from removing certain immigration detainees from the United States once they had filed legal challenges to their deportation.

The rule was designed to automatically pause removals for a limited period while courts reviewed emergency filings from detainees seeking relief.

For the Trump administration, the order represented another example of the judiciary interfering with the executive branch’s constitutional authority to enforce immigration law. For the judges defending the rule, it was a narrow procedural safeguard meant to preserve habeas review before a detainee could be removed from the country.

The legal fight quickly escalated into a broader separation-of-powers dispute.

A group of nearly a dozen retired federal judges, appointed by presidents from both parties, filed an amicus brief urging an appeals court in Virginia to reject the Trump administration’s effort to revive the case. The judges were represented by Williams & Connolly.

They argued the lawsuit was unprecedented and posed a direct threat to the independence of the judiciary.

The retired judges described the case as an “extraordinary, unprecedented broadside” against the courts and warned that allowing the executive branch to sue an entire district court over a standing order would endanger core judicial functions.

They also argued that standing orders are routine tools used by courts to manage dockets and emergency filings, and that suing an entire bench over such an order had no historical foundation.

The case, United States v. Russell, 4th Cir. No. 25-2004, underscores the growing tension between the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda and the federal courts’ role in reviewing habeas corpus claims.

Maryland’s federal judges defended the order as a limited protection for due process, not a sweeping prohibition on deportations.

Still, the lawsuit highlighted a deeper constitutional question: how far can the executive branch go when it believes the judiciary is obstructing lawful immigration enforcement?

So far, the courts have been skeptical of the Justice Department’s strategy. Cullen’s ruling makes clear that even in high-stakes immigration cases, the executive branch cannot simply sue judges because it disagrees with how a court manages its docket.

The Fourth Circuit’s eventual handling of the dispute could shape the limits of future lawsuits aimed directly at courts and judges themselves.

For conservatives, the case presents a complicated legal battle. President Trump’s administration has a clear mandate to enforce immigration law and restore order at the border. But the ruling also reflects a longstanding constitutional principle that judges cannot be personally dragged into lawsuits by the executive branch over their official judicial actions.

The fight is not over immigration alone. It is about where executive power ends, where judicial review begins, and how the constitutional system handles collisions between the two.