U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration, which sued all 15 of Maryland’s federal judges Tuesday.
The case revolved around centered on Maryland Chief District Judge George Russell III’s order to put a two-day waiting period on the deportation of migrants, in part to avoid errors.
The Trump administration sued the judges for their order, in a move that many legal experts called an unprecedented challenge to federal judicial authority.
Cullen’s opinion dismissing the case stated that suing judges was not the correct avenue to challenge judicial orders.
“Much as the executive fights the characterization, a lawsuit by the executive branch of government against the judicial branch for the exercise of judicial power is not ordinary,” Cullen wrote.
He also called back to the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant living in Maryland who is in the United States legally by court order, but was imprisoned and deported by the Trump administration, in his opinion.
“As Judge [Harvie] Wilkinson aptly noted in a case posing a similar—though less direct—clash: ‘A reciprocal respect for the roles of the Executive and the Judiciary may be too much to hope for in this most fraught and polarized of times, but it remains the only way that our system of constitutional governance can ever hope to work,’” Cullen wrote.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Virginia said the decision shows why the Department of Justice should not have pursued the case.
“That court does not referee disputes among the three branches, and he persuasively explains how the DOJ should have proceeded,” Tobias said. “The DOJ will now appeal to the Fourth Circuit, which will probably affirm the well-reasoned decision of the district judge. The DOJ is then likely to appeal to SCOTUS, which may or might not decide to hear the case.”
Cullen serves on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, but was moved to Maryland for the case since all of Maryland’s judges were named in the suit.
