Transcript of TRO Hearing

Key Excerpts‍

• Regardless of whether the President dislikes the firm's clients, dislikes the litigation positions the law firm takes and vigorous representation of those clients, or dislikes the results Perkins Coie achieves for its clients, issuing an executive order targeting the firm based on the President's dislike of these political positions of the firm's clients or the firm's litigation positions is retaliatory and runs head-on into the wall of First Amendment protections.
• [The White House factsheet’s] language makes perfectly clear that Perkins Coie and its employees were targeted for the firm accepting clients with perceived viewpoints that are unpopular with those in current political power. This targeting is a clear violation of long-established Supreme Court precedent that government actors may not punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.
• Compounding this harm, the order casts a chilling harm of a blizzard -- of blizzard proportions across the entire legal profession. If not enjoined or restrained, the executive order will be understood by lawyers and law firms as an extreme dangerous and unprecedented effort to intimidate them and prevent them from representing clients whom the President does not wish to have access to legal counsel or to the courts or whose advocacy the President wishes to punish.