Jenner Adds Trump Fights While Fending Off Executive Order (1)

Jenner & Block is taking on a new lawsuit for groups challenging the Trump administration as the firm awaits a judge’s ruling in its own case against the president.

Jenner lawyers on Monday filed a federal suit against the National Science Foundation for a group of universities. The schools asked a judge to strike down caps on costs for government-funded research that were recently put in place by the agency, according to a complaint filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

The firm is involved in a handful of cases against President Donald Trump’s administration filed since he returned to the White House, including suits challenging orders limiting gender affirming care and slashing research funding. Jenner also is seeking to permanently block Trump’s executive order targeting the firm for its ties to Andrew Weissmann, a former partner who had a key role in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Jenner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A judge in March temporarily froze large portions of the order, which limited lawyers’ access to government buildings, revoked employees’ security clearances, and instructed federal agencies to terminate contracts for companies that are Jenner clients. Three other firms targeted by Trump secured similar rulings, with Perkins Coie last week winning a permanent injunction last week.

The orders prompted concerns that other firms would avoid taking the Trump administration on in court to stay off the president’s enemies list. Nine other firms pledged nearly $1 billion in free legal services on shared causes with the Trump administration, raising questions about whether their lawyers would be permitted to take cases challenging the president going forward.

Jenner teamed up with Hogan Lovells to represent a group of individuals that sued Trump in February over an executive order limiting gender-affirming care for transgender people. A federal court ultimately ended up granting a preliminary injunction pending a trial on the legality of orders directing the funding freeze, a decision now on appeal.

The firm is working with conservative litigator and former US Solicitor General Paul Clement and lawyers from his litigation boutique Clement & Murphy in the new case filed on Monday. The Association of American Universities is an organization of roughly 69 public and private research universities that includes Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Yale, Northwestern, and others.

Jenner and Clement & Murphy also teamed up earlier this year to challenge the Trump administration’s cuts to medical research funding on behalf of the Association of American Universities and other groups and universities, like Brown University and California Institute of Technology. A federal judge in March blocked the policy by the National Institutes of Health, a decision currently on appeal.

Clement is representing WilmerHale in its battle against the Trump administration after over executive order over its ties to Mueller.

Jenner, WilmerHale, and other law firms challenging the orders against them say Trump is retaliating against them in violation of their First Amendment rights to represent clients of their choosing and constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection.

Perkins Coie, who successfully defeated its own executive order on May 2, has also taken on several cases against the Trump administration beyond its own battle. The firm is working on behalf of two groups representing Harvard professors that in April sued the Trump administration over threats to terminate or withhold up to $9 billion in federal funding after antisemitism probe.