Jenner & Block Aids Harvard While Fighting Trump Executive Order

Lawyers from the Trump-targeted firm Jenner & Block have joined the Harvard University legal team facing down the administration over the enrollment of international students.

The Jenner lawyers include Ishan Bhabha, who often represents higher education clients and took over this year as co-managing partner, and Ian Heath Gershengorn, who was acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama. They joined a team on the international student case that had previously been representing Harvard in a separate lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to block federal funds for the university.

The team includes Bill Burck, co-managing partner of Quinn Emanuel, who was fired by the Trump Organization as outside ethics counsel after he aided the earlier Harvard suit, and Robert Hur, a King & Spalding partner who in his previous job as a US special counsel questioned President Joe Biden’s mental acuity during an investigation into the mishandling of classified documents.

Harvard’s legal team won a victory Friday when US District Judge Allison Burroughs temporarily blocked the Trump administration from preventing the school’s enrollment of international students. Harvard earlier Friday had filed a lawsuit asking the federal court in Massachusetts to stop the government from blocking the enrollment of the students.

The Harvard case presents a new battle front for Jenner & Block to oppose President Donald Trump. The firm on March 28 sued the White House to overturn an executive order that stripped security clearances, barred lawyers from federal buildings, and threatened government contracts. Trump, in issuing the order three days earlier, cited the firm’s past employment of Andrew Weissmann, who served on Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian ties to the 2016 election.

A federal court in Washington has already frozen parts of the order—not including the security clearances provision—and is set to rule on a request for a permanent injunction scrapping the entire directive. Jenner is also facing Trump by representing a group of individuals in a suit over an executive order halting funding for gender-affirming care for transgender people.

Jenner & Block didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Harvard last month sued the administration to reclaim $2.2 billion in federal funds the Trump administration froze as part of a battle over diversity initiatives and anti-semitism efforts.

Lawyers from Lehotsky Keller Cohn are also working for Harvard on both of the cases against Trump. The team includes two of the firm’s name partners, Steven Lehotsky, who previously worked at WilmerHale, and Scott Keller, formerly of Baker Botts.

The case is President and Fellows of Harvard College v. Department of Homeland Security, D. Mass., 1:25-cv-11472-ADB, 5/23/25