Milbank’s Katyal, Wilson Sonsini’s McConnell Fight Trump Tariffs

Neal Katyal and his firm Milbank, which promised free legal services for President Donald Trump’s causes, has joined a court fight against the president’s tariffs.

Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama, and Michael McConnell, a former judge appointed by President George W. Bush to the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit now with Wilson Sonsini, signed on as co-counsel in a suit against the so-called Liberation Day tariffs, the Liberty Justice Center said Wednesday.

“These presidential actions fall on the wrong side of the line,” Katyal said in a statement. “I look forward to vindicating our Founders’ view of the separation of powers, and to restoring the primacy of Congress over such major questions.”

The Big Law additions to the suit against Trump are notable in an environment where firms have been reeling back their pro bono work for causes the president opposes. Milbank and eight other Big Law firms struck deals with Trump earlier this year for free legal services in order to avoid punitive executive orders.

The Liberty Justice Center is a libertarian-leaning nonprofit public-interest group known for winning a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2018 that made it unconstitutional for public sector unions to charge non-union workers bargaining fees.

The group’s April 14 lawsuit argues US trade deficits were “neither an emergency nor an unusual or extraordinary threat” and that even if they were, the president can’t legally impose across-the-board tariffs.

Katyal, who has argued more than 50 cases before the Supreme Court, more than any minority litigator in history, joined Milbank in February. Two months later, the firm struck a deal with Trump to spend $100 million on initiatives backed by the firm and the president.

Katyal joined Milbank after a stint at Hogan Lovell’s appellate practice. He joined a lawsuit in February that was also adversarial to Trump—it challenged the president’s effort to remove Merit Systems Protection Board chair Cathy Harris.

McConnell joined Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in 2019 as senior of counsel. Before that he was of counsel at Kirkland & Ellis. He’s also director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, which he joined after leaving the bench in 2009.

“More than any other case challenging executive action, the tariff cases combine fundamental principles of structural constitutional law with immense consequences for the economy,” McConnell said in a statement. “It is an honor for me and my colleagues at Wilson Sonsini to join in this effort.”

The case is V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, Fed. Cir., No. 25-01812, 5/28/25.