A judge on Wednesday angrily rejected the Justice Department’s efforts to remove her from considering the law firm Perkins Coie’s request to stop a Trump order that could effectively cripple the firm’s ability to represent its clients.
In a blistering decision, the judge, Beryl A. Howell, said that the attempt to kick her off the case threatened to “impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system.” It also signaled an effort to blame any losses the department might ultimately face in the case on her work as a judge rather than on the weakness of its own legal arguments, she added.
“Every litigating party deserves a fair and impartial hearing to determine both what the material facts are and how the law best applies to those facts,” wrote Judge Howell, who presides in federal court in Washington. “That fundamental promise, however, does not entitle any party — not even those with the power and prestige of the president of the United States or a federal agency — to demand adherence to their own version of the facts and preferred legal outcome.”
When Perkins Coie sued the administration on March 11, it argued that Mr. Trump’s executive order stripping its lawyers of security clearances and barring them from entering federal buildings was unconstitutional.
The order targeting Perkins Coie was only one part of a wider effort by the administration to go after white-shoe law firms that it perceives as enemies. Mr. Trump has also issued similar executive orders against the firms Paul Weiss, Covington and Burling, and Jenner and Block.
Last week, in a motion that cited several cases Judge Howell had handled, lawyers for the Justice Department accused her of being unfit to preside over the Perkins Coie case because, they claimed, she had “repeatedly demonstrated partiality against and animus towards the president.”
The move to disqualify Judge Howell was emblematic of the administration’s broader attacks on the federal judiciary, which in recent weeks has pushed back time and again against Mr. Trump’s repeated efforts to expand his own powers through a flurry of executive actions.
It came the same week that the department sought to remove one of her colleagues in Federal District Court in Washington, James E. Boasberg, from a separate case involving Mr. Trump’s attempts to use a wartime statute to deport scores of Venezuelan immigrants.
The administration and its allies have also called for judges who have ruled against Mr. Trump to be impeached, prompting a rare public rebuke this month from Chief Justice John J. Roberts Jr.
In rejecting the disqualification motion, Judge Howell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, offered a defense of her decisions regarding Mr. Trump, noting that she had decided in favor of the administration in some cases where the facts required doing so.
She also dismissed as “innuendo” the notion that she was biased against the president for having ruled against him in prior cases related to grand jury investigations. Those inquiries led to him being charged by the former special counsel, Jack Smith, with trying to overturn the 2020 election and with illegally holding on to classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
Judge Howell also rejected the idea that she had been unfair to Mr. Trump when she pushed back on his sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
She sought to turn the tables on the administration, accusing it of blaming her for having done her job.
“Though this adage is commonplace, and the tactic overused, it is called to mind by defendants’ pending motion to disqualify this court,” she wrote. “‘When you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger.’”
