Two Significant Court Rulings

Two significant court rulings were made last week that should slow Trump’s destruction of democracy.

Unlawful Use of Alien Enemies Act

On Thursday May 1 US district judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr ruled in a Texas court that the Trump regime’s use of the 1789 Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport people is unlawful. Rodriguez issued a permanent injunction stopping the use of that law to “… detain Venezuelan aliens, transfer them within the United States, or remove them from the country”.

This ruling is significant for several reasons. It’s the first permanent injunction – all the others have been temporary. And it’s the first to rule on the merits of the AEA itself, declaring it unlawful. Other rulings dealt with the lack of due process given to those deported. It is also significant that Rodriguez was appointed by Trump in 2018.

The Act requires that there be a war between the USA and another country or that “any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States.” When Trump invoked the AEA by proclamation on March 15, he claimed that the presence of members of this gang in the United States comprised an invasion.

Rodriguez disagreed with Trump’s interpretation of the Act and pointed out that the United States is not at war with Venezuela, nor has Venezuela attempted or threatened an organized military attack on this country. “For these reasons, the Court concludes that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful.”

The ruling only applies to the southern district of Texas but is an important precedent for other courts to follow. It is expected to be appealed, eventually all the way to the Supreme Court.

Rodriguez also pushed back at the idea argued by DOJ lawyers that the court has no jurisdiction on the president’s use of the AEA because that falls under foreign policy. Rodriguez wrote:

"Allowing the President to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the AEA, and then summarily declare that those conditions exist, would remove all limitations to the Executive Branch's authority under the AEA, and would strip the courts of their traditional role of interpreting Congressional statutes to determine whether a government official has exceeded the statute's scope. The law does not support such a position."

Unconstitutional Executive Order

On Friday May 2 Judge Beryl Howell permanently struck down President Trump’s Executive Order 14230 against the law firm Perkins Coie. This was the follow-up to a temporary restraining order she had granted on March 12 regarding the case.

Howell began her 102 page ruling by writing

“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue … but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’ … Eliminating lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law removes a major impediment to the path to more power.”

“In a cringe-worthy twist on the theatrical phrase ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers,’ 14230 takes the approach of ‘Let’s kill the lawyers I don’t like,’ sending the clear message: lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.”

Howell found that the EO violated the First, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the American Constitution. She rejected completely the DOJ arguments that the EO was necessary for national security (because they were connected with the Steele dossier compiled during the 2016 campaign which revealed Trump’s “discredited” Russian connections). The breadth of the EO which affected every employee of the firm nearly 10 years after the fact, and the separate requirement for private companies with government contracts to disclose ever working with the firm, made it clear that the purpose was not for national security. Instead, Howell wrote, “That is unconstitutional retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple.”

Howell praised the law firms which stood up to Trump’s attacks writing:

“Only when lawyers make the choice to challenge rather than back down when confronted with government action raising non-trivial constitutional issues can a case be brought to court for judicial review of the legal merits, as was done in this case.”

Writing about Howell’s ruling Jennifer Rubin commented:

Howell’s handiwork should also underscore that a great many executive edicts are utterly, obviously ineffective. Some are blatantly unconstitutional; others are beyond the powers of any official (e.g., renaming the Gulf of Mexico). Still others are absurd attempts to contradict statutes (e.g., recasting Veterans Day). Reducing Trump’s autocratic fantasies to writing does not necessarily change the law, let alone the Constitution or objective reality.

Couldn’t have said it better: putting Trump’s dictatorial fantasies in writing doesn’t change the law, the Constitution, or reality.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/01/alien-enemies-act-judge-ruling-texas

https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-blocks-alien-enemies-act-deport-venezuelans-texas/story?id=121364022

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/02/trump-perkins-coie-unconstitutional

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/putting-trumps-threats-in-writing