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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, left, and Attorney General Pam Bondi listen as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Sept. 15, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
After launching an ambitious lawsuit against an entire district court and its judges, only to face defeat, the Trump administration quickly shifted to appeal. However, when 2026 arrived, the Department of Justice (DOJ) attempted to retreat while still asserting victory. The appeals court has now put a stop to this maneuver.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a succinct order on Tuesday rejecting the DOJ’s motion to dismiss its appeal on grounds of mootness and its request to overturn its previous court loss.
“The case is not moot,” declared the 4th Circuit’s order, reinstating the case’s briefing schedule rather than complying with the DOJ’s request.
During the summer, the DOJ, alongside the Department of Homeland Security, took the extraordinary step of suing the entire U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. This was in response to the court’s automatic two-day stays in habeas corpus cases, which the government argued was indicative of “judicial overreach.” They claimed Chief U.S. District Judge George Russell III’s “standing orders” were obstructing President Donald Trump’s executive authority and his 2024 mandate to expedite deportations.
In August, these assertions met a significant setback when U.S. District Judge Thomas T. Cullen, appointed by Trump, dismantled the lawsuit he described as “novel and potentially calamitous.” He further admonished Trump administration officials for labeling judiciary members as “rogue” and “activists.”
Cullen, after tipping his hand during a hearing, ultimately opted to ratchet down the tensions between the executive and judicial branches and threw out the case he called a “constitutional free-for-all.”
“Dismissal of the Executive’s suit is appropriate because it has not pointed to a cause of action that permits this court to entertain a lawsuit between two coordinate branches of government, and this court will not be the first to create one,” he wrote, noting that the “irreconcilable defects” of the suit “mandate dismissal” — without even reaching the merits of whether court-created two-day administrative stays “are a proper exercise of judicial power.”
The DOJ promptly filed a notice of appeal, appearing to commit to seeing a lawsuit against 15 federal judges and a court to its end.
In January, that stance changed. The DOJ asserted that the case was moot because the district court modified the challenged standing orders, meaning the orders the government sued over “are no longer in effect.”
The Trump administration claimed that in a situation like this one, it’s the “customary practice” of the 4th Circuit to then vacate the district court’s opinion, wiping the loss away.
Unsurprisingly, the judges’ lawyers were not interested in that outcome.
Former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote that his clients didn’t “object to dismissal of this appeal” but that Cullen’s word on the matter should stand because the “Executive has expressly reserved the right to sue all over again.”
“Defendants have no interest in prolonging this litigation, which never should have been brought. But while the Executive has decided to dismiss this appeal in light of the issuance of the Second Amended Standing Order, it has expressly reserved the right to challenge that order facially via affirmative litigation (rather than as-applied in an individual case)—even though any such effort would plainly be barred several times over by the decision below,” the judges’ attorneys countered. “The parties’ dispute accordingly remains very much live.”
Clement said the DOJ shouldn’t be rewarded for abandoning its appeal, as that would “effectively give the Executive the relief it would obtain if it prevailed[.]”
“The Executive’s actions amount to ‘voluntarily abandon[ing appellate] review’ in hopes of ’employ[ing] the secondary remedy of vacatur as a refined form of collateral attack on the judgment,’” a filing said.
On Tuesday, the 4th Circuit rejected the DOJ, ensuring its judges will hear more from the Trump administration. The court set March 23 as the date to file an opening brief.