DOJ revokes job offers to young lawyers in elite honors program By Mark Smith, LL.M., Certified Paralegal & Legal Documents Preparer February 5, 2025

The Justice Department has abruptly revoked recent job offers from the Attorney General’s Honors Program—a prestigious and competitive opportunity for top law school graduates to work in entry-level positions across the department. The Trump administration’s cancellation of the program was confirmed by multiple people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. It is one of several unusual decisions made at the Justice Department since President Donald Trump took office Monday, including the reassignment of senior officials in multiple divisions; a directive that prosecutors consider criminal charges against local officials who don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts; a freeze on new or uncharged civil rights cases; and a review of police-reform agreements negotiated with localities in recent months. Those who know the honors program said the cancellation is unprecedented and has the potential to demolish one of the Justice Department’s main recruiting efforts to get the nation’s top law school graduates into the public sector. The program has operated for more than 60 years, hiring young lawyers through Democratic and Republican administrations. The decision was announced via short emails from the Justice Department on Wednesday afternoon, which cited a government-wide hiring freeze announced Monday, shortly after Trump was inaugurated. “Pursuant to the hiring freeze announced Jan. 20, 2025, your job offer has been revoked,” said the email, multiple copies of which were obtained by The Washington Post. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The number of lawyers given offers through the program varies, but people familiar with it said upward of 100 can be hired each year. The most recent hires had staggered start dates throughout the second half of this year in divisions including antitrust, national security, criminal and more, the people familiar with the situation said. They were interviewed for the positions toward the end of the Biden administration and accepted their positions after the election knowing that Trump would be president, the people said. Lawyers are hired for two years, with the aim of placing them in permanent career-track jobs after that. People familiar with the program said it was a key tool in replacing top legal talent lost through the usual attrition process. Current students and graduates of Harvard, Duke, Georgetown, Berkeley, Stanford and the University of Virginia law schools are among those affected. Deans at those schools who oversee public-interest law programs are reeling from the news and scrambling to help their students and graduates, according to people familiar with the matter. “Since 1953, the Attorney General’s Honors Program has been recognized as the nation’s premier entry-level federal attorney recruitment program,” the Justice Department website states. “The Honors Program attracts candidates from hundreds of law schools across the country representing a broad cross-section of experiences and interests.” In issuing the hiring freeze Monday, Trump ordered vacant positions to remain unfilled and said no new positions would be created. Hiring fellowship programs, such as the honors program, have typically been exempt from such freezes, according to federal guidelines.

Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump's 'blatantly unconstitutional' birthright citizenship order By Mark Smith, LL.M., CLDP February 5, 2025 2:40 pm

A federal judge on Thursday issued a two-week restraining order blocking the Trump administration from moving forward on an effort to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreign visitors, calling the directive “blatantly unconstitutional.” U.S. District Court John C. Coughenour’s decision, which applies nationwide, came in response to a lawsuit from a coalition of states—Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon—that argued that the White House executive order, which President Donald Trump signed Monday, violates the 14th Amendment. Coughenour was skeptical throughout the brief hearing before issuing his ruling from the bench, telling Justice Department lawyers that the executive order “boggles the mind,” according to the Associated Press. It was not immediately clear when Coughenour, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, would hold another hearing in the case. “Trump’s birthright citizenship EO is halted for now,” Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown said in a social media post on X. “Today a judge granted our temporary restraining order nationwide, saying he had not seen an order this blatantly unconstitutional in 40 years on the bench. We’ll continue fighting for Washingtonians’ freedoms.” The case is one of several lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive order, which the president said would take effect in mid-February. Another coalition of 18 states and Washington, D.C., filed a similar lawsuit in Massachusetts, and at least three different civil rights groups are pursuing their own legal challenges. Trump’s executive order stipulates that his administration will no longer recognize automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents who are in the country without authorization, provided that neither parent is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. It would also bar automatic citizenship for children born to noncitizen parents who are in the country on temporary work, student or tourist visas. Birthright citizenship was established by the 14th Amendment and passed by Congress in 1868, and includes a clause reading: “All people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Trump aides said the executive order stipulates that the administration has authority to ban birthright citizenship because unauthorized immigrants are in the country illegally and, therefore, are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States government. In the lawsuit filed in federal court in the Western District of Washington, attorneys for the four states said the order violates the Constitution and argued that thousands of newborns in their jurisdictions would be harmed each year. Across the country, the filing states, an estimated 153,000 children are born to two undocumented parents annually. The attorneys argued that their states would be required to undertake “disruptive” new operational and administrative burdens to help enforce the new policy and would lose revenue from the federal government to help provide Medicaid and other public benefits for children who are impacted. “The individuals who are stripped of their United States citizenship will be rendered undocumented, subject to removal or detention, and many will be stateless—that is, citizens of no country at all,” the filing states, adding that they “will be placed into lifelong positions of instability and insecurity as part of a new underclass in the United States.” The Trump administration responded in a court filing late Wednesday that the states lack legal standing to sue the federal government. Justice Department attorneys also argued that the executive order does not require state governments to pay for public benefits for the children who are denied citizenship or undertake new administrative procedures. “These asserted harms are greatly outweighed by the harm to the government and public interest that would result from the extraordinary relief Plaintiffs request,” according to the administration’s response to the lawsuit. “As the Supreme Court has recognized, Executive officials must have ‘broad discretion’ to manage the immigration system.”