'Impermissible': Trump hit with blistering court response in bid to sue judges

A federal court in Maryland has responded to President Donald Trump's out-of-the-box plan to sue judges who ruled against him — and pulled no punches.

Last month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland instituted a two-day pause in deportations as part of a habeas ruling in favor of immigrants challenging their detention in that state. Trump's Justice Department responded by suing the court and every judge sitting on it.

“Every unlawful order entered by the district courts robs the Executive Branch of its most scarce resource: time to put its policies into effect. In the process, such orders diminish the votes of the citizens who elected the head of the Executive Branch,” said the complaint.

But the court has issued its own response to the lawsuit, tearing it apart at every level.

This lawsuit, the court wrote, "is impermissible."

"It is an effort by one branch in its institutional capacity to sue another branch in its institutional capacity seeking what amounts to an advisory opinion unmoored from any specific case or controversy. The courts have confronted similar efforts by legislators to sue in their official capacity, and have routinely rejected them on nonjusticiability grounds."

"While the Executive enjoys the distinct power to sue in the name of the United States to enforce laws and ensure that they are faithfully executed, it does not enjoy any free-floating authority to sue a coordinate branch of government," the response continued. "Such a suit is nonjusticiable, and the fate of the standing orders can and should be resolved in an ordinary case or controversy."

The District Court of Maryland went on to add that Trump could simply have appealed their decision if he disagreed with it, that judges are immune from being sued over their rulings, and that even if Trump did have the power to sue judges over the habeas ruling, "the executive’s claims fail, as the standing orders are valid exercises of federal courts’ inherent authority to afford themselves time to determine their own jurisdiction."