Harvard Hires Conservative Lawyers to Fight Trump Administration

A former Texas solicitor general who argued in favor of abortion restrictions. Two former clerks to Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative members. And a one-time adviser to the Trump Organization.

These are a few of the conservative legal heavyweights Harvard University has hired to win a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

The A-list squadron of Republican-aligned lawyers is a departure from the last time Harvard faced a headline-seizing legal fight. Back then, in 2022, Harvard was defending affirmative action and turned to a firm long associated with the university, WilmerHale.

But the Trump administration has scrambled the legal landscape.

Now WilmerHale is under attack by the administration itself and is fighting its own battle. And Harvard is facing down a fundamental threat after refusing a list of administration demands that included eliminating professors “more committed to activism than scholarship” and banning international students who oppose “American values.”

Unlike last time, it has billions of dollars in federal funds on the line if it loses.

Legal observers have said that Harvard stands a good chance of winning on the legal merits. Although the case could face headwinds if it reaches the Supreme Court, the roster of conservative-aligned lawyers was designed to give the university a boost in front of a court with a supermajority of Republican-appointed justices.

“This fits with a long tradition of clients trying to signal to the Supreme Court through the counsel that they hire that this is not Harvard liberal versus conservative administration,” said Aaron Tang, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “This is academic freedom. It ought to appeal to someone across the political spectrum.”

Lee C. Bollinger, a former president of the University of Michigan, said he had used the same strategy when choosing a lawyer to argue an affirmative action case before the Supreme Court in 2003.

“I understand exactly what Harvard is thinking in employing these lawyers,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s swing vote at the time was Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a Reagan appointee. Michigan chose as its lawyer Maureen E. Mahoney, who had served as a clerk for William H. Rehnquist, a Republican appointee who was chief justice when the Supreme Court heard the case.

“I knew that Sandra Day O’Connor was likely to be the critical vote, and I wanted somebody who would really understand how she thought and how she might think about this case,” Mr. Bollinger, who subsequently became Columbia University’s president, said in a telephone interview.

The strategy worked. The Supreme Court ruled in Michigan’s favor.

Harvard did not comment for this article. Its case against the government argues that the Trump administration orders violate the First Amendment in several ways. The university’s arguments also rely on a more arcane law, the Administrative Procedure Act, which drives the process for federal agencies to develop rules and impose penalties. The university said the government had ignored its own requirements in order to cut federal funds.

Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School who clerked for Justice O’Connor, said Harvard’s roster of lawyers “underscores how deeply fractured the right is during this fraught moment in our nation’s history.”

And for the lawyers involved, taking on Harvard as a client carries some risks. One of the lawyers, William A. Burck, advised the Trump Organization until recently, when Mr. Trump moved to fire him because he had agreed to represent Harvard.

Seventeen lawyers have officially registered for Harvard’s team, and there are most likely others working behind the scenes.

Not all of them are known for being aligned with conservative causes. Joshua S. Levy, for example, was the U.S. attorney in Boston for part of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidency. He is now a partner in the firm Ropes & Gray. (Harvard still works with WilmerHale on other matters.)

But Mr. Burck, a partner in the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, is a Yale Law graduate who clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who retired in 2018. Mr. Burck had also served as a deputy to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in the George W. Bush White House and was once castigated by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, as a Republican partisan warrior.

At least seven other lawyers in the group have clerked for Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices, including four sitting justices, before or during their tenures in Washington.

In addition to Mr. Burck’s firm, at least three other firms are working on Harvard’s case, including Lehotsky Keller Cohn. Steven P. Lehotsky, a Harvard Law graduate who clerked for former Justice Antonin Scalia, worked in the Justice’s Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during Mr. Bush’s administration and had a central role in building Harvard’s legal team, according to a person familiar with the strategy who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Mr. Lehotsky, who was among the lawyers who appeared on Harvard’s behalf in court on Monday for a conference in the case, did not respond to emails.

One of Mr. Lehotsky’s partners, Scott Keller, is a former solicitor general for the State of Texas who defended the state’s tough restrictions on abortion clinics and who sees Republican Senator Ted Cruz as a mentor. Another, Jonathan F. Cohn, a Harvard Law graduate, clerked for Justice Thomas.

The Harvard team also includes Robert K. Hur, a partner in the firm King & Spalding. Mr. Hur, who clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist, is perhaps best known for investigating Mr. Biden in a classified documents case.

Mr. Hur, who was the U.S. attorney in Maryland for much of Mr. Trump’s first term, concluded that there were insufficient grounds for prosecution but nevertheless set off a firestorm by referring to Mr. Biden as “an elderly man with a poor memory.”

Harvard’s strategy has been successful before, but it also has risks.

“You have to be really careful,” Mr. Bollinger said. “If the people you’re arguing to feel like you’re trying to manipulate them by the type of lawyer that you have, that can turn them against you.”