Associated Press reported on Christmas Eve:

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a March presidential memorandum to revoke the security clearance of prominent Washington attorney Mark Zaid, ruling that the order — which also targeted 14 other individuals — could not be applied to him.

The decision marked the administration’s second legal setback on Tuesday, after the Supreme Court declined to allow Trump to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area, capping a first year in office in which President Donald Trump’s efforts to impose a sweeping agenda and pursue retribution against political adversaries have been repeatedly slowed by the courts.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington granted Zaid’s request for a preliminary injunction, after he sued the Trump administration in May over the revocation of his security clearance. Zaid’s request called it an act of “improper political retribution” that jeopardized his ability to continue representing clients in sensitive national security cases.

As slow and unresponsive as it may seem, and as unhinged from constitutional history and precedent the highest court in the land may be at times, federal judges are in numerous cases finding solid legal grounds for rejecting the president’s assumption of royal powers.

And this rejection of the president’s “improper political retribution” against those he has defined as his political enemies is one of those cases.

In a 39-page opinion issued on December 23, Judge Amir H. Ali, Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, found that Zaid’s due process rights were violated by the revocation of his security clearance.

This case involves the government’s retribution against a lawyer because he represented whistleblowers and other clients who complained about the government, carried out by summarily canceling the attorney’s security clearance without any of the process that is afforded to others. In defending its actions, the government does not meaningfully rebut that the decision to deny this attorney the usual process was based on his prior legal work for clients adverse to the government. The government instead asserts, emphasizes, and repeats that the executive branch has exclusive power to determine who meets the requirements for security clearance. See Dep’t of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 527 (1988) (observing that “the grant of security clearance to a particular employee, a sensitive and inherently discretionary judgment call, is committed by law to the appropriate agency of the Executive Branch”). That is well established, but does not answer the question in this case. It is equally well established that the executive branch’s exclusive power to determine who satisfies the eligibility criteria for security clearance does not mean it can conduct that determination however it wants and free from the Constitution’s limits. As Judge Randolph aptly laid out in this context over thirty years ago:

All questions of government are ultimately questions of ends and means. The end may be legitimate, its accomplishment may be entrusted solely to the President, yet the judiciary still may properly scrutinize the manner in which the objective is to be achieved. Suppose the President has unlimited and judicially unreviewable constitutional power to determine which Executive Branch employees will be given access to the nation’s secrets. No one would suggest the government therefore could, despite the Fourth Amendment, conduct random searches without warrants in the hope of uncovering information about employees seeking security clearances. Still less would anyone consider such unconstitutional searches and seizures to be immune from judicial review. The government may have considerable leeway to determine what information it needs from employees holding security clearances and how to go about getting it. But a large measure of discretion gives rise to judicial deference, not immunity from judicial review of constitutional claims.

Nat’l Fed’n of Fed. Emps. v. Greenberg, 983 F.2d 286, 290 (D.C. Cir. 1993). That guidance is sound, and it is binding.

It is another opinion that is worth wading throught the legalese to appreciate the substance of the arguments against the absolute power of this president to act like a king.