On Wednesday, the Department of Justice agreed to drop its pending lawsuit against Southwest Key Programs, a Texas company that operates more than two dozen shelters for unaccompanied minors who enter the United States at the southern border. The case, which the Biden Department of Justice filed in July 2024, accused Southwest Key employees of subjecting the children in federal custody to rampant, severe sexual abuse, including sexual assault and rape, requests for nude photos, and propositions for sex acts.
The details in the complaint are stomach-turning: A 12-year-old girl said she was groped by a teacher’s assistant, who “always requested that she stand in the back of line-ups”; the girl cried when she reported the incident. An 8-year-old girl said a “youth care worker” would routinely enter the dorm-style bedroom she shared with a 5-year-old and an 11-year-old girl to touch their “private area” at night, and “threatened to kill their families if they disclosed the abuse.” A teenage girl said she was repeatedly raped by a supervisor, and finally sought help by passing a note to a teacher when her tormentor was away on vacation: “El puede hacer lo que se le plazea porque es chiflider el manda,” she wrote, which roughly translates to, “He can do whatever he pleases because he is a Shift Leader, he’s the boss.”
According to the complaint, which asked a federal court to award money damages to victims under the Fair Housing Act, these incidents are just some of more than 100 reports of sexual abuse by Southwest Key employees between 2015 and 2023. During that same period, the company, which pitches itself as a provider of a “safe, home-like, and nurturing environment” for the children in its care, received more than $3 billion in federal funding.
In a press release, the Justice Department explained that it acted in response to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement that, going forward, his department would no longer place migrant children in Southwest Key facilities. “For too long, pernicious actors have exploited [unaccompanied] children,” he said. “Today’s action is a significant step toward ending this appalling abuse of innocents.”
But this news may not have been the Justice Department’s only rationale. Among those who had urged the Trump administration to drop the lawsuit, according to reporting from Bloomberg Law, is the famed Supreme Court lawyer Lisa Blatt, a Williams & Connolly partner representing Southwest Key. In a February 11 email viewed by Bloomberg, Blatt warned the Justice Department about the potential consequences of its legal theory: If the government’s lawsuit were successful, she said, the resulting protections for detainees would be strong enough to “actually incentivize illegal crossings at the southern border.” In other words, if it is serious about about cracking down on immigration, protecting children from the threat of taxpayer-funded sexual violence may not be in the Trump administration’s best interests.
Blatt’s suggestion would appear to clash with her carefully-cultivated public image as an outspoken feminist and proud Democrat. Her choice to adopt this position anyway underscores the perils of casting elite lawyers as white knights of democracy, fearlessly galloping to the defense of the poor and powerless every time the Trump administration finds a new constituency to threaten. Like any good lawyer, Blatt’s job is to use the tools available to her to push for the best results for her clients. Sometimes, this means taking positions that align with her professed values. Sometimes, the incentive to send an email suggesting that the government drop an effort to protect children from sexual abuse is too powerful to resist.
Blatt outside the U.S. Supreme Court with a client, October 2022 (Photo by Mickey Osterreicher/Getty Images)
Blatt, who has argued 53 cases before the justices in her career, is a former clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who has described herself as a “liberal Democrat and an unapologetic defender of a woman’s right to choose.” But she earned headlines in 2018 for nevertheless supporting the Supreme Court confirmation of her longtime friend Brett Kavanaugh, notwithstanding their supposed ideological differences. In August, before allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh became public, she made her case in a Politico essay entitled, “I’m a Liberal Feminist Lawyer. Here’s Why Democrats Should Support Judge Kavanaugh.” In it, Blatt praised Kavanaugh for his steadfast support of women in the profession, and described him as “one of the warmest, friendliest and kindest individuals I know.” Strangely, the fact that Kavanaugh was in line to hold one of nine votes that could deliver Blatt’s clients million-dollar victories or crushing defeats did not appear to factor into her analysis.
Later in the essay, Blatt gestured at the stakes for people who are not well-compensated appellate lawyers: the fate of abortion rights, which everyone knew Kavanaugh’s confirmation would place in immediate jeopardy. “I have no insight into his views on Roe v. Wade—something extremely important to me as a liberal, female Democrat and mother of a teenage girl,” Blatt wrote. “But whatever he decides on Roe, I know it will be because he believes the Constitution requires that result.” It is comforting to know that four years later, when Kavanaugh joined the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that indeed ended the right to abortion care for tens of millions of people, Lisa Blatt could remain confident that Brett Kavanaugh’s love for the Constitution endured.
As Bloomberg notes, lawyers across the country are still scrambling to figure out how to best position their clients under the new administration, which views the legal system primarily as a mechanism for rewarding friends and punishing enemies. Already, Trump has demonstrated a willingness to retaliate against lawyers who take positions or represent clients he does not like; already, his Justice Department has extended favorable treatment to parties in a position to support his policy agenda. If you are litigating against an administration led by a president with a famously transactional view of power, it probably doesn’t hurt to put out some feelers and see if you can’t back-channel your way to a mutually beneficial resolution.
Sure enough, when Blatt filed a motion to dismiss the Southwest Key case in September—about six weeks before the 2024 election—she contended that the Fair Housing Act does not apply to the company’s shelters, which are subject to different regulations, and she urged the court to reject the Justice Department’s attempts to “extend the FHA in such a novel fashion.” This is the sort of technical legal argument that lawyers often make on their clients’ behalf; the gist is not that Fair Housing Act violations are good or acceptable, but that the allegations against Southwest Key do not fit the precise definition of Fair Housing Act violations in the first place. Blatt emphasized this distinction in her motion, reiterating the “seriousness with which Southwest Key takes allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct,” and emphasizing that the company’s view is only that “the FHA is not the vehicle to address them.”
Blatt’s message to her new Trump-appointed counterparts is something different: a savvy bit of realpolitik that supplements her legal argument, framing it not only as the correct result as a matter of law, but also as good for the state-sanctioned xenophobia that the president she ostensibly opposes has pushed for ten years and counting. At last, Neal Katyal’s zealous defense of Nestle’s reliance on child slave labor in the Ivory Coast has meaningful competition for the most depraved argument a high-profile liberal lawyer is willing to make.
Right now, many lawyers are earning deserved shine for working to maintain some semblance of a constitutional order in the midst of the White House’s lawlessness. But this case represents the other, ruthlessly pragmatic side of the legal profession: As much as lawyers love touting their solemn obligation to safeguard the rule of law, BigLaw is a lucrative business, and upholding one’s values does not always pay market rate. What this means is that you can count on lawyers to be in these fights as long the price is right, which is to say, one dollar less than whatever their clients will pay them to do something else.
