The Justice Department told a federal appeals court on Monday that it was dropping a host of appeals challenging lower court rulings that had blocked President Trump’s attempts to punish Democrat-connected law firms.

Mr. Trump had ordered the government to quit doing business with lawyers from the four firms, calling them “dishonest and dangerous” for what he said were efforts to weaponize the legal system against him and his interests.

His orders had met with a wall of rejections in the district court, which found the retaliation unconstitutional.

The Justice Department had appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia but on Monday it filed a notice asking the court to dismiss the cases.

Jenner & Block, one of the firms targeted, celebrated the dismissal.

“The government’s decision to withdraw its appeals makes permanent the rulings of four federal judges that the executive orders targeting law firms, including Jenner & Block, were unconstitutional,” the firm said. 

“This chapter has once again confirmed what has been true of Jenner for more than a century — we will always zealously advocate for our clients and put them first, without compromise,” it added.

Mr. Trump had targeted Jenner & Block for hiring Andrew Weissmann, who had been part of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into unfounded claims about the Trump campaign and links to Russia in 2016.

Mr. Trump also targeted Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, which employed Mr. Mueller; Perkins Coie, which helped orchestrate the salacious and unfounded Steele Dossier that fueled the special counsel’s probe; and Susman Godfrey, which Mr. Trump said funded “groups that engage in dangerous efforts to undermine the effectiveness of the United States military through the injection of political and radical ideology, and it supports efforts to discriminate on the basis of race.”

Mr. Trump, in his executive orders calling for punishment, also cited firms’ representation on immigration cases and LGBT issues.

In his orders, the president directed the Justice Department and the intelligence community to suspend active security clearances held by the firms’ personnel and to cancel contracts to the maximum extent allowed by law.

The lower judges who handled the cases had decried Mr. Trump’s orders as an attack on a fair system of law, calling lawyers central to the constitutional order.