It would have been hard to blame Mitchell Reich of Hogan Lovells for being skeptical of his chances of persuading U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly to block a Trump administration policy disqualifying individuals from seeking asylum in the U.S. unless they already sought similar protection in another country first. Kelly, a Trump appointee to the Washington, D.C. district court bench, had already denied a request for a temporary restraining order last year challenging the policy, which all but eliminated the possibility of asylum for refugees fleeing Central America through Mexico.

But on July 1, Kelly did an about-face and granted summary judgment to Reich and his clients finding Trump officials violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not following the law’s “notice-and-comment” requirement before enacting the rule. It was an especially sweet win for Reich, an appellate specialist who had handled oral argument on the TRO loss and the summary judgment motion for clients: Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition, Human Rights First, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and nine individual asylum seekers.