Noah Feldman, Columnist

Huawei’s Lawsuit Against U.S. Won’t Win in Court

It’s hard to argue that the Chinese telecommunications company has a constitutional right to government contracts.

March 12, 2019 at 1:19 AM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Watch out for falling legal arguments.
Photographer: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images

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Whatever Huawei Technologies Co. is doing by suing the U.S. government and six cabinet officials, it isn’t trying to win in court. The legal arguments mounted in its brief aren’t based on existing precedent. Although the brief cites the Constitution, as written the arguments are barely legal at all.

The highly unusual lawsuit, filed last week in the Eastern District of Texas, reads more like a moral broadside directed at the U.S. Congress for naming Huawei as a Chinese-government affiliate and effectively blacklisting the company’s telecommunications equipment — and others who use it — from U.S. government contracts.