Judge rules a 2019 law singling out Huawei is constitutional

Enlarge / A customer looks at a Huawei smartphone in a Huawei store in Moscow. (credit: Sergei Karpukhin / TASS via Getty Images)

A federal judge has slapped down a Huawei lawsuit that sought to overturn a ban on federal agencies buying Huawei telecommunications gear. Congress passed the legislation, part of the military's 2019 appropriations bill, out of concern that the Chinese government could infiltrate Huawei-based networks.

Huawei had argued that the law was unconstitutional under the Constitution's ban on bills of attainder. The federal government argued that was nonsense. On Tuesday, Texas Federal Judge Amos Mazzant sided with the government.

The Constitution prohibits Congress from imposing "bills of attainder"-legislation that singles out individuals for punishment without trial. This was an infamous practice in Great Britain in the decades before the American Revolution. Huawei argued that it was a "person" under US law and hence entitled to this protection.

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