Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice.

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for President Donald Trump and a veteran U.S. Supreme Court advocate, failed to persuade the justices on Monday to review an abortion-related challenge.

Sekulow had asked the high court to overturn an injunction against his client, Troy Newman, president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and a former board member and secretary of the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress. The court denied review without comment.

Newman and David Daleiden, founder of CMP, were sued by the National Abortion Federation for publicly releasing secret recordings of the federation's annual meetings and follow-up meetings with abortion providers.

The videos, which lawyers for the abortion federation claimed were manipulated to falsely portray the providers as sellers of fetal tissue, violated confidentiality agreements that members of CMP, using false names, signed in order to have access to the meetings, according to the suit.

A federal district court, finding the contracts enforceable and breached, issued a preliminary injunction blocking release of the videos in 2016. The court rejected arguments by Newman and Daleiden that enforcing the contracts was an unconstitutional prior restraint under the First Amendment and that CMP had an interest in disclosing criminal wrongdoing.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the trial court. The appeals panel said the district court concluded “as a matter of fact” that CMP had not found evidence of criminal wrongdoing and “that determination is amply supported by the record.”

Because of the videos, nine states opened and then closed investigations of Planned Parenthood after finding no wrongdoing; 11 other states refused to pursue investigations based on CMP's accusations, according to the National Abortion Federation's high court brief opposing review.

In addition to Newman, Daleiden, represented by Catherine Wynne Short of Ojai, California, filed a separate petition for review. Marc Hearron, an appellate partner at Morrison & Foerster, represents NAF in both cases.

Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law & Justice, is a familiar face in the high court. He has argued 12 cases involving speech and religion issues such as abortion clinic buffer zones, prayers before high school football games and religious monuments in public parks. He also has filed numerous amicus briefs.

In February, Sekulow filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court supporting the Trump administration's most recent iteration of its ban on certain foreign nationals entering the United States in Trump v. Hawaii.

Sekulow was not immediately reached for comment Monday.

He is not the only lawyer straddling two legal worlds amid the difficulties stemming from the 2016 presidential campaign. Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben and Elizabeth Prelogar, an assistant to the solicitor, are assigned to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team but continue to handle and argue certain cases in the Office of the Solicitor General.

Dreeben has argued two major cases in the current term: Carpenter v. United States and United States v. Microsoft. Prelogar argued City of Hays, Kansas v. Vogt.

Read more: