Mikie Sherrill was elected New Jersey’s first woman governor in November, after several terms in Congress. This week, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Sherrill, while spelling her name wrong repeatedly.
According to The New Republic, the government “misspelled the newly elected Democrat’s name five times. The government spelled it correctly only thrice, with two of those times being in quotes from other sources.”
“Mikie Sherill,” with only one “R,” was the most common misspelling.
The Department of Justice’s lawsuit to overturn Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s executive order that limits ICE presence on state property misspells her name five of the eight times she’s mentioned pic.twitter.com/BFwmHGH2g6
— Matt Friedman (@MattFriedmanNJ) February 24, 2026
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The lawsuit was over the governor’s immigration policies, most specifically an executive order that barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from “entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas of state-owned property without first receiving a judicial warrant. Examples of nonpublic state property include government offices, childcare centers, residential medical facilities, and state university residence halls.”
“Given ICE’s willingness to flout the Constitution and violently endanger communities—detaining children, arresting citizens, and even killing several innocent civilians—I will stand up for New Jerseyans’ right to be safe,” Sherrill said in a statement along with the executive order.
The lawsuit from the DOJ accuses the governor of various misdeeds.
I am incredibly honored to serve as the 57th Governor of the great State of New Jersey.
I want you to know that I will never stop fighting for you. pic.twitter.com/4GqJXe3xx0
— Mikie Sherrill (@MikieSherrill) January 20, 2026
The suit also managed to spell Trump’s name wrong, referring to him as “President Trumps.”
“Despite the ongoing threat to American lives and communities President Trumps seeks to cure, the State of New Jersey, insists on harboring criminal offenders from federal law enforcement,” the lawsuit says. ‘Governor Mikie Sherill [sic] aims to intentionally obstruct federal law enforcement and celebrates thwarting the constitutional obligation of the President of the United States to take care that federal immigration law be faithfully executed.”
It’s not quite a new development for things to be misspelled in Trump-associated legal filings. During the 2020 election, Trump’s lawyers frequently made typos and other mistakes in their legal work.
“His attorneys have repeatedly made elementary errors in those high-profile cases,” PBS reported at the time. This included “misspelling ‘poll watcher’ as ‘pole watcher,’ forgetting the name of the presiding judge during a hearing, inadvertently filing a Michigan lawsuit before an obscure court in Washington and having to refile complaints after erasing entire arguments they’re using to challenge results.”
Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, in her 2020 filings, infamously spelled the word “district” three different ways.
Photo courtesy of the official portrait of Gov. Mikie Sherrill.
