In court fights over policy, Trump officials rack up an extraordinary record of defiance
When a federal judge struck down a Trump administration policy holding immigrants without bail Last December, this appeared to be a serious blow to the president’s mass deportation efforts.
Instead, a senior Justice Department official insisted that the decision was not binding, and the administration continued to deny detainees across the country the chance of being released.
By February, district court judge Sunshine Sykes had had enough. Sykes, President Joe Biden’s candidate Trump blamed officials A decision handed down that month said they were trying to “erode any semblance of separation of powers” and added that “they could only do so in a world without a Constitution.”
The case, by no means an isolated one, illustrates a broader pattern of challenges to lower court decisions during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Trump officials’ failure to comply with court orders most emphasized In individual immigration cases. But an Associated Press review of hundreds of pages of court records also shows an extraordinary record of violations in cases related to policy changes and other moves.
Republican administration’s power struggle with federal courts is being tested Fundamental principles of US democracy – reflects a broad view of executive authority that also challenges the independence of federal institutions; ethical obligationsand the role of the United States in the international order.
Judges find widespread non-compliance
An AP review of court records found that in the second Trump administration’s first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled he violated an order in at least 31 cases on a wide range of issues, including mass layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration enforcement. This represents one in eight cases in which the courts at least temporarily blocked the administration’s actions.
The White House’s aggressive policy moves have led to a barrage of lawsuits, more than 700 and counting.
More than 250 cases of non-compliance are added to violations in 31 cases judges recently emphasized that in individual immigration petitions – from non-return of property to keeping immigrants locked up after their court-ordered release date.
Legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few violations of court orders during the four-year tenures of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump’s first inauguration. They also noted that previous administrations often apologized when confronted by judges; The Trump administration’s Justice Department has been openly combative in some cases.
“What the court system has experienced in the last year and a half is completely different, qualitatively, than anything that came before it,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who studies federal courts. Pursuing lawsuits against the Trump administration.
Although Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 cases, legal experts say their treatment of court orders poses serious dangers.
“The federal government should be the institution most committed to the rule of law in this country,” said David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown University. “When it ceases to feel connected, respect for the rule of law is likely to collapse across the country.”
The administration received support from high courts
The AP review also found that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, overruled district courts and sided with the White House in nearly half of the 31 cases. Critics say these decisions embolden the administration to ignore judges’ orders.
White House press secretary Abigail Jackson said higher courts had overturned “unlawful district court decisions.” He added in a written statement that the administration “will continue to comply with lawful court orders.”
“President Trump’s entire administration is lawfully implementing the America First agenda that he was elected to enact,” the statement said.
Among other cases of noncompliance, the judges found that the White House defied orders by deporting scores of accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, withholding billions of dollars in foreign aid and failing to restart Voice of America’s programming. The three cases date to the first few months of the new administration, but judges have continued to find violations since then, including two cases in April.
“The danger is that this becomes normal,” said JoAnna Suriani, an attorney with the nonpartisan group Protecting Democracy, which tracks cases of noncompliance. The group also participates in lawsuits filed against the administration.
‘Ham-fifty.’ ‘I’m hallucinating.’ Judges also acted harshly
In October, U.S. District Judge William Smith wasted little time in concluding that Homeland Security officials had violated one of his orders. As George W. Bush’s nominee, Smith blocked states from providing billions of dollars in disaster relief funds as long as they cooperated with the president’s immigration priorities.
DHS responded by retaining the immigration requirement on some grants, but made it subject to a supreme court invalidating Smith’s injunction. The judge called the move a “bad hand” and said DHS was trying to “bully the states.”
In a case related to the suspension of refugee admissions, Biden nominee U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead last May accused the Justice Department of “dreaming up the new text” in the appeals court decision and “rewriting” it to achieve the government’s preferred outcome.
In four additional cases reviewed by the AP, judges were unable to make a clear, written finding of noncompliance but still criticized the administration’s response to their orders.
Of the judges who confirmed the violations, 22 were appointed by Democratic presidents and 7 by Republican presidents.
Former federal judges Jeremy Fogel and Liam O’Grady said the justices had lost confidence in the Justice Department’s integrity.
O’Grady, who along with Fogel is now part of the nonpartisan democracy group Keep Our Republic, said it has made them “more aggressive in accusing the government of bad faith.”
Fogel said the judges were also disappointed.
“They give orders, but the orders are not followed, and then they have to investigate why the orders were not followed, and that’s where it gets very emotional and political,” he said.
Plaintiffs in education case sound alarm
In Eureka, Calif., school administrator Lisa Claussen worries about how her students’ mental health will be affected if a judge doesn’t find that the Department of Education violated a court order regarding federal grants.
Grant money allowed the school district in Northern California’s impoverished coastal region to hire more than a dozen psychologists and social workers to help students struggling with drug use and suicidal thoughts.
Education officials in the Trump administration said last year that grants to schools in California and other states were being halted; The administration balked at diversity considerations in the grant process.
U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson permanently blocked the move in December, but California and 15 other states say the administration ended the injunction by imposing new rules, including an initial six-month funding limit.
Department of Education lawyers said they want to see whether schools are making progress on performance goals before allocating additional funds. In the case submitted to the court, it was stated that the judge’s decision did not prevent the six-month period.
Biden candidate Evanson has not yet come to power.
In the absence of a one-year funding guarantee, Eureka City Schools and other districts say they are issuing layoff notices to mental health providers or eliminating positions.
“We have a lot of kids who don’t trust adults for a very good reason and are able to take this donation just like they did …,” Claussen said, her voice breaking in a phone interview. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ministry of Justice took a step back
In court filings, Justice Department lawyers often objected to charges that the government failed to comply with. They argued over the meaning of the words, cited favorable appeals court decisions and said they were acting outside the scope of the court order, among other legal maneuvers.
Trump and White House officials outside court railed against federal judges. Vice President J.D. Vance even suggested that the president could ignore court orders.
Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the conservative legal advocacy group The Article III Project, said most judges who find violations ignore laws that expressly prohibit their decisions.
He said Trump officials were “generally compliant, charming, and winning.” “If they had defied orders left and right, they would have lost them.”
Critics say higher courts excused non-compliance
In March, a federal appeals court ruled that Sykes, the judge in California, likely overstepped his authority to require bond hearings nationwide, blocking his February ruling.
The result was not unusual.
In 15 of the 31 cases the AP reviewed, an appeals court or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration’s basic policy, limited the district court’s efforts to correct or punish noncompliance, or both.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her fellow justices after such a decision.
“This is not the first time the Court has turned a blind eye to noncompliance, and I fear it will not be the last,” he wrote in a dissent in June, joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. “But each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, respect for the courts and the rule of law is further eroded.”
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Associated Press writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed.
