The Supreme Court has been active on its emergency docket in recent months, halting several lower court injunctions and causing anger from some of those lower court judges.
The justices have increasingly expressed frustration over lower courts continuing to rule counter to their orders on the emergency docket, leading to Justice Neil Gorsuch issuing a stern message in an order allowing the Trump administration to terminate $783 million in DEI-related grants from the National Institutes of Health.
“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote, aiming at lower court judges.
Judges have pushed back on emergency docket rulings
While some lower court judges have taken heed of the justices’ orders, others have continued to criticize the justices over the rulings from the emergency docket.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs took direct issue with Gorsuch’s comments in a ruling Wednesday that blocked the Trump administration’s $2.2 billion funding freeze of Harvard University.
“This Court understands, of course, that the Supreme Court, like the district courts, is trying to resolve these issues quickly, often on an emergency basis, and that the issues are complex and evolving,” said Burroughs, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
“Given this, however, the Court respectfully submits that it is unhelpful and unnecessary to criticize district courts for ‘defy[ing]’ the Supreme Court when they are working to find the right answer in a rapidly evolving doctrinal landscape, where they must grapple with both existing precedent and interim guidance from the Supreme Court that appears to set that precedent aside without much explanation or consensus,” she added.
Mike Davis, founder of the conservative Article III Project, said Burroughs’s statement showed “these Democrat activist judges are not even pretending to hide their disdain for their bosses on the Supreme Court.”
An example of a judge pushing back on the high court’s emergency docket orders prior to Gorsuch’s forceful statement came when U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy attempted to enforce a subsequent order that stemmed from an order the Supreme Court halted on its emergency order. Murphy cited the dissent of the order as part of his rationale, leading the Justice Department to request a clarification from the high court.
The Supreme Court ruled that Murphy’s subsequent orders, which stemmed from the now-stayed order, were also halted. Justice Elena Kagan, who had been in the dissent of the initial order, expressed concern that the district judge still attempted to enforce the paused order.
Other judges have offered criticism via anonymous quotes to the media. A group of a dozen federal judges anonymously told NBC News.
One judge told the outlet that the Supreme Court’s short orders on the emergency docket are “inexcusable” and that the justices “don’t have our backs.”
Another judge said that by giving multiple rulings on the emergency docket that have sided with the Trump administration and reversing lower court orders, the government is “undermining the lower courts” and the judges have been “thrown under the bus.”
An anonymous Obama-appointed federal judge told the outlet that while “there is a strong sense in the judiciary among the judges ruling on these cases that the court is leaving them out to dry,” the judge also conceded that some judges are part of a “Trump derangement syndrome” issue.
Several judges have expressed their disdain for some of the Trump administration’s actions, getting emotional in some opinions. One judge appointed by former President Joe Biden accused officials of “racial animus” for attempting to end a temporary immigration program for foreign nationals.
One judge offers apology to the justices for earlier ruling
While some judges have been outspoken in their criticism of the justices and the Supreme Court’s emergency docket rulings, one federal judge offered an apology for his order, which the high court forcefully paused.
Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts began a hearing on Tuesday, issuing an apology to two of the justices for his prior ruling enjoining the Trump administration from terminating $783 million in DEI-related grants from the NIH, warranting Gorsuch’s scathing rebuke.
“I really feel it’s incumbent upon me to, on the record here, apologize to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they think that anything this court has done has been done in defiance of a precedential action of the Supreme Court in the United States,” Young said, per Reuters.
Young, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, said he misunderstood that the high court’s previous emergency docket orders should be viewed as precedent to guide his thinking on similar matters.
SUPREME COURT FRUSTRATED BY LOWER COURT OVERREACHES
“Those justices, and indeed the entire court, can be assured that this court will absolutely obey and generously adhere to the precedential decisions of the Supreme Court, as I have done and tried to do throughout all my judicial service,” Young added.
The Supreme Court will return to hear full oral arguments in cases in its upcoming term next month, but will likely still see a busy emergency docket even as the regular cases in the new term ramp up.