-Trump’s Legal Battles and Judicial Rebukes: A First Year Review
- Murphy temporarily blocked the administration from deporting eight men to South Sudan - a nation to which they had no connection, and which has a record of human...
- Boasberg began pursuing a criminal contempt inquiry into the actions of senior administration officials who continued flights deporting Venezuelan nationals to a notorious Salvadoran prison despite Boasberg having...
- While more measured than the nation's coarse political rhetoric, the legal exchanges have nonetheless been stunning by judicial standards - a sign of boiling anger among judges, rising...
A few months into President Trump’s second term, federal appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III – a conservative appointee of President Reagan – issued a scathing opinion denouncing what he found to be the Trump management’s unlawful removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador, despite a previous court order barring it.
“the government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that ther is nothing that can be done,” Wilkinson wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
Two months later, U.S. District Judge William G. Young, also a Reagan appointee, ripped into the Trump administration from the bench for its unprecedented decision to terminate hundreds of National Institutes of Health grants based on their perceived nexus to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Young ruled the cuts were “arbitrary and capricious” and thus illegal. But he also said there was a “darker aspect” to the case that he had an “unflinching obligation” to call out – that the administration’s actions amounted to “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”
“I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young said, explaining a decision the Supreme Court later reversed. “Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”
In the year since an aggrieved and combative Trump returned to the White House, his administration has strained the American legal system by testing and rejecting laws and other long-standing policies and defending those actions by arguing the president has a broad scope of authority under the U.S. Constitution.
Administration officials and Justice Department attor
After District Judge Brian E. Murphy temporarily blocked the administration from deporting eight men to South Sudan - a nation to which they had no connection, and which has a record of human rights abuses – Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, the administration’s top litigator, called the order “a lawless act of defiance” that ignored a recent Supreme Court ruling.
After District Judge James E. Boasberg began pursuing a criminal contempt inquiry into the actions of senior administration officials who continued flights deporting Venezuelan nationals to a notorious Salvadoran prison despite Boasberg having previously ordered the planes turned back to the U.S., government attorneys said it portended a “circus” that threatened the separation of powers.
While more measured than the nation’s coarse political rhetoric, the legal exchanges have nonetheless been stunning by judicial standards – a sign of boiling anger among judges, rising indignation among administration officials and a wide gulf between them as to the limits of their respective legal powers.
“These judges, these Democrat activist judges, are the ones who are 100% at fault,” said Mike Davis, a prominent Republican lawyer and Trump ally who advocates for sweeping executive authority. “They are taking the country to the cliff.”
The litigation has challenged a range of Trump administration policies,including his executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of many immigrants; his unilateral imposition of stiff tariffs around the world; the administration’s attempt to slash trillions of dollars in federal funding from states, and its deployment of National Guard troops to American cities.
The battles have produced some of the year’s most eye-popping legal exchanges.
In june, Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to federalize and deploy California National guard troops in Los angeles, after days of protest over immigration enforcement.
an attorney for the administration had argued that federal law gave Trump such authority in instances of domestic “rebellion” or when the president is unable to execute the nation’s laws with regular forces, and said the court had no authority to question Trump’s decisions.
But breyer wasn’t buying it, ruling Trump’s authority was “of course limited.”
“I mean,that’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George,” he said from the bench. “This country was founded in response to a monarchy. And the Constitution is a document of limitations – frequent limitations – and enunciation of rights.”
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Atty. Gen. Pam bondi said the justice Department ”has spent the past year righting the wrongs of the previous administration” and “working tirelessly to successfully advance President Trump’s agenda and keep Americans safe.”
Sauer said it has won rulings “on key priorities of this administration, including stopping nationwide injunctions from lower courts, defending ICE’s ability to carry out law enforcement duties, and removing hazardous illegal aliens from our country,” and that those decisions “respect the role” of the courts, Trump’s “constitutional authority” and the “rule of law.”
‘Imperial executive’ or ‘imperial judiciary’?
Just after taking office, Trump said he was ending birthright citizenship. California and others sued, and several lower court judges blocked the order with nationwide or “universal” injunctions – with one calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
In response, the Trump administration filed an emergency petition with the Supreme court challenging the ability of district court judges to issue such sweeping injunctions. In June, the high court largely sided with the administration, ruling 6 to 3 that many such injunctions likely exceed the lower courts’ authority.
Trump’s policy remains on hold based on other litigation. But the case laid bare a stark divide on the high court.
In her opinion for the conservative majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that universal injunctions were not used in early English and U.S.history, and that while the president has a “duty to follow the law,” the judiciary “does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation.”
