Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh issued warnings this summer to lower court judges, cautioning them against defying precedents set by the high court in a series of cases involving President Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cLower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court\u2019s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,\u201d Gorsuch\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in an opinion last week.<\/p>\n The decision was related to\u00a0Trump\u2019s cancellation<\/a>\u00a0of nearly $800 million in federal research grants. Kavanaugh joined the opinion, which criticized a district court for disregarding an earlier Supreme Court order.<\/p>\n Gorsuch noted that it was \u201cthe third time in a matter of weeks this court has had to intercede in a case \u2018squarely controlled\u2019 by one of its precedents.\u201d He added, \u201cWhen this court issues a decision, it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision allowed the administration to keep the grants frozen, overturning a ruling from U.S. District Judge William Young, who made the baseless claim he had \u201cnever seen government racial discrimination like this.\u201d<\/p>\n Other justices have also criticized lower courts. In March, Justice Samuel Alito\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0a federal judge had committed an \u201cact of judicial hubris\u201d in a case involving another Trump policy.<\/p>\n The high court has sided with the administration on a number of emergency docket cases this year, including disputes over immigration, spending, and the leadership of independent agencies. In some instances, the justices have ruled in Trump\u2019s favor even when the executive branch had not complied with lower court orders.<\/p>\n Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting in the NIH funding case, compared the majority\u2019s approach to \u201cCalvinball jurisprudence,\u201d referring to the comic strip in which rules constantly change. \u201cCalvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWe seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice Sonia Sotomayor has also criticized the majority\u2019s handling of Trump cases. In a dissent earlier this summer involving deportations, she wrote that the court was \u201crewarding lawlessness.\u201d \u201cThis is not the first time the court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Conservative legal figures defended Gorsuch\u2019s warning. James Burnham, a former clerk for Gorsuch who served in the Trump administration, said, \u201cThe defiance of the Supreme Court\u2019s emergency orders by some lower courts is unprecedented, extraordinary, and the Supreme Court must deal with it decisively.\u201d Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network wrote that it had \u201cbecome necessary to remind district judges not to flout orders of the Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n At issue is how much weight lower courts should give to the Supreme Court\u2019s emergency orders, which are often unsigned and issued without detailed reasoning. While the justices have emphasized that such rulings are not conclusive on the merits, recent opinions have said they should still guide short-term outcomes in similar cases.<\/p>\n In July, the court ruled in favor of Trump\u2019s decision to remove three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission appointed by President Biden. The unsigned opinion pointed to an\u00a0earlier emergency order<\/a>\u00a0concerning removals at labor agencies and said the CPSC case was \u201csquarely controlled\u201d by that precedent.<\/p>\n The court also issued a major ruling this year restricting the power of district judges to impose nationwide injunctions, which had been used in both Republican and Democratic administrations to block policies. The decision came in a case involving Trump\u2019s order to end birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n