Justice Gorsuch went off on the frivolous TRO's from the lower courts. It's quite apparent the lower courts are ignoring SCOTUS in outright defiance. I'm not sure what corrective measures are available. This should be interesting, no doubt.
The granting of stay was one of several instances in which the Supreme Court has been asked to weigh in on injunctions issued by (primarily) left-wing district judges. Such orders have often come at the behest of Democrat activists seeking to sabotage the Trump administration via a judicial coup.
In addition to signing onto the majority’s Thursday decision, Gorsuch penned a concurring opinion in the case in which he ripped into the lower judiciary’s out-of-control behavior. While noting that “[l]ower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions … they are never free to defy them.”
Citing a related case recently before the Supreme Court (Department of Ed. v. California), the Trump appointee highlighted how the high court “granted a stay [in that case] because it found the government likely to prevail in showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the government to pay grant obligations.” He wrote, “California explained that ‘suits based on “any express or implied contract with the United States”’ do not belong in district court under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but in the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act.
“Rather than follow that direction, the district court in this case permitted a suit involving materially identical grants to proceed to final judgment under the APA,” Gorsuch wrote. “As support for its course, the district court invoked the ‘persuasive authority’ of ‘the dissent in California‘ and an earlier court of appeals decision California repudiated … That was error.”
Gorsuch went on to underscore that “the promise of our legal system that like cases are treated alike means that a lower court ought not invoke the ‘persuasive authority’ of a dissent or a repudiated court of appeals decision to reach a different conclusion on an equivalent record.” More to the point, however, he noted that the district court’s apparent rebuke of the precedent very recently established by SCOTUS in the California case is not an isolated incident among the lower courts.
“If the district court’s failure to abide by California were a one-off, perhaps it would not be worth writing to address it. But two months ago another district court tried to ‘compel compliance’ with a different ‘order that this Court ha[d] stayed,'” Gorsuch wrote. “Still another district court recently diverged from one of this Court’s decisions even though the case at hand did not differ ‘in any pertinent respect’ from the one this Court had decided … So this is now the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to intercede in a case ‘squarely controlled’ by one of its precedents.”
thefederalist.com
The granting of stay was one of several instances in which the Supreme Court has been asked to weigh in on injunctions issued by (primarily) left-wing district judges. Such orders have often come at the behest of Democrat activists seeking to sabotage the Trump administration via a judicial coup.
In addition to signing onto the majority’s Thursday decision, Gorsuch penned a concurring opinion in the case in which he ripped into the lower judiciary’s out-of-control behavior. While noting that “[l]ower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions … they are never free to defy them.”
Citing a related case recently before the Supreme Court (Department of Ed. v. California), the Trump appointee highlighted how the high court “granted a stay [in that case] because it found the government likely to prevail in showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the government to pay grant obligations.” He wrote, “California explained that ‘suits based on “any express or implied contract with the United States”’ do not belong in district court under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but in the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act.
“Rather than follow that direction, the district court in this case permitted a suit involving materially identical grants to proceed to final judgment under the APA,” Gorsuch wrote. “As support for its course, the district court invoked the ‘persuasive authority’ of ‘the dissent in California‘ and an earlier court of appeals decision California repudiated … That was error.”
Gorsuch went on to underscore that “the promise of our legal system that like cases are treated alike means that a lower court ought not invoke the ‘persuasive authority’ of a dissent or a repudiated court of appeals decision to reach a different conclusion on an equivalent record.” More to the point, however, he noted that the district court’s apparent rebuke of the precedent very recently established by SCOTUS in the California case is not an isolated incident among the lower courts.
“If the district court’s failure to abide by California were a one-off, perhaps it would not be worth writing to address it. But two months ago another district court tried to ‘compel compliance’ with a different ‘order that this Court ha[d] stayed,'” Gorsuch wrote. “Still another district court recently diverged from one of this Court’s decisions even though the case at hand did not differ ‘in any pertinent respect’ from the one this Court had decided … So this is now the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to intercede in a case ‘squarely controlled’ by one of its precedents.”
Gorsuch Gives Rogue Courts The Smackdown They Deserve
Justice Gorsuch penned a concurring opinion in SCOTUS's Thursday order ripping into the lower judiciary's out-of-control behavior.