Lower court judges are deliberately being stubborn when issuing rulings that appear to supersede the Supreme Court, according to judges, government officials, and legal experts.
The high court has responded to lower-court rulings by using its emergency docket to say a previous decision should have been enough.
Democrats have relied on the courts to try to stop President Donald Trump from implementing his policies, and District Court judges have issued nationwide injunctions.
"I think lower court judges are reading Supreme Court opinions very narrowly, almost in an act of resistance," South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman told The Washington Times.
"It is very common for judges to call Trump out for defiance, but these courts need to look at their own actions."
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said something similar last month when the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow it to cut hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of research funding in its push to roll back federal diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
The Justice Department argued a federal judge in Massachusetts was wrong to block the National Institutes of Health from making $783 million worth of cuts to align with the president's priorities.
"Our judicial system rests on vertical stare decisis, not a lower-court free-for-all where individual district judges feel free to elevate their own policy judgments over those of the executive branch, and their own legal judgments over those of this court," the solicitor general said.
Sauer pointed to a 5-4 decision on the Supreme Court's emergency docket from April that allowed cuts to teacher training programs to go forward. The order shows that district judges shouldn't be hearing those cases at all, but rather sending them to federal claims court, he argued.
"Those decisions reflect quintessential policy judgments on hotly contested issues that should not be subject to judicial second-guessing. It is hardly irrational for agencies to recognize — as members of this Court have done — that paeans to 'diversity' often conceal invidious racial discrimination," Sauer wrote.
In another case, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to remove three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The justices overruled a federal judge who had blocked the president from doing so.
The justices said they thought their ruling involving firings at the National Labor Relations Board had settled such a situation.
"Although our interim orders are not conclusive as to the merits, they inform how a court should exercise its equitable discretion in like cases," the Supreme Court said in an unsigned order.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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