Two Supreme Court justices issued a scathing warning to lower courts seeking to subvert the high court’s rulings amid ongoing lawfare battles with the Trump administration.
Since five seconds after Trump took office, his administration has faced several legal challenges to his policies. A considerable portion of the battles have made it to the Supreme Court. But it appears some courts believe they can simply ignore SCOTUS rulings they don’t like.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both Trump appointees, criticized these courts for flouting the Supreme Court’s authority.
From CNN:
A growing sense of frustration with some lower courts — articulated in terms that at times sound similar to Trump’s own rhetoric — has crept into a series of opinions this summer from the Supreme Court’s conservative justices as they juggle a flood of emergency cases dealing with Trump’s second term.
“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Justice Neil Gorsuch admonished in an opinion last week tied to the court’s decision to allow Trump to cancel nearly $800 million in research grants.
The rebuke, which was joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, flipped the narrative that it is Trump who has pushed legal boundaries with his flurry of executive orders and support for impeaching judges who rule against him. A wave of legal conservatives took to social media to tout Gorsuch’s warning.
“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,” wrote Gorsuch, who was Trump’s first nominee to the high court. (Kavanaugh was Trump’s second.) “When this court issues a decision, it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts.”
Other conservatives have been just as harsh this year. Justice Samuel Alito in March accused a federal judge in another case involving a Trump policy of committing an “act of judicial hubris” and “self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction.”
📢Federal Judges Gone Rogue: When Lower Courts Forget Their Constitutional Lane⚖️
— IndependentVettedNewsNetwork (@IVNNetwork) August 26, 2025
The Supreme Court has issued a stark warning that should send shockwaves through federal courthouses nationwide: lower court judges are overstepping their constitutional boundaries and undermining… pic.twitter.com/ZiFgM9BZYt
Lower courts are bound by Supreme Court precedents and emergency orders. However, there have been several instances where district and circuit courts defy or evade these rulings.
Judge Brian Murphy with the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s policy of deporting illegal immigrants to countries they do not come from.
Judge William Young, with the same court, ordered the Trump administration to revive canceled grants to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other entities that employ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. The Supreme Court had issued an emergency order beforehand allowing freezes on grants.”
The US District Court for the District of Maryland imposed a preliminary injunction on President Trump’s executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court had already issued a ruling barring judges from issuing nationwide injunctions to block Trump’s policies.
What is ironic is that throughout his second term, Democrats and their close friends and allies in the activist media, have repeatedly criticized Trump for flouting court orders — especially when it comes to his immigration policies. Yet, they have nothing to say when courts that side with the left actually violate the Supreme Court’s rulings.