Justice Gorsuch Smacks Lower Courts Back Into Reality for Continuing to Defy SCOTUS Rulings

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File

Over time, we have learned that when Democrats and the left have nothing left to fight with, they take their issues into court. They shop whatever they would like to force onto the American people around to a left-leaning Democrat-appointed judge to get the outcome they want. They couldn't stop President Donald Trump's return to the White House, so they figure they will stop anything he tries to do through the court system. It literally took an act of Congress to put the brakes on activist judges, and a few of them continue to issue edicts. But now, Supreme Court Justices have had enough and are speaking out.

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On Thursday, in a rare instance of public comment, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch called out lower courts and their judges for repeatedly ignoring Supreme Court rulings. In a ruling that allows the Trump administration to move ahead with cutting millions of dollars in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, Gorsuch slapped back at a lower court, writing in an opinion that it was the “third time in a matter of weeks” that the Supreme Court was forced to reverse a lower court ruling on an issue they had already ruled on.


READ MORE: Trump Chalks Up Another Victory at the Supreme Court Over Ending DEI


Along with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Gorsuch flexed some Supreme Court muscle, writing, “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them." And it is something that has obviously become problematic enough for Justices to address, yet still keeps happening. In April, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that the Trump administration could continue the termination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-related teacher training grants.  

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In June, a lower court allowed a lawsuit “involving materially identical grants” from the NIH to proceed, but that court cherry-picked the dissenting justices' opinion and ignored the majority ruling. That judge ultimately blocked the Trump administration's ending of DEI and gender ideology-related grants. Gorsuch wrote of this instance of lower court defiance,

“If nothing else, 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."

But as we have seen since Trump took office, there are plenty more examples of lower courts and judges blatantly ignoring SCOTUS decisions. Gorsuch mentioned them as well. In June, after the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could deport illegal immigrants to countries that were not specified in their removal order, Biden-appointed Judge Brian Murphy claimed that one of his orders regarding the deportation of eight illegal immigrants to South Sudan was still in effect. In a 7-2 ruling, SCOTUS later ruled that Murphy had violated their original order. Even Justice Elena Kagan remarked, “I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed." Gorsuch also referred to another lower court that blocked Trump from firing three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), also in July. However, SCOTUS had given the go-ahead to Trump in May to fire members of administrative agencies. 

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ALSO READ: Sen. Kennedy Breaks Down SCOTUS Injunction Decision, Tells Detractors to File 'Hurt Feelings Report'


Gorsuch also called out more of the obvious, writing:

“All these interventions should have been unnecessary, but together they underscore a basic tenet of our judicial system: Whatever their own views, judges are duty-bound to respect ‘the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress.'"

You have to love Justice Gorsuch putting lower court judges on notice, and in a polite, sophisticated SCOTUS kind of way, asking, "Who the hell do you people think you are?" They are not fooling anyone, and they would do well to pay attention to the fact that the Supreme Court is fed up with their grandstanding and defying Supreme Court rulings. 

Editor's Note: Radical leftist judges are doing everything they can to hamstring President Trump's agenda to make America great again.


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