Supreme Court Issues a Direct Warning to 'Rogue Judges'

"The message from the Supreme Court’s majority is unmistakable: lower courts are not free to reinterpret or resist its rulings."

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have issued a sharp warning to lower court judges: follow Supreme Court precedent — or face the consequences.

“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote in a recent opinion joined by Kavanaugh.

The case involved the Trump administration’s cancellation of nearly $800 million in federal research grants. A lower court had blocked the move, prompting Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to intervene.

Gorsuch criticized the district judge for disregarding a prior Supreme Court order, calling it “the third time in a matter of weeks this court has had to intercede in a case ‘squarely controlled’ by one of its precedents.”

“When this court issues a decision, it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts,” he added.

The Supreme Court’s ruling overturned U.S. District Judge William Young, who had written, “I have never seen government racial discrimination like this.” Gorsuch’s opinion dismissed that claim and reinstated the grant freeze.

Justice Samuel Alito made similar criticisms earlier this year, accusing a federal judge of committing an “act of judicial hubris” in a case involving another Trump-era policy.

The conservative majority has consistently sided with the Trump administration on emergency docket cases — including disputes over immigration, executive power, and agency leadership — often even when the administration had not complied with lower court rulings.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting in the NIH grants case, accused the majority of “Calvinball jurisprudence.”

She wrote: “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor echoed the concern in a deportation-related dissent: “This is not the first time the court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last.” She accused the majority of “rewarding lawlessness.”

The debate centers on how binding the Court’s emergency rulings are. Though often unsigned and lacking full explanation, the justices are increasingly treating them as mandatory guides for lower courts.

Former Gorsuch clerk and Trump administration official James Burnham said, “The defiance of the Supreme Court’s emergency orders by some lower courts is unprecedented, extraordinary, and the Supreme Court must deal with it decisively.”

Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network added: “It’s become necessary to remind district judges not to flout orders of the Supreme Court.”

The Court recently ruled in favor of Trump’s removal of three Biden-appointed members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, citing a prior emergency ruling involving agency removals. The unsigned opinion said the case was “squarely controlled” by that precedent.

It also issued a major decision limiting the power of lower courts to impose nationwide injunctions — a tool frequently used to block federal policy — in a case involving Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship.

Justice Elena Kagan, speaking in California, acknowledged that the Court could “explain things better” to help lower courts apply its rulings.

Days later, Kavanaugh told judges and lawyers in Kansas City: “We’re not the policymakers.”

“Members of the judiciary have an important responsibility, of course, that goes with maintaining the independence — that responsibility, of course, to get it right, to do our hard work, to understand our role in the constitutional democracy,” he said.

The message from the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is unmistakable: lower courts are not free to reinterpret or resist its rulings — even on emergency orders. As legal tensions escalate over judicial authority and executive power, the Court is drawing a hard line.