It's Time For SCOTUS To Hold Rogue Judges Accountable

thefederalist.com

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week in United States v. Skrmetti not only upheld the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that blocks the mutilation of children through the garbage science of “gender-affirming care,” it sent a clear message to rogue lower courts about the constitutional limits of the third branch. 

But the message apparently was lost on Brian E. Murphy, a Biden-nominated U.S. District Court judge for the District of Massachusetts, who ignored the high court’s ruling Monday that allows the Trump Administration to continue deportations. 

‘It Is Not Up To The Court’ 

As my Federalist colleague Shawn Fleetwood reported, the Skrmetti case stems from a lawsuit filed by the leftist American Civil Liberties Union, joined by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice. The ACLU claimed the law violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause because it didn’t allow health care providers to conduct harmful “trans” procedures on minors. 

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 6-3 majority opinion (with the court’s liberal wing dissenting), reiterating what should be clear to a judicial system bound by co-equal branches of government. 

“The Court’s role is not ‘to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic’ of” the Volunteer State’s law, Roberts warned. While the decision dispatched the faulty claim of a due process violation, the broader message could not be missed by even the most obtuse federal judges leading the left’s “resistance” movement against President Donald Trump’s agenda. 

Constitutional law expert Hans von Spakovsky said the message should be crystal clear. He pointed to the late Justice Antonin Scalia who, in his inimitable way, advised that legislatures do stupid things — and they’re allowed. 

“Dare to think this: It is entirely possible for a law to be really, really stupid and yet be constitutional,” the legendary textualist said during a  2013 lecture at Tufts. “It is not up to the Court to run the country by holding as unconstitutional not only those things the Constitution pronounces to be unconstitutional, but those things it thinks ought to be unconstitutional.”

Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said the court’s Skrmetti ruling “spoke to what is going on in the court system.” 

“That part of the decision was a warning shot across the bows of judges making basically policy decisions in all of these cases,” he told me last week on the Dan O’Donnell Show on WISN in Milwaukee. 

‘Errant, Rogue Judges’

Activist judges predominantly appointed by Democrat presidents have tried to shut down Trump’s agenda, slapping nationwide injunctions on everything from the firings of federal employees to the removal of violent criminal illegal immigrants. And the plaintiffs in those cases know where to shop for their brand of justice. 

Von Spakovsky said the Supreme Court could send an even stronger message to activist judges if it issues an end-of-term ruling involving birthright citizenship. Lower courts have blocked Trump’s executive order ending the constitutionally suspect allowance provided to the U.S.-born children of parents who enter the country illegally. The justices are weighing in on the Trump administration’s emergency request to decide whether lower federal court judges have the authority to issue sweeping nationwide justices. 

Von Spakovsky said he hopes the high court “comes down even harder on these errant, rogue judges and lays out that nationwide injunctions can only be issued in the most extreme, rare circumstances.” 

“I’m hoping we’re going to get another decision that’s even stronger than this one,” the legal expert said, referring to the Skrmetti ruling. 

‘Judicial Coup’

Apparently, the message isn’t getting through to Murphy, the federal judge for the District of Massachusetts. 

Murphy issued an order Monday evening insisting that his order last month blocking the administration from sending violent illegal immigrants to a detention facility at a U.S. naval base in Djibouti “remains in full force and effect, notwithstanding” the Supreme Court’s stay Monday of his order. 

The noncitizens are “murderers, rapists, and pedophiles that this activist district court judge is trying to bring back to American soil,” according to Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. 

“As he spits in the face of victims, this Massachusetts district court judge is stalling the final removal of these barbaric individuals from the country and wants taxpayers to continue to foot the bill to keep these criminals in DHS custody overseas. It is deranged,” McLaughlin said Monday evening in a press release.  

Murphy’s nationwide injunction demanded the administration provide illegal immigrants “meaningful” advance notice and the opportunity to explain their objections before being deported to other countries where they do not have citizenship. 

Trump Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller called Murphy’s order a “judicial coup.” 

“A district judge has just announced he will openly defy the unambiguous ruling issued today by the Supreme Court and continue to block the expulsion of illegal aliens convicted of child rape and murder,” Miller wrote on X. 

Miller told Fox News to “expect fireworks” when the administration holds “this judge accountable for refusing to obey the Supreme Court.”

It will be up to the Supreme Court to hold the lower court “accountable.” Whether it does so, remains to be seen. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.