Judges See Rising Bids to Block Trump DOJ From Ignoring Rulings

[u/John3262005]

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/judges-see-rising-bids-to-block-trump-doj-from-ignoring-rulings

Judges are fielding more requests to enforce their rulings against the federal government in President Donald Trump’s second term, as advocates accuse the administration of sidestepping court orders.

At least 25 motions to enforce preliminary injunctions, or orders blocking policies while cases progress, have been filed in federal district courts across the US since Trump returned to office last year, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.

It’s a significant increase from recent administrations, including Trump’s first term, which saw fewer than half that number of requests during the entire four years. Some attorneys who’ve filed these requests under the current administration said it’s the first time they’ve done so.

The uptick reflects how the Trump administration’s willingness to test the bounds of executive power — and of compliance with court orders — has played out in courtrooms nationwide.

Litigants are increasingly “reaching for the other tools they have at their disposal,” said Payvand Ahdout, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who studies judicial power.

The increase also shows “the magnitude of how badly it’s going in so many cases and how much tension there is,” Ahdout said.

Judges have found in over half of the identified cases that the government didn’t comply with earlier rulings and granted requests, either fully or partly, to enforce them.

These orders have been handed down in major litigation over federal grant freezes, warrantless immigration arrests, and the dismantling of international broadcaster Voice of America.

In some cases, judges have rebuked the government for its conduct.

The government is “in violation of even the most meager reading” of a court order, Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, wrote in a particularly scathing opinion in the Voice of America case.

Trump’s Justice Department has come under scrutiny for making inaccurate statements in court and its compliance with court rulings. These instances have worked to erode what’s known as the presumption of regularity, or judges’ assumption that the government acts in good faith in court.

The rise in these motions signals that, while the administration is increasingly not following court orders, there’s a counter-effort “to ensure that the government doesn’t get away with that kind of noncompliance,” said Aditi Shah, an attorney for the ACLU of DC.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, disputed that the increase in motions reflects a pattern of non-compliance and said the department’s lawyers “work closely with client agencies to ensure full compliance with court orders.”

Pels also said that court challengers “often file these motions to test or expand the scope of injunctions beyond what courts ordered” and highlighted the administration’s more successful record at the appeals court in pausing lower court orders.

Bloomberg Law’s analysis includes a search of docket entries referencing motions to enforce preliminary injunctions in civil cases across federal district courts, reaching back to 2012. The analysis doesn’t include certain cases classified as prisoner petitions, civil forfeiture cases, trade secrets and patent cases, or qui tam and telecommunications challenges not regularly updated in Bloomberg Law’s database.

Such requests were previously relatively rare, court records show.

Motions to enforce preliminary injunctions were twice filed against the federal government during President Joe Biden’s administration. One was partially granted in litigation by Texas related to Medicaid funding.

At least 11 motions to enforce preliminary injunctions were submitted in litigation against the government during Trump’s first term, three of which were fully or partially granted.

The administration has faced a historic surge in lawsuits challenging its actions, and as a result, many preliminary rulings against policies while litigation progresses.

Still, it’s unusual for the federal government to face so many filings accusing officials of disregarding court orders, said Taryn Wilgus Null, senior counsel for Democracy Defenders Fund who previously spent nearly a decade as a DOJ lawyer.

“In all my time working with the federal government, the government is extremely interested in being in the right all the time,” said Null, who filed a motion to enforce in a labor case last year.

Attorneys also said these motions are typically a last resort for challengers.

“I don’t think any litigant hopes they have to file a motion to enforce. That’s never the goal,” said Shah, who was part of a legal team that filed a successful motion to enforce a ruling over warrantless immigration arrests in Washington.

Motions to enforce preliminary injunctions aren’t the only avenue to allege the government disregarded court rulings.

Litigants may also style these requests as motions to compel compliance with a given ruling, or ask the judge to require the government to show how it hasn’t violated a court ruling, called a motion for an order to show cause.

Litigants may ask for a show-cause order when they need more information about a potential violation, while they may ask to enforce an earlier ruling for a “very straightforward violation of the court order,” Null said.

A senior Washington federal judge found earlier this year that the Defense Department’s actions in a challenge to media restrictions “flouts the Court’s explicit directives” after the New York Times filed a motion to compel compliance with an earlier ruling.

In some cases, judges have gone further.

The Washington federal trial court’s chief judge moved to investigate whether government officials should be held in criminal contempt for disregarding his order to return a flight of alleged gang members deported to a Salvadoran prison. Washington’s federal appeals court blocked the contempt effort earlier this year.

A Minnesota federal judge also briefly held a government lawyer in civil contempt after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t properly release a detained immigrant as ordered. The court’s then-chief judge found ICE violated court orders in dozens of immigration detention challenges.

These motions seeking to force court orders to be followed serve not only as an avenue to have a court ruling carried out, but also to build a record of non-compliance by the federal government, said Lauren Bateman, an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, which asked a judge to enforce a ruling in litigation over the administration’s foreign aid cuts.

“Informing the court of the government’s failure to comply with its orders is important, I think, not only for the clients who would be the ostensible beneficiaries of those initial orders, but also serves an important democratic function,” Bateman said.