Latest news with #DCCircuit
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Appeals court tosses contempt order in case over Venezuelans sent to El Salvador
Washington — A divided federal appeals court on Friday granted the Trump administration's request to set aside a district judge's decision finding probable cause that some federal officials committed criminal contempt by violating an order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants bound for El Salvador. The 2-1 decision from a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is a massive victory for the Trump administration, which has lambasted U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for overstepping his authority when he initiated criminal contempt proceedings in April. The D.C. Circuit had issued a temporary pause of Boasberg's decision while it took more time to consider the issue. In an unsigned opinion issued Friday, Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both appointed by President Trump in his first term, granted a request from the Justice Department to toss out Boasberg's contempt order. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, dissented. The Alien Enemies Act case The dispute over Boasberg's contempt order stems from immigration officials' efforts to deport Venezuelan migrants under the wartime Alien Enemies Act, which President Trump invoked in March to swiftly remove alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. In response to a fast-moving legal challenge brought by a group of migrants in Washington, D.C., over the removals, Boasberg temporarily blocked the deportations and issued an oral order directing the Trump administration to return Venezuelan migrants subject to Mr. Trump's declaration who were on planes bound for El Salvador back to the U.S. A written order issued shortly after prevented the Trump administration from conducting any deportations of noncitizens under the Alien Enemies Act. But Boasberg said that despite his injunctions, the Trump administration did not stop the removals, and the planes carrying the migrants deported under the Alien Enemies Act landed in El Salvador. The planes were already outside U.S. airspace when Boasberg issued his order blocking U.S. officials from "removing" the detainees, a fact that the appeals court noted in ruling for the administration. Most of the people were transferred to El Salvador's notorious supermax prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. The administration's actions raised questions as to whether it had violated Boasberg's order, and the judge in April ruled that probable cause existed to find government officials in criminal contempt over what he was their defiance. Boasberg said the government's actions demonstrated a "willful disregard" for his order. "The court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory," Boasberg wrote in his decision. He said the Trump administration could remedy his contempt findings by asserting custody over the migrants who were removed in violation of his order, so they can assert their right to challenge their removability. The Trump administration appealed Boasberg's contempt finding and asked the D.C. Circuit to vacate the decision, which it then agreed to do. In a concurring opinion on Friday, Katsas wrote that the dispute over the removal of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March "involves an extraordinary, ongoing confrontation between the Executive and Judicial Branches." He noted that the proceedings do not involve the lawfulness of removals made under the Alien Enemies Act in March, and said the court may not decide at this time "whether the government's aggressive implementation of the presidential proclamation warrants praise or criticism as a policy matter." Still, Katsas wrote that a decision in favor of the Trump administration is appropriate because "the government is plainly correct about the merits of the criminal contempt, and our saying so now would prevent long disputes between the Executive and the Judiciary over difficult, contentious issues regarding the courts' power to control foreign policy or prosecutions, or to impose criminal sanctions for violating injunctions entered without jurisdiction." "In circumstances much less fraught than these, courts have reviewed interlocutory orders through mandamus to prevent extended inter-branch conflict," Katsas said. He wrote that Boasberg's contempt finding "raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses." In her dissent, Pillard argued that Boasberg's contempt findings were appropriate, and said the majority's decision to throw out the contempt findings was "in error." "Our system of courts cannot long endure if disappointed litigants defy court orders with impunity rather than legally challenge them. That is why willful disobedience of a court order is punishable as criminal contempt," Pillar wrote. "When it appears that a judicial order has been disobeyed, the court's ability to learn who was responsible is the first step to accountability." ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, the lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the Alien Enemies Act cases, said in a statement: "We strongly disagree with today's decision regarding contempt and are considering all options going forward. Even DOJ's own lawyers have now stated publicly that they understood that they were not supposed to hand over these men to El Salvador. There was zero ambiguity in the moment." Since Boasberg's findings and the appeals court's stay of his order, 252 Venezuelans who were deported from the U.S. to CECOT were sent from El Salvador back to their home country as part of a prisoner swap involving the U.S. Tensions between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary have escalated across Mr. Trump's second term, as judges have issued decisions blocking implementation of many aspects of the president's agenda. But the clash between Boasberg and the president has been one of the most fierce, and the judge's contempt finding marked the most direct rebuke of the administration so far. Mr. Trump has called for Congress to impeach Boasberg, and the Justice Department filed a judicial misconduct complaint against the judge over comments he allegedly made at a closed-door meeting of the Judicial Conference in March. 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Mint
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Mint
US court ends contempt proceeding in Trump deportations fight
Bloomberg Updated 8 Aug 2025, 09:56 PM IST A federal appeals court threw out a judge's finding of 'probable cause' to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt of court for sending accused Venezuelan gang members to an El Salvador prison despite his order to halt the deportations. The 2-1 order on Friday means US officials no longer face a further contempt investigation or the possibility of prosecution under that previous ruling. In April, US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington concluded in a blockbuster opinion that officials acted in 'willful disregard' of his verbal order on March 15 to turn around planes carrying Venezuelans to El Salvador. Judge Greg Katsas wrote for the appeals court that there was 'fatal ambiguity' in Boasberg's early handling of the deportation fight to the point that the Trump administration's actions 'clearly and indisputably' weren't criminal. Also on Friday, a different appeals court panel struck another decision from Boasberg that the Venezuelans were entitled to an opportunity to retroactively challenge being sent to the Salvadoran prison. The appellate judges said that because those individuals had since been sent to Venezuela and released, Boasberg's earlier decision had been 'overtaken by events' and could no longer stand. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit sent the case back to Boasberg to reconsider what kind of relief is appropriate now.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
US court says Trump can remove Democrat from labor board, for now
By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trumpto remove a Democratic member from a federal labor board while his administration appeals a ruling that said her firing was illegal and had reinstated her. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit paused the lower court decision pending the appeal, saying a law shielding members of the Federal Labor Relations Authority from being removed at will likely violated Trump's broad powers to control the executive branch. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington had ruled otherwise in March and ordered the reinstatement of Susan Tsui Grundmann, who had been fired by Trump a month earlier. The three-member FLRA, which was created by Congress to be independent from the White House, hears disputes between federal agencies and their employees' unions. It can order agencies to bargain with unions and in some cases prevent agencies from firing unionized workers.
Fox News
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Appeals court grants Trump short-term win over Boasberg in immigration ruling
A U.S. appeals court agreed to pause a lower court order requiring the Trump administration to provide due process to hundreds of Venezuelan migrants deported from the U.S. to El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in a near-term victory for the Trump administration. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted the Justice Department's request for an administrative stay, putting on hold a lower court order handed down last week by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. Last Wednesday, Boasberg ruled that the migrants deported solely on the basis of the Alien Enemies Act immigration law did not have prior notice of their removals or the ability to challenge their removals in court, in a violation of due process. He ordered the Trump administration to provide migrants deported under the law the opportunity to seek habeas relief, and the opportunity to challenge their alleged gang member status that the administration had pointed to as the basis for their removal. Boasberg had given the Trump administration through Wednesday to submit to the court plans for how it would go about providing habeas relief to the plaintiffs in CECOT, the maximum security prison in El Salvador. This week, lawyers for the Trump administration filed an emergency motion to stay the ruling in both the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Tuesday, one day before that plan was due, seeking additional time to respond to the underlying merits of Boasberg's ruling. Justice Department officials argued that Boasberg did not have jurisdiction in the case, as the migrants are detained in El Salvador, and said his order interfered "with the president's removal of dangerous criminal aliens from the United States." Boasberg's final order last week did not attempt to determine who had jurisdiction. Instead, he set the matter aside, and said the individuals could remain in custody at CECOT, so long as the government submitted plans to the court for how they would be provided a chance to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. The Trump administration still took umbrage with that ruling, which it blasted earlier this week in their appeal as "unprecedented, baseless and constitutionally offensive." "The district court's increasingly fantastical injunctions continue to threaten serious harm to the government's national-security and foreign-affairs interests," they told the circuit court. The court "correctly ruled that the United States lacks constructive custody over the aliens held at CECOT and therefore that this Court lacks jurisdiction over their habeas claims," attorneys for the Justice Department said in their motion. "That should have been the end of this case." That order sparked fierce backlash from senior Trump officials, who have blasted Bosaberg and other federal judges who have ruled in ways unfavorable to them as "activist judges." Boasberg, however, was the first federal judge to try to block Trump's attempt to use the law to summarily deport certain migrants to El Salvador earlier this year, putting him squarely in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. On March 15, he granted a temporary restraining order attempting to block the first wave of deportation flights to El Salvador, and ordered the administration to "immediately" return to the U.S. all planes that had already departed. That did not happen, however, and the planes landed hours later in El Salvador. In the months since, Boasberg attempted to hold various fact-finding hearings to determine who knew what, and when, about the flights. He later found probable cause to hold the administration in contempt of the court, citing the government's "willful disregard" for his March 15 emergency order, though those proceedings were later halted by a federal appeals court.
Boston Globe
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The ‘reverse discrimination' US Supreme Court ruling could've been much worse
I was struck by the fact that the opinion was written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's only Black woman and someone who was nominated after former President Joe Biden vowed to install a Black woman on the court. Chief Justice John Roberts, when he is in the majority of a decision of the court, is the one who decides which justice will write the opinion. Lots of considerations go into who an opinion's author is, including how many other cases that justice has written compared to others. Advertisement And, as 'It also was a strategic assignment by Roberts,' Coyle observed. 'Justice Jackson, a member of a minority group, led the court in a discrimination case involving a member of a majority group. It gave the final decision an extra dollop of credibility.' Advertisement So was it some kind of subtle troll by Roberts to assign an opinion that will likely open the door to more so-called reverse discrimination cases? Only Roberts knows his thought process. But what is clear is this: When it comes to protecting the ability of people to bring employment discrimination claims, this ruling could have been much, much worse. And for that, I'm grateful for Jackson's leadership. After all, some of her colleagues, like Justice Brett Kavanaugh, have gone on record questioning whether the framework for proving employment discrimination claims that the court established more than half century ago should be tossed out. That framework, established 52 years ago in Then, the burden of proof shifts to the employer to show a 'legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason' for the adverse employment action. Then the burden shifts back to the employee to prove that the employer's nondiscriminatory reason is a pretext for actual discrimination. But when Kavanaugh was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, he questioned whether that framework should come into play at all when an employer seeks to dismiss a case in the early stages of litigation before the case has a chance to go to trial. Advertisement But dropping the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting standard in such early challenges to litigation would risk slamming the door on many meritorious claims. That's because it is very hard, before the parties have had a chance to obtain and produce crucial evidence of their case, for an employee to make a full evidentiary showing that their case is likely to succeed if it goes to a jury. Burden-shifting schemes are meant to avoid this, and striking down McDonnell Douglas would have the immediate effect of making all discrimination claims more difficult to bring and prove. Enter Jackson, with a reasonable alternative that the court could unanimously back: applying the McDonnell Douglas framework to all cases, whether the person claiming discrimination is a member of a minority group or not. After all, as Jackson reasoned, that is what the plain reading of Title VII — the civil rights-era law that federal employment discrimination claims are brought under — calls for. That is originalism in action — declaring that a statute says what it says, based on its plain text. And if that is the narrow holding that Jackson knew she could get everyone on board for, then good for her. There are bigger battles ahead to fight. This is an excerpt from , a newsletter about the Supreme Court from columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Advertisement Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at
