Latest news with #courtorders
Reuters
4 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Trump's sweeping tax-cut bill includes provision to weaken court powers
WILMINGTON, Delaware, May 30 (Reuters) - The sweeping tax-and-spending bill that would enact President Donald Trump's policy agenda includes a provision that critics said would weaken the power of U.S. judges to enforce contempt when the government defies court orders. The one-sentence provision in the 1,100-page bill prevents federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from enforcing contempt orders unless the plaintiffs have posted a monetary bond, which rarely happens in cases against the government. "No court of the United States may enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued," the provision says. It applies retroactively. "Security" refers to monetary bonds that can be used in private litigation when one party seeks to ask a judge to issue an injunction blocking the actions of another party, such as a company trying to prevent a rival from selling a product. If it turns out the injunction is later reversed, the bond helps cover the defendant's losses. The provision follows a White House memo in March that directed heads of government agencies to request that plaintiffs post a bond if they are seeking an injunction against an agency policy. The Trump administration said the measure would deter frivolous lawsuits. The Trump administration and the House Judiciary Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump has attacked judges who ruled against his government but he has also said he would obey the Supreme Court. Judges often don't require bonds in cases against the government. In a case by two small toymakers against the Trump administration tariffs, the plaintiffs said the bond that had been requested by the government would be more costly than tariffs and would nullify the benefit of an injunction. The judge on Thursday set the bond at $100 and blocked the tariffs against the two companies. Federal courts have been a major check on Trump in his second term, as plaintiffs in dozens of cases have gotten judges to block White House policies. Bonds were not required in the vast majority of those cases, so if the House bill provision became law, judges would be unable to enforce contempt orders. While no judge has issued a contempt order, several federal judges have said Trump administration officials appeared to be defying court orders and are at risk of being held in contempt. Judges use contempt to bring a party into compliance, usually by ratcheting up measures from fines to jail. Once the party complies, the penalties cease. In 2022, when Trump was out of office, he was held in contempt and fined $10,000 by a New York state judge for each day that he failed to produce documents that were subpoenaed in a civil probe of his private business practices that was led by New York's attorney general. Trump eventually complied after paying $110,000. The House passed the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" on May 22 by a one-vote margin, without any votes from Democrats. The bill is now heading to the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 vote margin. Several Republicans said they will seek to modify the bill. Twenty-one Democrats from the House wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson on May 20 and urged him to strike the provision from the bill. "This provision would neutralize valid injunctions and leave courts powerless to act in the face of open defiance," said the letter. Eric Kashdan, senior legal counsel with the Campaign Legal Center, said judges could comply with the provision by setting bonds at a nominal amount and old cases could be reopened, but he said it would be time-consuming and burdensome. "You know what the government is going to do in the meantime? It's free to ignore those orders," said Kashdan, whose organization has sued the Trump administration over a voting policy.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Spaghetti against the wall?' Trump tests legal strategies as judges block his policies
WASHINGTON – As the Trump administration fights to kill 40 court orders blocking some of his most controversial or aggressive new policies, legal experts say the government's strategy is to break the cases apart, into individual disputes, to delay an eventual reckoning at the Supreme Court. One called President Donald Trump's legal strategy a 'shell game.' Another said government lawyers were 'throwing spaghetti against the wall' to see what sticks. 'Their bottom line is that they don't think these cases should be in court in the first place,' said Luke McCloud, a lawyer at Williams and Connolly who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. 'They are looking for a procedural mechanism that will make it the most challenging to bring these sorts of cases.' Related: Supreme Court deals blow to Trump, says in emergency order he can't deport Venezuelan migrants Judges have stepped in and blocked a range of Trump's most aggressive policies: restrictions on immigration, a ban on transgender troops in the military and drastic funding cuts to high-profile U.S. agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services. The common element: a single judge in one of 94 regional districts around the country paused a policy for the entire country while the case is working its way through court. Presidents of both parties have opposed these kinds of policy blocks. Barack Obama faced injunctions against Obamacare and Joe Biden's plan to forgive student loans was blocked. Supreme Court justices have also voiced concerns about district courts setting national policy before the high court gets a chance to weigh in. 'As the brief and furious history of the regulation before us illustrates, the routine issuance of universal injunctions is patently unworkable, sowing chaos for litigants, the government, courts, and all those affected by these conflicting decisions,' Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a 2020 opinion in a case dealing with a Department of Homeland Security immigration regulation. The unresolved question is how − or whether − presidential policies could be blocked if the Supreme Court limits or abolishes the nationwide court orders. A district judge's ruling's impact would extend to the geographical boundaries of where the judge presides. If the case is appealed to a circuit court of appeals, that could broaden the impact because circuits span multiple states. But Solicitor General John Sauer, the lawyer who argued the Trump administration's position at the Supreme Court, refused to commit, in arguments this week that the administration would obey lower court decisions. If the justices rule against nationwide court orders, one option for expanding the reach of specific cases would be for people to join together in class-action lawsuits. But certifying who gets to participate in the lawsuit can take months or years, while a policy and its arguable harms would survive. 'The Trump administration wants to win by losing,' said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in immigration. 'Even if it loses case after case after case, it wins in the sense of implementing his policies nationwide for years.' As Trump seeks to abolish nationwide injunctions, government lawyers have argued for and against the cases becoming class actions. 'I think the government is basically throwing spaghetti at the wall and looking for any excuse and any case to kick it out of court,' said Alan Trammell, an associate law professor at Washington and Lee University who is an expert on nationwide injunctions. A trio of cases at the Supreme Court oppose Trump's order limiting birthright citizenship to children with at least one parent who is a citizen or legal permanent resident. Sauer, the solicitor general, urged the justices on May 15 to lift all further nationwide injunctions on the policy and argued a class action was the legitimate way to challenge the citizenship order. But Sauer also said he would oppose certifying a class action. After the blockbuster hearing, Trump urged the court not to be swayed by Democratic pressure. Trump stated in a social media post on May 16 that 'THE SUPREME COURT IS BEING PLAYED BY THE RADICAL LEFT LOSERS.' In another set of cases, hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants are fighting deportation under Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. The high court ruled in April that each immigrant had to file a separate lawsuit in the region where they are detained, rather than join a class action. In a separate case involving Venezuelan immigrants, the Supreme Court has blocked their removal from the United States until the justices can decide whether the Alien Enemies Act, which has only been invoked during a declared war, applies to them. The Trump administration contends that the immigrants are enemy combatants because they allegedly belong to a criminal organization. Following the ruling, Trump said in a social media post on May 16: "THE SUPREME COURT WON'T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!" The Venezuelans, accused of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua, could also potentially be recognized as a class of detainees in Texas, the court said. Requiring individual lawsuits or forcing people to prove they belong in class-action lawsuits would splinter the litigation and delay the eventual results when appeals are exhausted, experts said. 'The courts don't want that. They're overwhelmed as it is,' said Frost, the professor specializing in immigration. 'But, of course, the Trump administration would like that. It's trying to flood the zone and overwhelm the institutions.' The Supreme Court has been scrutinizing the strategy of class actions in Trump cases. A federal judge was considering a class action for Venezuelan immigrants fighting deportation under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). But the Supreme Court ruled on April 7 that the immigrants must file individual lawsuits to force the government to justify their detention. Sotomayor, who dissented, called the decision 'suspect' and 'dubious.' She accused the government of trying to hustle immigrants onto deportation flights without offering them a chance to contest the allegations, including whether they are gang members, in court. 'The Government's conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law,' Sotomayor wrote. Forcing immigrants to wage their own legal battles could delay the eventual resolution of the cases at the Supreme Court. 'That kicks the can down the road and it has the added benefit, from the government's perspective, of preventing a class action and enforcing this piecemeal litigation,' Trammell, the injunction expert, said. 'What it effectively amounts to is this drip, drip, drip approach.' Steven Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, noted that in a bevy of recent court rulings, the Trump administration tried to slow down or defeat immigration cases by moving 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the case of a Tufts student named Rumeysa Ozturk should continue to be heard in Vermont, where it began, despite federal authorities moving her to a Louisiana detention facility. A federal judge in Virginia ruled that a Georgetown postdoctoral fellow, Badar Suri, could bring his lawsuit in that state rather than transferring it to Texas, where he is now detained. And a federal judge in New Jersey continues to preside over the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student activist, despite his transfer to Louisiana. 'The good news in all of these developments is that the shell games failed, at least in these high-profile individualized immigration detention contexts,' Vladeck wrote in his newsletter on developments in federal law. Justices questioned the lawyers on May 15 about how class-action lawsuits would work in birthright citizenship cases. Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh separately asked the lawyers for both sides whether the strategy would provide a remedy if nationwide injunctions no longer existed. 'Is there a practical problem?' Kavanaugh asked. New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremey Feigenbaum, who represents 22 states in the case, said yes, because states can't file class actions. Certifying a class is challenging and time-consuming because participants must show they have common interests. For example, immigrant parents who arrived days before the birth of a child might not be considered in the same class as those who arrived 10 years earlier. If the high court doesn't allow birthright injunctions to all states, it would create a patchwork of disparate legal practices. Without a nationwide pause on Trump's order, Kavanaugh posed, the federal government would refuse to recognize the citizenship of babies born in a state that isn't participating in the lawsuit. Children of undocumented immigrants or tourists would be citizens in some states and not in others. 'What do hospitals do with a newborn?' Kavanaugh asked. 'What do states do with a newborn?' Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett asked why Sauer sought to abolish nationwide injunctions if class-action lawsuits would accomplish the same thing. 'What is the point of this argument about universal injunctions?' Alito asked. Sauer said injunctions encourage litigants to shop for favorable judges and prevent courts from "percolating" over complex issues, or considering them thoroughly before they arrive before the high court. Justice Elena Kagan and Barrett pressed the government's lawyer about whether the Trump administration would obey temporary circuit rulings blocking its policies until the Supreme Court issued final decisions. 'Generally, our practice is to respect circuit precedent within the circuit," Sauer said. "But there are exceptions to that." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump is testing new legal strategies as judges halt his policies
Washington Post
21-05-2025
- Washington Post
Migrants may have been deported to South Sudan despite court orders, lawyers say
Federal immigration authorities may have deported up to a dozen immigrants from Myanmar, Vietnam and other countries to South Sudan on Tuesday despite federal court orders prohibiting it, lawyers for the immigrants said in an emergency court filing. A federal immigration officer confirmed that at least one immigrant from Myanmar had been deported Tuesday morning to the African nation, according to the court records. The spouse of a man from Vietnam said he told her that he and at least 10 others had also been flagged for deportation to that country.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Fmr. federal prosecutor reacts to Trump attorney's SCOTUS arguments to Justice Barrett
Legal experts say the Trump administration and U.S. attorneys are flirting with ignoring court orders, even as the Supreme Court has begun to weigh in on President Trump's agenda. Former SDNY federal prosecutor Berit Berger shares her thoughts on the latest legal developments for the Trump White House.
Washington Post
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Trump's diciest deportations, examined
On no issue has the clash between the Trump administration and the courts been as intense and consequential as it has been on deportations. The administration has repeatedly flouted and possibly defied court orders. The resolutions in these cases will say a lot about how much the courts can constrain a president who is clearly trying to wield an extraordinary amount of power — and whether we could drift into a constitutional crisis. But while that legal battle has huge ramifications, the political battle is also important. Democrats have somewhat uneasily highlighted the deportations as the epitome of a lawless president. Some are concerned about aligning too closely with the causes of undocumented immigrants, coming out of an election in which Republicans were seen as stronger on border issues. And as the details of those individual deportations trickle out, it's become clear that the administration has created some major potential perception problems for itself. The Washington Post this past weekend published an authoritative look at how the administration's efforts were often rushed and arguably hasty, and some of the results certainly speak to that. Several cases appear to be particularly problematic. Let's run through them. This has been the most widely discussed deportation, with the U.S. Supreme Court even weighing in at one point. To recap: The Trump administration has acknowledged in court that it wrongly deported Abrego García to a brutal El Salvador prison, saying it was due to an 'administrative error.' (Abrego García is an undocumented immigrant, but the government wasn't legally allowed to deport him to El Salvador, specifically.) But despite courts of all levels ordering the administration to 'facilitate' Abrego García's return, the administration has resisted taking significant steps to accomplish that. President Donald Trump recently agreed that he could get Abrego García returned if he wanted to, but he added, 'We have lawyers that don't want to do this.' The administration has argued that courts can't dictate such foreign policy actions. The American people, though, do want Abrego García returned. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll two weeks ago showed Americans said by 16 points that Abrego García should be returned. A YouGov poll, meanwhile, showed they said 53-21 that the administration should comply with the Supreme Court's order to facilitate his return. The polls also show Americans disagree with the El Salvador deportations in principle. The administration has sent many people it has claimed are gang members but who don't have apparent criminal records to the notorious prison — as many as three-fourths of them, according to a '60 Minutes' report. An earlier YouGov poll showed Americans said more than 2-to-1 that people without criminal records should not be sent to the El Salvador prison. A CNN poll last month showed Americans opposed deporting any migrants to the prison, 51 percent to 29 percent. While Abrego García has gotten the most attention, he's not the only wrongly deported man. A Trump-appointed judge recently ruled that the administration also wrongly deported a 20-year-old identified only as 'Cristian' to the El Salvador prison. U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher ruled that the deportation violated a legal settlement that allowed certain migrants who arrived as unaccompanied minors to remain in the United States as they pursue asylum claims. She went further than other courts in ordering the administration to not only 'facilitate' Cristian's return, but to make 'a good faith request' that El Salvador release him. The administration has also resisted this order. Some of the above poll numbers also apply here. But it's worth emphasizing that having wrongly deported a second man could confirm many people's notions about how careless this effort has been. An Economist-YouGov poll released before these two wrongful deportations came to light showed a majority of Americans believed the administration was making at least 'some' mistakes in its deportations. Just one-third thought there were no mistakes or 'only a few.' A big question in just about all of these deportation controversies is whether these men are actually gang members, as the administration has claimed. That doesn't necessarily matter when it comes to their due process rights, but it does matter when it comes to public perception. And perhaps nobody epitomizes that portion of this controversy like Andry José Hernández Romero. The New Yorker initially reported on his case in late March, identifying him as a makeup artist from Venezuela. Like others, the administration identified him as a gang member based on tattoos, which experts say can be unreliable. It would obviously be a major problem if the administration is sending not just people without criminal records but also non-gang members to the El Salvador prison. And that would again reinforce people's reservations about these deportations. The late-March Economist-YouGov poll showed just 15 percent of Americans believed that all of the Venezuelans who were deported to the El Salvador prison were gang members. And a more recent YouGov poll showed a slight plurality of Americans doubted that Abrego García was actually a gang member. In other words, the administration hasn't convinced people that these people meet the low threshold it has set for instant deportation to a brutal foreign prison. The Washington Post reported late last month that three U.S. citizen children from two families have been sent to another country. One of them was a 4-year old with Stage 4 cancer who was sent without their medications, according to the family's lawyer. The administration has sought to argue that these children weren't 'deported' because their undocumented mothers allegedly wanted to bring them. But a Trump-appointed judge has cast doubt on that explanation and raised strong concerns that the administration has now sent U.S. citizens to another country 'with no meaningful process.' This appears to be a problem for the administration. A YouGov poll last week showed Americans said by a 55-26 margin that it was 'unacceptable' to send to another country the U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants. Americans have also generally disliked the idea of deporting undocumented migrants who have citizen children, if it means separating families (which happened in this case). A Scripps-Ipsos poll last year showed Americans opposed mass deportations if they led to that outcome, 57-38. And despite the administration's arguments, Trump has floated the idea of sending U.S. citizens — criminals, specifically — to the El Salvador prison. That doesn't appear legally possible. (U.S. citizens have also been caught up in Trump's immigration crackdown in other ways, including being detained.) The early-April YouGov poll showed Americans opposed sending U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, 68-16. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that at least two of the men deported to the El Salvador prison had won State Department approval to resettle as refugees in the U.S. That process includes extensive vetting by the federal government. The early April YouGov survey showed just 14 percent of Americans supported sending refugees without criminal records to the El Salvador prison. About 7 in 10 opposed it.
