The imperial judiciary strikes back
Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Just a few of the dozens of examples of politicized judicial decisions:
In May, Myong Joun, a Biden appointee in Boston, enjoined layoffs at the Department of Education in a decision featuring an encomium to its anti-discrimination mission. The Supreme Court stayed his injunction.
Despite this precedent, Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee in San Francisco, issued a nationwide injunction barring the administration from firing union employees during or because of the government shutdown. Ignoring settled law, she bemoaned the “trauma” of workers who had been under “stress” ever since Trump’s election. Illston gambled correctly that the shutdown would end before her order could be reversed.
Indira Talwani, a federal district court judge in Boston, went further. Declaiming her fear that defunding Planned Parenthood would deprive women of access to abortions, she elided Article I of the Constitution, which requires all federal spending to be approved by Congress, nullifying a duly enacted statute that suspended funding of large abortion providers for a year. By the time she is reversed, the suspension will have expired.
In June, after San Francisco Federal Judge Charles Breyer enjoined Trump from federalizing the California National Guard, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit unanimously stayed his order, explaining that on military matters, the president’s judgment stands unless it is dishonest. Nonetheless, Oregon Federal Judge Karin Immergut subsequently blocked deployments in Portland, substituting her assessment of the situation for the president’s.
An Obama-appointed judge recently interviewed by NBC explained, “Trump derangement syndrome is a real issue. As a result, judges are mad at what Trump is doing or the manner he is going about things; they are sometimes forgetting to stay in their lane.”
Trump sometimes exceeds his authority. Activist judges, who self-reverentially believe progressive technocrats and judges are democracy’s guardians, substitute “frequently” for “sometimes.” The Constitution and the Supreme Court disagree.
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