The Supreme Court and lower federal judges are locked in a judicial showdown that’s spicier than a conservative’s take on campus speech codes.
According to the Washington Examiner, the nation’s highest court has been flexing its muscle on the emergency docket, halting lower court injunctions, sparking frustration among justices and pushback from district judges, while one even issued a public mea culpa for stepping out of line.
This saga kicked off with the Supreme Court actively intervening in recent months, putting the brakes on several lower court decisions that didn’t align with their emergency orders.
Justice Neil Gorsuch didn’t mince words, issuing a sharp rebuke while allowing the Trump administration to cut $783 million in diversity, equity, and inclusion grants from the National Institutes of Health.
“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch declared, a statement that lands like a gavel on progressive hopes of judicial freelancing.
His words are a reminder that the Supreme Court isn’t here to play nice when it senses lower courts overstepping—call it a constitutional reality check for activist benches.
Some lower court judges have taken the hint and aligned with the high court’s directives, but others aren’t shy about voicing their discontent with these emergency rulings.
Take U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee, who blocked a $2.2 billion funding freeze on Harvard University just this past Wednesday, showing that defiance isn’t entirely off the table.
Burroughs offered a polite but pointed critique, saying, “This Court understands... that the Supreme Court... is trying to resolve these issues quickly,” before suggesting it’s “unhelpful” to accuse district courts of defiance in such a murky legal landscape—a diplomatic jab that still stings.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy tried to enforce an order tied to one of the Supreme Court had already been paused, even citing the high court’s dissent as his reasoning.
The Justice Department stepped in, seeking clarity, and the Supreme Court swiftly ruled that Murphy’s related orders were also on hold, with Justice Elena Kagan noting her concern over his persistence.
Elsewhere, Judge William Young from Massachusetts, a Reagan appointee, found himself in hot water after a prior ruling against the same NIH grant cuts earned a blistering response from Gorsuch, prompting Young to publicly apologize during a hearing this past Tuesday.
“I really feel it's incumbent upon me to... apologize to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh,” Young stated, pledging to adhere strictly to the Supreme Court’s precedents moving forward. Behind closed doors, a dozen federal judges anonymously vented to NBC News, with one calling the high court’s short orders “inexcusable” and claiming the justices “don’t have our backs”—a complaint that sounds more like a plea for coddling than a call for clarity.
Conservative voices like Mike Davis of the Article III Project aren’t buying the sob stories, arguing, “These Democrat activist judges are not even pretending to hide their disdain for their bosses on the Supreme Court,” a zinger that cuts through the judicial drama with surgical precision.
