Trump hopes top court will rein in judges who block policies
• Legal Press News updated 2018/03/01 09:06
• Legal Press News updated 2018/03/01 09:06
The Trump administration is looking for ways to deal with a recurring frustration: individual federal judges who have put the brakes on one major administration policy after another.
The administration is telling the Supreme Court in a case about President Donald Trump's travel ban that judges are increasingly using what are called nationwide injunctions to stop "a federal policy everywhere." The Justice Department says the high court should "reject the deeply misguided practice," which has also been used against the administration's crackdown on "sanctuary cities," President Donald Trump's announced ban on transgender military service members and, most recently, the effort to end legal protections for young immigrants.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has become the administration's leading critic of the injunctions. Sessions said Tuesday they have been used 20 times in Trump's first year in office, "as many as President Obama had in eight years." But Sessions didn't object to the practice in his prior life as a senator from Alabama. He had praised a single judge from Texas who put a nationwide block on an Obama immigration policy. The more common practice is for a judge to issue an order that gives only the people who sued what they want.
Legal scholars have attributed the rise of these broad judicial orders to a corresponding increase in executive action. In 2014, Obama acted to protect immigrant parents of U.S. children after Congress failed to pass an immigration overhaul. Similarly, Trump unilaterally sought to impose travel restrictions on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries a week after taking office.
The issue has a decidedly partisan tinge. During the Obama years, Republican officials and conservative interests sought out seemingly friendly judges, often in Texas, to challenge administration actions. Since Trump has been president, Democrats and liberal interests have filed lawsuits in places where they think federal judges will be receptive, like California, Hawaii and Washington.
The administration is telling the Supreme Court in a case about President Donald Trump's travel ban that judges are increasingly using what are called nationwide injunctions to stop "a federal policy everywhere." The Justice Department says the high court should "reject the deeply misguided practice," which has also been used against the administration's crackdown on "sanctuary cities," President Donald Trump's announced ban on transgender military service members and, most recently, the effort to end legal protections for young immigrants.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has become the administration's leading critic of the injunctions. Sessions said Tuesday they have been used 20 times in Trump's first year in office, "as many as President Obama had in eight years." But Sessions didn't object to the practice in his prior life as a senator from Alabama. He had praised a single judge from Texas who put a nationwide block on an Obama immigration policy. The more common practice is for a judge to issue an order that gives only the people who sued what they want.
Legal scholars have attributed the rise of these broad judicial orders to a corresponding increase in executive action. In 2014, Obama acted to protect immigrant parents of U.S. children after Congress failed to pass an immigration overhaul. Similarly, Trump unilaterally sought to impose travel restrictions on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries a week after taking office.
The issue has a decidedly partisan tinge. During the Obama years, Republican officials and conservative interests sought out seemingly friendly judges, often in Texas, to challenge administration actions. Since Trump has been president, Democrats and liberal interests have filed lawsuits in places where they think federal judges will be receptive, like California, Hawaii and Washington.