Rogue Judges Gone Wild

It started with Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who miraculously (more like suspiciously) got assigned to the case every time one of President Trump’s executive orders was contested in federal court.

Boasberg seemed to relish his role as a self-appointed demigod, somehow forgetting that the Constitution that he swore to uphold clearly established three separate and co-equal branches of the federal government: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial.

Sorry, Judge Boasberg, but rock doesn’t break scissors, which cuts paper, which covers rock when it comes to the three branches of the federal government.

The legislative branch enacts laws, the executive branch carries them out while overseeing the general administration of the government just like the CEO of a company, and the judiciary simply interprets the constitutionality of those laws and actions.

In other words, stay in your own lane and we’ll all get along just fine.

However, somewhere along the line Judge Boasberg and many other activist judges like him have decided that they are really unelected legislators in black robes. Forgetting about – or purposely ignoring – the constitutional separation of powers, they have decided to wear two hats at the same time.

Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court put Judge Boasberg and his uppity cohorts in their place with its recent Trump v. CASA decision in which the high court ruled 6–3 that, “Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts."

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett issued a rare public rebuke of one of her Progressive colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who authored a childlike dissenting opinion that was virtually devoid of academic substance or judicial relevance.

“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Justice Barrett wrote in her scholarly and scathing smackdown. "We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."

OUCH!!! That had to sting… and rightfully so, because Justice Jackson’s overblown rhetoric about an “existential threat to the rule of law” was straight out of the DNC playbook. So was her ludicrous warning that the ruling dealt a potential deathblow to the United States of America.

“It is not difficult to predict how this all ends,” Jackson wrote with an overly dramatic and unintentionally comedic flair. “Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.”

Please try to control your laughter, because she was trying to sound like a grown-up. But then again, that’s what happens when you appoint a DEI hire to the highest court in the land.

But was Justice Jackson properly chastised and did she learn her lesson about not legislating from the bench? Hardly… because just this week she did it again, making a public spectacle of herself while revealing once again that she isn’t to be taken seriously as a jurist.

This time, the court didn’t rule 6-3, with liberal Justices Kagan and Sotomayor joining Jackson in the minority. No, this time she was the only dissenting vote in an 8-1 decision.

Kind of tells you something, doesn’t it? Just like when Kagan and Sotomayor, while disagreeing with the CASA decision, declined to sign onto Justice Jackson’s juvenile minority opinion because it lacked judicial merit… and was so vague and vacuous that it could have been written by a high school intern.

In her lone dissent, Justice Jackson accused her colleagues of a “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.”

"This Court lacks the capacity to fully evaluate, much less responsibly override, reasoned lower court factfinding about what this challenged executive action actually entails," Justice Jackson added.

I’m sure that went over well in the cloakroom.

Meanwhile, Justice Jackson just revealed her hand. Simply put, she despises President Trump and will stop at nothing to find a reason – regardless of legal precedent – to oppose his policies.

But wait. She wasn’t done digging a hole deep enough to bury her entire judicial reputation in, so she just kept going.

“This executive action promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it,” Justice Jackson wrote.

What Justice Jackson fails to realize, is intellectually incapable of understanding, or willfully chooses not to admit is this: it doesn’t matter what she thinks about the president’s policies. Her sole job as a justice of the United States Supreme Court is to determine their constitutionality… period.

The other eight justices managed to grasp that simple judicial concept, which is why they wrote the following: “Because the government is likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order and memorandum are lawful – and because the other factors bearing on whether to grant a stay are satisfied – we grant the application.”

In other words, SCOTUS (minus Jackson) ruled that the President of the United States has the constitutional authority to run the executive branch of the federal government as he sees fit.

And so – just like the CEO of Apple, Walmart, McDonald’s, Ford, or General Motors – he can hire, fire, or lay off employees (and yes, even restructure entire departments) as long as Congress has appropriated the money to do so.

End of story.

It’s really a simple concept, Justice Jackson. Just ask your intern to explain it to you. I’m sure she will be glad to break it down into bite-size words.

Editor’s note: The case above, Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees, involved President Trump’s executive orders to trim various federal agencies and to dismantle others such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (the infamous U.S.A.I.D.) based on recommendations by the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.). When department heads began executing their workforce cuts earlier this year – with thousands of federal employees losing their jobs and probationary workers being terminated – labor unions, nonprofit groups, and local governments sued nearly every federal agency to block the layoffs, arguing that the executive order exceeded the president's authority and violated the separation of powers.

A federal judge in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order that prevented the Trump administration from moving forward with its existing reductions-in-force or planning any future layoffs and U.S. District Judge Susan Illston extended that injunction in May to 22 federal agencies – including the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and State – claiming that the president can restructure federal agencies, but only after obtaining approval from Congress.

"Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them. This much is undisputed," Illston wrote. "But Congress creates federal agencies, funds them, and gives them duties that – by statute – they must carry out. Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress's mandates, and a president may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress."

Based in San Francisco, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit declined to lift Illston’s order, stating in its 2-1 decision in late May that President Trump's executive order "far exceeds" his supervisory powers under the Constitution.

So, basically what Judge Illston and two constitutionally illiterate judges on the 9th Circuit were saying was that the executive branch needs to get permission from the legislative branch to perform its constitutionally-specified duties. I’m not sure if they learned that from the back of a cereal box or just made it up out of whole cloth, but they are clearly wrong… and SCOTUS told them so, in its landmark 8-1 decision.

And so, a few more "rogue judges gone wild" bite the dust!