Free Republic

Justice Neil Gorsuch called out lower courts on Thursday for a pattern of defying Supreme Court rulings. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with cutting millions in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants marked the “third time in a matter of weeks” the Supreme Court had to reverse a lower court on an issue it had already addressed, Gorsuch wrote. “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to rein in lower court rulings that have prevented a ban on birthright citizenship from taking effect nationwide. Judges should not be able to govern “the whole Nation” from their courtrooms by issuing universal injunctions that block policies across the entire country while litigation is pending, the administration told the justices in its application. “District courts have issued more universal injunctions and TROs [temporary restraining orders] during February 2025 alone than through the first three years of the Biden Administration,” the application states. “That sharp rise in universal injunctions stops the...

A New York appeals court rejected on Thursday former President Donald Trump’s effort to lift the remainder of his gag order. Trump sought to have the order lifted after he was convicted in May on 34 counts for falsifying business records. Judge Juan Merchan partially lifted the order in June but left in place key restrictions, including one that prevents Trump from criticizing prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office. The court agreed that the end of the trial did not constitute “a change in circumstances” that warranted terminating the order, noting that the “fair administration of justice necessarily...

The Supreme Court may soon weigh in on Mountain Valley Pipeline developers’ request to vacate a federal court’s order to halt construction on the project, which developers argue conflicts with a law Congress passed guaranteeing its completion. Developers of the natural gas pipeline filed an emergency application Friday with Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles petitions from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the Supreme Court to allow the project to continue. The Fourth Circuit sided with environmental groups challenging the pipeline and temporarily halted the project last week, an order the developers argue “flew in the face” of...

The Delaware Supreme Court sided with the University of Delaware Thursday, denying the release of President Joe Biden’s Senate records in a lawsuit brought by the Daily Caller News Foundation and Judicial Watch. The DCNF and Judicial Watch appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court in January 2023 after the state’s Superior Court found the university had satisfied the burden of proof needed to justify denying the records that the DCNF requested through the state’s public records act. The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Superior Court’s judgement Thursday, shielding the documents requested in both organization’s April 30, 2020 public records requests...