Fully aware that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court is going to extremes to hand Donald Trump multiple victories by use of the so-called "shadow docket," judges in the lower courts are fashioning some of their rulings to work around the nation's highest court.
According to a report from Politico, the Supreme Court has been handcuffing the lower courts by swatting down nationwide injunctions even when they are constitutionally sound which is leading to both plaintiffs, and the judges hearing challenges, to tailor their filings accordingly.
As Politico's Kyle Cheney and Hassan Ali Kanu wrote, "... early results indicate that judges see other paths to impose sweeping restrictions on government actions they deem unlawful. And those options remain viable in many major pending lawsuits against the administration."
Case in point: on Friday U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued an "extraordinary" rejection of a Trump demand to eliminate asylum for most southern border-crossers which has national implications.
Politico is reporting Judge Moss, "emphasized that his decision was not one of the now-verboten injunctions. Instead, it relied on two alternative routes the Supreme Court acknowledged remained available for those challenging Trump’s policies: class actions, which allow large groups to band together and sue over a common problem, and the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that permits courts to 'set aside' federal agency actions that violate the law, including rules, regulations and memos laying out new procedures."
That was followed, just hours later when U.S. District Judge John Bates ordered the Trump administration "to restore hundreds of web pages containing gender-related data that officials took down pursuant to a Trump executive order cracking down on 'gender ideology.'"
The report notes that Bates –– a George W. Bush appointee –– "... emphasized that the APA allows courts to effectively undo unjustified agency action, adding that even the Justice Department did 'not argue that more tailored relief is even possible here, let alone appropriate.'"
The Politico report added, "In short, the Supreme Court’s ruling on nationwide injunctions may be the tectonic shift that wasn’t. Despite the extraordinary potential to reshape the judiciary, its immediate impact — particularly in the innumerable challenges to Trump’s effort to single-handedly slash and reshape the federal government — may be limited."
You can read more here.
