The Supreme Court Justices have had enough. The Judicial branch is out of control.
And now Justice Neil Gorsuch has put lower courts in their place with this newly released opinion.
The American judicial system is under siege, and the culprits are activist lower court judges who think they can override the Supreme Court and the will of the people. Justice Neil Gorsuch called out lower courts on Thursday for a pattern of defying Supreme Court rulings, and he’s absolutely right to sound the alarm. These rogue judges are trying to sabotage President Trump’s agenda, and it’s time for patriots to take notice.
The latest battleground is the Trump administration’s push to cut millions in National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants tied to divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and gender ideology nonsense. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, allowed the administration to move forward with these cuts, marking 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. This isn’t a one-off mistake—it’s a deliberate pattern of defiance that threatens the very structure of our judicial system.
“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. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening. In April, the Supreme Court greenlit the Trump administration’s termination of DEI-related teacher training grants.
But in June, a Massachusetts federal judge, William Young, had the audacity to block similar NIH grant cuts, citing the dissenting justices while ignoring the majority ruling. This is judicial activism at its worst—judges cherry-picking opinions to push their own agendas.
Gorsuch didn’t mince words, pointing out that the district court’s behavior was not a “one-off.” He highlighted two other recent cases where lower courts tried to undermine the Supreme Court’s authority. In July, a 7-2 decision slapped down a district judge’s attempt to block Trump’s third-country deportation policy. Even liberal Justice Elena Kagan, who dissented in the original case, couldn’t stomach the lower court’s defiance, writing, “I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed.” When even Kagan is calling out these judges, you know it’s bad.
The pattern continued with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). In May, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to fire members of administrative agencies, yet a lower court tried to block the president from removing three Democratic CPSC members in July. The Supreme Court stepped in again, reinforcing its authority.
These repeated interventions prove Gorsuch’s point: “All these interventions should have been unnecessary, but together they underscore a basic tenet of our judicial system: Whatever their own views, judges are duty-bound to respect ‘the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress.’”
This rebellion isn’t just about legal technicalities—it’s about power. Lower court judges, often appointed by liberal administrations, are waging a war against Trump’s America First policies. The NIH grants, worth $783 million, funded studies like “Buddhism and HIV stigma in Thailand” and “controlled puberty in transgender adolescents,” according to the Trump administration’s lawyers.
These are the kinds of wasteful, ideologically driven projects that taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund. Yet, activist judges are fighting tooth and nail to keep the money flowing, defying both the Supreme Court and the executive branch’s prerogative to set priorities.
The NIH case is a perfect example of the left’s obsession with DEI and gender ideology. When Trump took office in January, he vowed to dismantle these divisive programs, arguing they promote discrimination under the guise of equality. The NIH, with its massive $47 billion budget, became a prime target.
The administration identified over 1,700 grants that didn’t align with its priorities and moved to terminate them. But Judge Young, a Reagan appointee turned liberal darling, ruled the cancellations were “arbitrary and discriminatory,” accusing the government of “pervasive racial discrimination” and bias against women’s health issues. This is the kind of judicial overreach that infuriates hardworking Americans.
Gorsuch called out the lower court’s reliance on dissenting opinions, writing, “If nothing else, the promise of our legal system that like cases are treated alike means that a lower court ought not invoke the ‘persuasive authority’ of a dissent or a repudiated court of appeals decision to reach a different conclusion on an equivalent record.” This isn’t just a legal error—it’s a slap in the face to the principle of vertical stare decisis, which ensures lower courts follow Supreme Court precedent. When judges ignore this, they’re not just defying the court—they’re defying the Constitution itself.
The Supreme Court’s emergency docket has become a battleground for these clashes. As Gorsuch noted, the court’s emergency rulings are “not conclusive as to the merits” but should guide lower courts in similar cases. Yet, time and again, district judges are acting like they’re above the law. Solicitor General D. John Sauer warned that this defiance “has grown to epidemic proportions,” and he’s not exaggerating. The Trump administration has had to run to the Supreme Court repeatedly to stop these rogue judges from blocking its policies, from NIH cuts to deportations to agency firings.
The left’s strategy is clear: use friendly judges in liberal strongholds to tie up Trump’s agenda in endless litigation. Posts on X have highlighted this tactic, with users like @HarryMacD noting that Democrats are waging “lawfare” in jurisdictions they control, like Washington, D.C., where Trump lost by over 90% in every election. These judges know they can delay and obstruct, hoping to outlast the administration or sway public opinion. It’s a cynical abuse of power that undermines the will of the voters who elected Trump to shake up the system.
What’s at stake here is more than just a few grants or deportations—it’s the integrity of our judicial system. When lower courts defy the Supreme Court, they erode public trust in the rule of law. Americans want a government that works for them, not one bogged down by activist judges pushing their own ideologies. The NIH cuts, for instance, are about redirecting taxpayer dollars to real priorities, like curing diseases, not funding woke experiments that most Americans reject.
The Supreme Court’s recent rulings show it’s not afraid to stand up to these rogue judges. In the NIH case, Justice Amy Coney Barrett played a key role, writing that the lower court “likely lacked jurisdiction” to block the grant terminations, which belong in the Court of Federal Claims. Her nuanced approach—allowing the cuts but keeping the administration’s guidance documents blocked—shows the court is trying to balance fairness with authority. But the fact that these interventions keep happening proves the problem is systemic.
Chief Justice John Roberts, often a swing vote, dissented in the NIH case, siding with the court’s liberals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson went further, blasting the majority for turning a statute meant to check agency overreach “into a gauntlet rather than a refuge.” But their arguments miss the point: lower courts can’t just ignore Supreme Court precedent because they disagree with it.
The Trump administration’s victories at the Supreme Court—18 emergency appeals granted in its second term, according to The Hill—are a testament to its determination to fight judicial overreach. But the battle is far from over. As long as liberal judges feel emboldened to defy the Supreme Court, they’ll keep trying to block Trump’s agenda, from securing the border to cutting wasteful spending.
