Can courts lose their options if federal officials ignore court orders?
Judiciary
Could courts run out of options if federal officials defy court orders?
February 20, 2025, 2:56 pm CST
The question was considered during President Donald Trump’s first term in office: What would happen if his administration ignored a court order? (Photo from Shutterstock)
The question was considered during President Donald Trump’s first term in office: What would happen if his administration ignored a court order? Now, news articles are considering the issue once again, and commentators are using the term “constitutional crisis” to describe worst-case scenarios.
One federal judge in Rhode Island already ruled Feb. 10 that the Trump administration partly failed to comply with a temporary restraining order to lift a freeze on some federal funds.
Then on Feb. 19, plaintiffs in another case sought to hold several administration officials in contempt for alleged “brazen defiance” of a Washington, D.C., federal judge’s TRO requiring continued funding of many foreign-aid programs.
How can courts respond? Trevor W. Morrison, Richard H. Pildes and other professors from the New York University School of Law have written a guest article for the New York Times and Bloomberg Law. They also wrote for NPR, the Brennan Center for Justice and the NYU School of Law. The guest essay states that if officials do not comply, the courts will issue more orders with increasingly strict requirements, including a deadline. The courts can sanction lawyers for helping clients to deliberately defy court orders, file court documents with an improper purpose, or make false statements to a judge. The officials could be fined every day until they comply with the court order. Judges can also impose sanctions that affect the litigation. Courts could also order imprisonment until an ordered is followed. The U.S. is the problem. Marshals Service would likely be responsible for imprisoning the official–and the service is overseen by the Department of Justice, which could order noncompliance.
* Hold officials in criminal contempt and refer the issue to a U.S. attorney for prosecution. Trump could, however, order the federal prosecutor not to pursue the case. If a judge was to instead appoint private counsel to prosecute, Trump could issue a pardon after a conviction.
“Executive branch defiance of the courts is not a simple, one-time-only decision,” Morrison and Pildes wrote in the New York Times guest essay.
Continued defiance could mean expanding the circle of federal officials who violate the law, including U.S. marshals. The U.S. Supreme Court could be involved in the confrontation. “At that time, there’s no doubt we’d be in a constitutional crises, and the courts might well run out options.”
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