The Associated Press review describes what it calls an unusually broad pattern of lower-court rulings being treated as nonbinding, undermining court orders across a range of policies in President Donald Trump’s second term. It traces the dispute to individual immigration cases but also to litigation over changes in policy, mass layoffs, spending reductions, and federal practices tied to agency authority. In multiple matters, district judges said the Justice Department and other executive-branch actors did not follow what the courts required.
The AP review said district court judges ruled there were order-violations in at least 31 lawsuits spanning “a wide range of issues,” and that this corresponded to about one out of every eight lawsuits in which courts temporarily blocked administration actions. The review described immigration as the most visible arena, but said the pattern extended beyond detention and deportation into other executive initiatives and funding decisions.
A central example cited by the AP involved federal district Judge Sunshine Sykes, a nominee of President Joe Biden, who in December had rejected a Trump administration policy aimed at holding immigrants without bond. The AP said that after the ruling, a top Justice Department official told the district court that the order was not binding, and the administration continued denying detainees a chance for release. By February, Sykes said in a later ruling that Trump officials were seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” and that they could do so only “in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”
The AP review also said the noncompliance findings were not limited to the 31 lawsuits. It reported that courts have highlighted more than 250 instances of noncompliance in individual immigration petitions, including situations involving officials failing to return property and keeping immigrants locked up past release dates ordered by courts. Legal scholars and former federal judges quoted in the AP story said they could remember at most a few comparable examples across the full four-year terms of other recent administrations, including Trump’s earlier presidency, and said the Justice Department had been more combative in some of the current matters.
In the cases where district judges found violations, the AP said higher courts sometimes moved to the administration’s side. The review found appellate courts and the Supreme Court overruled district courts and sided with the White House in nearly half of the 31 cases. A White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said those higher courts had overturned “unlawful district court rulings,” and the White House would “continue to comply with lawful court rulings,” according to a written statement cited by the AP. The statement added that the administration would implement the “America First agenda he was elected to enact,” as described in the AP report.
Critics quoted in the AP story said the legal pattern can normalize defiance. Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who tracks litigation against the administration, said, “What the court system is experiencing in the last year and a half is just qualitatively completely different from anything that’s preceded it.” David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University, said in the AP report that when the federal government stops feeling bound by court orders, “respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.” JoAnna Suriani, counsel at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, said, “The danger is that this gets normalized,” and noted the group tracks noncompliance cases and is involved in litigation against the administration.
The AP said some judges’ criticisms stopped short of formal findings of violations but still described what they viewed as problems in how the executive branch responded. It cited an October dispute where a judge, William Smith, concluded Homeland Security officials were flouting an order connected to disaster-relief funding conditioned on immigration priorities. The AP said DHS kept the immigration requirement on some grants, but made it contingent on a higher court overriding Smith’s injunction, and that Smith called the response “ham-handed” and said DHS was trying to “bully the states.” The AP also cited a May dispute over refugee admissions in which another district judge, Jamal Whitehead, said Justice Department filings last year involved “hallucinating new text” and “rewriting” an appellate court order.
Judicial criticism also appears in cases that continued after district orders, the AP said. It reported that among the judges who confirmed violations in the reviewed cases, 22 were appointed by Democratic presidents and 7 by Republican presidents. It also reported that former federal judges Jeremy Fogel and Liam O’Grady said judges are losing trust in the Justice Department’s integrity and that this has made courts more aggressive in accusing the government of bad faith. In the AP story, O’Grady said judges are getting frustrated as orders go uncomplied with and courts end up inquiring why compliance did not happen.
The AP described the spillover into education policy as well. It said that in Eureka, California, school administrator Lisa Claussen raised concerns about student mental health if a judge does not find the Education Department in violation of an order about federal grants. The AP said the district used grant money to hire more than a dozen psychologists and social workers, and that the Trump administration told schools it was discontinuing the grants while opposing diversity considerations. The AP said Judge Kymberly Evanson permanently blocked the move in December, but that California and 15 other states later said the administration was pursuing an end run around the injunction through new rules, including a six-month initial limit on funding. According to the AP, Justice Department attorneys said they wanted to determine whether schools met performance goals before releasing more funds and said the judge’s order did not block the six-month limit; Evanson, a Biden nominee, had yet to rule at the time of the AP report.
The AP story also says that in court filings, Justice Department attorneys generally disputed accusations of noncompliance. It reported that lawyers argued over the meaning of words in orders, pointed to favorable appellate rulings, and said they were acting outside the scope of what the district court required. Outside court, the AP said Trump and White House officials criticized judges and, citing video and statements included in the AP story, Vice President JD Vance suggested the president could ignore court orders.
In its summary of the broader context, the AP reported that in March an appellate court ruled Sykes had likely exceeded her authority in requiring bond hearings nationwide and blocked her February decision. The AP said that in 15 of the 31 lawsuits it reviewed, appellate courts or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration’s underlying policy, limited the district court’s ability to correct or punish noncompliance, or both. It also cited a dissent by Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor warning that the court had “closed its eyes” to noncompliance before and that discretionary relief in such cases further erodes respect for courts and the rule of law.
As this dispute plays out across multiple policy areas, the AP’s reporting highlights a recurring institutional question: whether the executive branch treats lower-court orders as binding while legal challenges proceed. The administration says it will follow lawful rulings, while the AP’s review and multiple judges’ characterizations described in the story raise concerns about how quickly alleged noncompliance becomes routine—an outcome critics say could weaken the rule of law beyond the cases before the courts.