Judge Apologizes to Conservative Justices in Case Over N.I.H. Cuts

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/us/politics/judge-apology-conservative-justices.html

https://archive.ph/PZLGi

Judge Apologizes to Conservative Justices in Case Over N.I.H. Cuts
The display of contrition came after Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh issued a stern warning directing judges to heed their orders in August.
By Zach Montague
Sept. 2, 2025, 4:49 p.m. ET

Nearly two weeks after two Supreme Court justices delivered a stinging rebuke warning lower-court judges not to “defy” their rulings, the judge at whom the directive was aimed issued an apology from the bench, pledging to adjust to meet the highest court’s demands.

The acknowledgment on Tuesday by Judge William G. Young in Federal District Court in Massachusetts highlighted the precarious position that lower courts have landed in this year as they struggle to make sense of a growing number of unsigned orders the Supreme Court has produced through the court’s emergency docket.

Judge Young’s apology came at a hearing on Tuesday to discuss how to move forward after the Supreme Court in August overruled his decision to block the Trump administration from slashing hundreds of millions of dollars in grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health.

Writing as part of that emergency order, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh had suggested that Judge Young subverted the court’s will by failing to apply an earlier emergency order focused on canceled Education Department grants to his N.I.H. case.

Judge Young said on Tuesday that he had not realized he was expected to rely on a slim three-page order issued with minimal legal reasoning in April to his case dealing with a different agency.

Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has sided with White House in nearly every case it has considered.

But it has done so relatively opaquely through more than a dozen emergency orders — unsigned opinions issued relatively quickly and without oral argument.

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"To all lower-level judges: Thou shalt not disobey the Trump Supreme Whorehouse"