The Supreme Court Keeps Throwing Judges Under the Bus. They're Finally Fighting Back.

"U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled that the assault on the university brazenly violated the First Amendment by mandating conformity with the administration's views-though she also set Harvard on a winding path of additional litigation to restore the canceled grants. In one remarkable passage, Burroughs also criticized the Supreme Court's cryptic shadow docket decisions, then condemned the justices for scolding lower courts that are unable to divine the meaning of these cryptic orders."

"Two weeks ago, in a shadow docket order, Justice Gorsuch decided to write a little missive aimed at lower courts that were failing to divine exactly how SCOTUS wanted them to handle these decisions. He wrote: "Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court's decisions, but they are never free to defy them. This is now the third time in a matter of weeks this court has had to intercede in a case squarely controlled by one of its precedents." Justice Kavanaugh joined this bench-slap to the lower courts."

A federal judge found that the Trump administration's cancellation of $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard violated the First Amendment by demanding ideological conformity. The judge criticized Supreme Court shadow-docket decisions and rebuked the justices for chastising lower courts that cannot interpret opaque orders. The ruling allows Harvard to pursue additional litigation to attempt to restore the canceled grants. The case intensified debate about opaque Supreme Court practices after Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh issued a shadow-docket admonition to lower courts, prompting renewed lower-court frustration with cryptic high-court orders.

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