Washington — A divided federal appeals court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s request to set aside a district judge’s decision finding probable cause that some federal officials violated an order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants bound for El Salvador.
The 2-1 decision from a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is a massive victory for the Trump administration, which has lambasted U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for overstepping his authority when he ordered criminal contempt proceedings in April.
The D.C. Circuit had issued a temporary pause of Boasberg’s decision while it took more time to consider the issue. In an unsigned opinion, Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both appointed by President Trump in his first term, granted a request from the Justice Department to toss out Boasberg’s contempt order. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, dissented.
In a concurring opinion, Katsas wrote that the dispute over the removal of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March “involves an extraordinary, ongoing confrontation between the Executive and Judicial Branches.”
The judge said a decision in favor of the Trump administration is appropriate because “the government is plainly correct about the merits of the criminal contempt, and our saying so now would prevent long disputes between the Executive and the Judiciary over difficult, contentious issues regarding the courts’ power to control foreign policy or prosecutions, or to impose criminal sanctions for violating injunctions entered without jurisdiction.”
“In circumstances much less fraught than these, courts have reviewed interlocutory orders through mandamus to prevent extended inter-branch conflict,” Katsas said.
He wrote that Boasberg’s contempt finding “raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses.”
In her dissent, Pillard argued that Boasberg’s contempt findings were appropriate, and said the majority’s decision to throw out the contempt findings was “in error.”
“Our system of courts cannot long endure if disappointed litigants defy court orders with impunity rather than legally challenge them. That is why willful disobedience of a court order is punishable as criminal contempt,” Pillar wrote. “When it appears that a judicial order has been disobeyed, the court’s ability to learn who was responsible is the first step to accountability.”
