Trump Hypes Incremental Wins at Supreme Court as Big Victories

President Donald Trump is heralding victories from the Supreme Court that legal experts say are short-term, procedural, and incremental wins at best in his effort to unilaterally advance immigration and federal spending priorities.

Responses to rulings that allowed the Trump administration to keep deporting alleged Venezuela gang members, halt teacher grants, and fire federal workers are among those said to be overblown. And the court this week issued a high-profile ruling ordering the government to “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man it deported to El Salvador, largely rejecting the administration’s arguments that doing so would go beyond the government’s authority.

Part of why Trump and his allies have claimed big wins “is because the court has been handing the administration narrow procedural victories in the cover of broad substantive defeats,” Georgetown law professor Stephen Vladeck said on Bloomberg Law’s “Cases and Controversies” podcast.

Trump is seeking help from the justices after a wave of losses in the lower courts. He’s asked for emergency rulings in 10 cases so far. The justices have blocked lower court orders against his administration in three of the six they’ve decided. Others are still pending.

It’s premature for the Trump administration to call these victories, said University of San Diego Law professor Michael Ramsey.

“To say that, either the administration is doing great in the Supreme Court or that the administration is on the way to getting substantially restrained by the court, it’s just too early to know where this is going to head,” he said.

Notre Dame Law professor Derek Muller agreed, saying the rulings are “pretty small ball in the large scheme of things.”

Nevertheless, “there’s been a lot of hype around the justices’ decisions or votes, and the outcomes or what it means, including some pretty vigorous dissenting opinions,” Muller said.

He noted Justice Samuel Alito said he was “stunned” on March 5 when the court reinstated a lower court order that forced the administration to disburse as much as $2 billion in foreign aid for contracted work that had already been performed. The justices later allowed the Trump administration to cancel millions in teacher grants, this time with Alito in the majority.

On the other side of the court’s ideological divide, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said her colleague’s decision to let Trump keep deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members is as “inexplicable as it is dangerous.”

The president quickly praised the ruling on social media.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Detainee Litigation

But while the majority and the dissent in that case, known as Trump v. J.G.G., disagreed on what type of claim detainees can make and where they can bring them, Muller said they fundamentally agreed there is a way for people to challenge their detention.

“For all the rhetoric of the dissents, today’s order and per curiam confirm that the detainees subject to removal orders under the AEA are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal,” the court’s unsigned opinion April 7 said, referring to the Alien Enemies Act. The 1798 law allows the president to remove foreign citizens of a “hostile” nation during wartime.

The majority ultimately lifted a lower court’s hold on deportations, saying the plaintiffs should have filed a habeas petition in the federal district in which they were confined rather than challenge the use of the AEA in the US District Court for the District of Columbia under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Days later, and citing the Supreme Court’s April 7 ruling, federal judges in New York and Texas temporarily halted the deportations once again. The plaintiffs “are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims, that neither the AEA, nor the Presidential Proclamation, authorizes removal of detainees or other persons similarly situated, without notice and hearing,” Southern District of New York Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in his April 9 order.

Ramsey said it shows the justices are concerned with procedural formalities. They’re “insisting that lower courts not cut corners on procedure and follow technicalities,” he said.

Federal Workers

A 7-2 court reversed a lower court ruling halting the firing of thousands of federal employees. The nonprofit groups that secured the order didn’t have standing, the April 8 order said.

While the order means the Trump administration doesn’t have to immediately rehire those employees, it’s likely another group of plaintiffs will have standing, and therefore the case will continue, Ramsey said.

Even Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented from the Supreme Court’s order in that case, did so because of procedural concerns.

She would have “declined to reach the standing question in the context of an application for emergency relief,” the order said.

In the deportation case, Jackson scolded the court for resolving issues via its so-called shadow docket without full briefing and argument. She called this “fly-by-night approach to the work of the Supreme Court” misguided and dangerous.

“The court does seem to be overly willing to step in when the government asks them to,” said Carolyn Shapiro, co-director of the Chicago-Kent College of Law Institute on the Supreme Court.

“It’s often not conducive to them being able to fully understand what’s at stake,” she said.

Vladeck said that willingness is likely to lead to more emergency requests.

“These modest procedural wins are only going to incentivize the administration to ask for more of them,” he said.