By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) – A federal judge in Boston had some direct words for Donald Trump as he issued one of dozens of court decisions in four New England states against the Republican president in challenges to the legality of his policies.
“I fear that President Trump believes that the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight, and defend our most cherished constitutional values ​​while they are led to believe that their personal interests are not affected,” wrote US District Judge William Young in ruling that the Trump administration was violating free speech rights by deporting non-US citizen pro-Palestinian activists in American universities.
Young’s Sept. 30 ruling was an example of how federal judges in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine have become key players in legal wars over Trump’s policies since he returned to office in January, as litigants seek a friendly venue to challenge the president.
A Reuters analysis found that at least 72 lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies have been filed in federal courts in those four states by plaintiffs including Democratic state attorneys general, advocacy groups and institutions targeted by the administration. Lower court judges made at least an initial decision in 51 of those cases, ruling against Trump in 46 of them, the analysis showed.
These have included challenges to Trump’s policies to restrict birthright citizenship, gutting the US Department of Education, revoking the legal status of thousands of immigrants, and accelerating deportations of immigrants to countries other than their own – so-called “third countries” – including politically unstable South Sudan.
While nationally the American judiciary is closely divided between judges appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents, in these four states 17 of the 20 active federal trial judges are appointed by Democrats. These states fall under the umbrella of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose five active judges were appointed by Democratic presidents while a Trump nominee awaits Senate confirmation.
“I don’t think there’s any other court that, in terms of composition, has those kinds of odds for groups advocating on the liberal side,” Payvand Ahdout, a law professor at the University of Virginia, said of the First Circuit.
Ahdout said the ideological makeup of that appeals court has made New England’s federal trial courts attractive litigation venues that offer the “best opportunity” for those challenging Trump’s policies.
The First Circuit, in handling Justice Department appeals against rulings by these trial judges against the president’s policies, has issued 15 decisions, granting the administration’s request to vacate court orders only three times.
To be sure, the First Circuit does not have the final say on the cases. It is one of 12 regional federal appeals courts that cover specific geographic areas of the United States. All of them are one step below the U.S. Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority has seen American law shift dramatically to the right under Chief Justice John Roberts.
The administration has repeatedly gone to the Supreme Court with emergency requests to implement policies stymied by lower courts, and the justices have almost always sided with Trump. This year, the Supreme Court has already fully or partially stayed injunctions against Trump policies arising from the First Circuit’s jurisdiction on seven occasions in cases related to the Department of Education, the legal status of immigrants and deportations to third countries.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Reuters that the administration’s policies have been “consistently upheld by the Supreme Court as legal despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and illegal lower court rulings by far-left liberal activist judges.”
Trump himself has criticized some of the New England judges. After Boston-based US District Judge Brian Murphy blocked several deportations to South Sudan, Trump called him and other judges “out of control.” And Trump called Boston-based U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs’ ruling against the administration in a case involving Harvard University a “total disaster.”
“Regardless of where Democrats try to make their challenges, our victory will continue,” Jackson said.
PURCHASES IN THE FORUM
The idea of ​​”forum shopping,” seeking a friendly legal venue, is nothing new, as litigants across the political spectrum have long taken cases to ideologically sympathetic judges. For example, conservatives challenging the agenda of Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, flocked to Texas courts packed with Republican-appointed judges to challenge policies regarding LGBT rights, immigration, student debt relief and gun control.
The regional federal appeals court that has jurisdiction over most of the challenges this year to Trump’s policies is the one that covers Washington, DC, as might be expected considering it is the seat of the US government. But the First Circuit courts have attracted the second-highest number of such lawsuits, according to data from Just Security, an online publication based at New York University School of Law.
During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, the federal courts in Northern California were a prime venue for legal challenges. Trump called the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which handles appeals from there, a “disgrace” after it ruled against him in cases including his travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries, a policy later allowed by the Supreme Court.
However, by the end of his first term, Trump had appointed 10 judges to the Ninth Circuit, reducing the likelihood that Democratic appointees would dominate the judicial panels that decide appeals.
‘KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GETTING’
While the Supreme Court has sided with the administration in some major cases this year stemming from the First Circuit, the Justice Department has not yet asked the justices to review other adverse rulings by judges in the region.
That means, for example, that decisions by judges in Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, remain in place and block the administration’s efforts to make changes to federal elections, including limits on the counting of mail-in ballots, limiting federal research funding to universities, and disfavoring arts organizations that seek grants because they support “gender ideology.”
Among the rulings the administration has not asked the Supreme Court to stay is one by Providence-based U.S. District Judge John McConnell, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, who blocked a broad freeze on federal funds that Trump’s White House budget office issued in January.
Until this year, the Rhode Island court rarely heard cases of this type. However, in deciding where to bring the funding freeze case, Democratic Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said states pursuing the challenge considered New York City before settling on Providence, whose three active judges are, in his words, “known quantities.”
“You know what you’re getting,” Neronha told Reuters. “He has some confidence that he will get a well-reasoned, law-based decision.”
Democratic state attorneys general have filed 43 lawsuits in which several states have challenged Trump’s policies this year. Of them, 26 have been filed in Massachusetts (13), Rhode Island (12) and directly in the First Circuit Court of Appeals (one).
In the past two months, judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have blocked the administration’s cancellation of federal funding for Harvard, its immigration-related conditions on disaster aid and housing grants, and its attempt to exclude the children of certain immigrants from the federally funded Head Start preschool program.
Burroughs, an Obama appointee, wrote in the Harvard ruling that courts must “step forward” to safeguard free speech rights “even if doing so risks incurring the wrath of a government committed to its agenda no matter the cost.”
‘WE THE PEOPLE’
Young was appointed to the position in 1985 by former Republican President Ronald Reagan.
The judge’s docket remains full of Trump-related cases. The Supreme Court put on hold one of its rulings reinstating diversity-related National Institutes of Health research grants. Meanwhile, Young is weighing challenges on issues including the administration’s suspension of wind energy projects, gutting climate regulations and weakening government vaccine policies.
In his ruling on the deportation of university activists, Young found that Trump’s policy violated the US Constitution’s protection against government restriction of free speech. The judge also included in his written decision part of a postcard he received from an anonymous sender that asked: “Trump has pardons and tanks… What do you have?”
“Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, we, the people of the United States – you and I – have our magnificent Constitution,” Young wrote, quoting the document’s preamble. “Here’s how that works in a specific case.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham and Alexia Garamfalvi)