“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
Two Trump judges on the D.C. Circuit terminated a district court judge’s contempt of court proceeding against the Trump administration for violating a court order. The August 2025 case is in J.G.G. v. Trump.
What was this case about?
Earlier this year, the Trump administration began to round up immigrants and send them to a concentration camp in El Salvador. As its legal authority to do this, it cited a statute that only applies in wartime. And it refused to give the targeted immigrants a chance to defend themselves against the government’s accusations against them.
A group of targeted individuals turned to the court for help. DC district court judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to stop while litigation was pending. Yet the administration defied that order. Officials chose not to turn around planes that were already out of U.S. airspace.
The Supreme Court later ruled that the plaintiffs should have gone to another court. The justices ordered Judge Boasberg to dismiss their lawsuit.
But there was still the issue of defying Judge Boasberg's order which was in place until the justices ordered dismissal of the lawsuit. Even if it turns out that a court order was wrongly decided, the parties can’t simply defy it.
So Judge Boasberg started a process to determine if officials had engaged in criminal contempt of court. He directed the administration to identify who made the decision to allow the planes to proceed. As an alternative, he told officials they could instead commit to giving the immigrants sent to El Salvador their fair day in court to argue that Trump’s accusations against them were false.
Trump went to the DC Circuit and asked them to issue a “writ of mandamus” terminating the contempt proceeding. A writ of mandamus is considered an “extraordinary” remedy. It is only to be used in the exceptional circumstance where there has been a clear abuse of discretion by a lower court, and no other means is available to correct it.
What did the Trump judges do, and how does it harm us?
The case was decided by a three-judge panel with two Trump judges: Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao. Over the dissent of Obama judge Nina Pillard, they granted Trump’s request and issued the writ.
Importantly, the majority opinion was not signed by either judge. It granted the writ without explaining why. That matters, because the two Trump judges couldn’t agree on their reasoning. Judge Katsas wrote a concurring opinion setting forth his reasons, and Judge Rao had her own concurrence setting out hers.
Under the law, a petitioner can get a writ only if they have “a clear and indisputable right” to it. As Judge Pillard pointed out in her dissent, the fact that the two judges ruling for Trump disagreed on their reasoning makes it “even more apparent” that the government did not have a clear and indisputable right to the writ.
Among other things, Katsas claimed that Boasberg’s order halting the deportations was ambiguous. Boasberg had enjoined the government from “removing” members of the class, but he didn’t specifically define the word “removing.” If it meant “transporting class members outside of U.S. territory,” then the government didn’t violate it because the planes were already outside of U.S. airspace when the order was issued. But if it meant “relinquishing custody” of the immigrants to El Salvadoran authorities, then the administration was in violation, because that happened after Boasberg’s order. Katsas thought the former was more likely, so the administration may have genuinely believed it was in compliance.
In her dissent, Pillard sharply criticized the idea that Boasberg’s order had been ambiguous. She cited precedent noting that a party “may not avoid contempt proceedings by twisted interpretations or tortured constructions of the provisions of the order.”
Judge Rao’s reasoning was different from Katsas’s. She took issue with Boasberg for giving the administration a way to avoid having to provide information about who made the decision to violate the court order. Boasberg had said the government could instead give the plaintiffs a fair hearing. Rao claimed that when the Supreme Court vacated Boasberg’s original order, he lost the authority to coerce compliance with it.
In her dissent, Pillard pointed out that Rao did not challenge the first part of the contempt order (to produce information). Rao provided no legal authority for the idea that a court can’t offer parties an alternative to avoid criminal contempt of court. In addition, even if Boasberg’s alternative was not permitted, the solution would not be to vacate both parts of the contempt order.
This ruling illustrates the importance of our federal courts to protecting our freedom. If the Trump administration can get away with defying court orders, then we no longer have a system of checks and balances. We have a dictatorship.