What Happens if (or When) the Federal Government Disobeys a Court Order?, by David C. Vladeck

by Guest Blogger — Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017


vladeck-200-287Yale Law School Professor Nick Parrillo must have a crystal ball. His just-posted article, The Endgame of Administrative Law: Governmental Disobedience and the Judicial Contempt Power, seems to have anticipated today’s headlines. The controversies over Trump’s ill-considered Immigration Executive Order, Trump’s summary firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to defend the Order, and reports that some Customs and Border Protection agents may have disregarded court orders, all suggest that we may be moving quickly towards a smack-down between the Executive and Judicial branches, with the looming possibility that Trump will direct government officials to disobey court orders.

Fortunately, Professor Parrillo has written the definitive account of how courts deal with Executive Branch defiance of court orders. Here are portions of the abstract of his article:

Scholars of administrative law focus overwhelmingly on lawsuits to review federal government action while assuming that, if plaintiffs win such lawsuits, the government will do what the court says. But in fact, the federal government’s compliance with court orders is imperfect and fraught, especially with orders compelling the government to act affirmatively. . . . An agency hit with such an order will often warn the judge that it badly needs more latitude and more time to comply. Judges relent, cutting slack and extending deadlines. The plaintiff who has “won” the suit finds that victory was merely the start of a tough negotiation that can drag on for years.

These compliance negotiations are little understood. . . . [I]f the judge concludes that the agency has delayed too long and demanded too much, is there anything she can do, at long last, to make the agency comply?

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Through an examination of thousands of opinions (especially of district courts), docket sheets, briefs, and other filings, plus archival research and interviews, this Article provides the first general assessment of how federal courts handle the federal government’s disobedience. It makes four conclusions. First, the federal judiciary is willing to issue contempt findings against agencies and officials. Second, while several federal judges believe they can (and have tried to) attach sanctions to these findings, the higher courts have exhibited a virtually complete unwillingness to allow sanctions, at times swooping down at the eleventh hour to rescue an agency from incurring a budget-straining fine or its top official from being thrown in jail. Third, the higher courts, even as they unfailingly thwart sanctions in all but a few minor instances, have bent over backward to avoid making pronouncements that sanctions are categorically unavailable, deliberately keeping the sanctions issue in a state of low salience and at least nominal legal uncertainty. Fourth, even though contempt findings are practically devoid of sanctions, they have a shaming effect that gives them substantial if imperfect deterrent power.

Until now, government disobedience with court orders has been an obscure and rarely examined codicil to administrative law. None of the leading administrative law casebooks deals with the question. A few mention the “non-acquiescence” stance taken during the Reagan Administration. But “non-acquiescence” is a far cry from disobedience. Ultimately, the Reagan Administration complied with courts orders, even if it insisted on circuit-by-circuit adjudication of the same issue. The lack of scholarly attention to the issue of Executive disobedience is unsurprising. As Professor Parrillo documents, the Executive and Judicial branches have by and large sought to avoid head on collisions. Professor Parrillo is the first scholar to attempt to impose some order on what has been an unruly and neglected subject.

Fortunately, Professor Parrillo has done yeoman’s work in telling the stories of these cases. Having spent much of my career battling the government in court, I participated in some of the cases discussed in the article. Much of their history is not laid out in reported decisions; which may explain why this issue has long been ignored by scholars. Rather, the stories had to be painstakingly unearthed by digging through old case records and reading mounds of motion papers, briefs, and affidavits. Professor Parrillo’s research provides a deep and highly detailed factual account of what really takes place in cases where the Executive Branch feels it necessary to defy a court order.

As the new President tests the limits of the courts, judges, litigators, agency lawyers, and scholars who have long wondered about the dynamics in contempt actions against government agencies but never had more than a small window into one or a few cases will turn to Professor Parrillo’s article for guidance. It is a primer for anyone watching the Trump Administration edge closer and closer to defying court orders.


David C. Vladeck is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.



3 thoughts on “What Happens if (or When) the Federal Government Disobeys a Court Order?, by David C. Vladeck

  1. LaSandra Brown

    What happens now that Trump has disobeyed the Federal court order to reunite migrant children with their parents/guardians? The court-ordered deadline was TODAY. 7-10-18.

  2. Daron Johnson

    I see this country becoming a dictatorship and police state if Trump doesn’t get removed from office. He is also causing division within his party and to some extent in the democratic party as well. Not only that he is increasing the difference between the rich and the poor. He is selling this country out. The problems don’t stop there. We pay congress’s salary and all we get is a process that is slower than the slowest turtle in the world and they cannot seem to agree on anything. They spend money like it is free while senior’s like me have to put up with inflation. It is not fair that people in this country are struggling just to keep a roof over their head and food on the table and a car in running condition for rural folks that are a ways from town. This country seems to be headed to something like Venezuela but we are a long ways from there but that could happen to us. Our infostructure is getting in disrepair and our taxes are increasing and our money’s purchasing power is shrinking every day. I hope and prey that this country will not head in that direction that many other poor countries are headed. By the way I did not vote for him, or for hilary either BUT I did vote. I guess it is ok for Trump to have chain migration family as his wife and parents are forign but nobody else is allowed to do it and all the children at the border that are being put in cages there and this is likely they will suffer life long effects. I do agree that the U.S. cannot just take all of them in but a more orderly fashion needs to take place and all those migrants needed to be treated with respect.

  3. Daron Johnson

    It is clear that there are holes in the U.S. constitution that need to be closed. As more people enter the government eventually somebody will find legal ways to go around it. If somebody breaks the law and has enough money to hire a team of top lawyers that person could get off scott free. It is sad that in this case the president can do pretty much what he wants and nobody can stop him. There needs to be some more laws to limit what legally the president and/ or lawmaker can do if forbid somebody else that is not fit to be elected in the first place somehow wins the office.


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