The Justice Department fell short in its attempt to do an end-run around a federal judge by seeking from an appeals court a delay in the proceedings in the Census citizenship question case.
The appeals court on Tuesday rejected the DOJ request to grant the delay, which the Justice Department filed before U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman had a chance to rule on the initial motion. The appeals court said that the request was “premature” given that it was still pending before Furman, who had set a Tuesday afternoon deadline for the challengers in the case to response.
The Justice Department, in requesting the delay from the appeals court, had argued that Furman’s order for a response from the challengers amounted to him “implicitly” denying of the request. The Justice Department has argued that the post-trial proceedings in the case should wait until after the Supreme Court resolves a discovery dispute it agreed on Friday to hear next year. The Supreme Court rejected a previous attempt by the administration to delay the trial, which wrapped up last week.
The appeals court on Tuesday said that if Furman denies the delay request, the appeal “will be deemed automatically renewed for our consideration.”
The Justice Department’s failed attempt to get an appeals court to delay the proceedings is only the latest example of the Trump administrations habit of fast-tracking the typical judicial procedure in the Census citizenship question case.
Read the appeals court order below:
“We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. You’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.’ And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again.’ You’re gonna say, ‘Please.’ I said, ‘Nope, nope. We’re gonna keep winning.’”
— Toadglans Spankee, bankrupter of casinos, companies and once-great countries … oh, and a proven “winner”
Rhetorical question: does anyone in the Justice Department leadership know how the courts are supposed to work?
Nothing that the Supreme Court wants more than to adjudicate requests for stays. Keep it up guys. Maybe they can get the court pissed off enough that some members may open their closed minds. I don’t expect it, but it would be nice.
Good decision by the Courts. One thing I’ve noticed is as ideological, politically motivated and conservative the Roberts Court has become, the lower courts are not following the SCOTUS blindly. This is because the Roberts Court’s approach is to create loads of exceptions to existing precedent like making Swiss cheese, but the opinions are so hollow that they can be limited to the ‘facts of that case’ and don’t have wide value as precedent. I’m not saying this is such a case, but the CO anti-gay baker man case would be an example as would Bush v Gore and the gerrymandering cases.
Yeah, I’m hoping that too. I gotta believe the SCOTUS has an institutional ego about being the ones to determine which cases are of such constitutional moment that they deserve cert (even though the republican justices are often wrong about their actual choice of cases). Having the Trump DOJ constantly asking for emergency intervention in cases that aren’t even finished yet has to be galling.