Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn’t name Donald Trump on Tuesday when she stressed the importance of obeying court rulings. But she spoke against the backdrop of a judge finding his administration has violated a court order as several legal issues sparked by the president’s early executive actions head toward the high court.
During Sotomayor’s public appearance at a Florida college, the Obama appointee “made pointed remarks about the limits of presidential power and her fear that government officials might flout court decisions,” The New York Times reported. “Our founders were hellbent on ensuring that we didn’t have a monarchy,” she said, “and the first way they thought of that was to give Congress the power of the purse.”
“Court decisions stand whether one particular person chooses to abide by them or not,” Sotomayor said.
The justice’s comments came amid judicial scrutiny of the Trump administration’s legal compliance or lack thereof, as well as Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance raising questions about the Trump government’s compliance commitment — including when it comes to issues surrounding Congress’ power of the purse that Sotomayor mentioned.
Sotomayor is attuned to presidential power generally and in the case of Trump specifically. She dissented from the court’s decision last year granting Trump (and presidents generally) broad criminal immunity. “Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency,” she wrote in Trump v. United States, adding: “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”
The immunity ruling’s author, Chief Justice John Roberts, also recently emphasized the importance of abiding by court rulings. To be sure, Roberts did so in his year-end report, before Trump was inaugurated and sparked several court cases, but it makes for a recent bipartisan consensus on the subject. As legal challenges make their way through the trial courts and start to make their way into the appeals courts, the high court may soon be issuing rulings that raise the ultimate question of Trump administration compliance or defiance.
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