Former President Donald Trump’s judges are causing problems for President Joe Biden in the first months of his new administration.
Fox News reported that Trump-appointed judges have ruled against President Trump on policies related to immigration and COVID-19 relief, as well as the environment.
Many of the cases against Biden’s policies are still pending and higher courts could overturn decisions against Biden.
“What you’re seeing is that ‘pen and phone’ initiatives are running into legal trouble right off the bat,” Ilya Shapiro, the vice president and director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, told Fox News.
“Trump appointed a lot of judges — more than anyone in one term than Jimmy Carter, for whom Congress created 152 new judgeships to fill — and these folks aren’t as deferential to executive power as past Republican-appointed judges might have been.”
According to Pew Research Center, Trump appointed 226 federal judges in one term.
This number includes 54 federal appeals court judges.
The Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry Doughty, who was appointed by Trump, ruled last week Biden’s order “to pause on new oil & gas leases” likely violates at most three federal laws according to Fox News.
“Although there is certainly nothing wrong with performing a comprehensive review, there is a problem in ignoring acts of Congress while the review is being completed,” Doughty wrote in his opinion.
Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines praised the judge for “acting as a firewall to President Joe Biden’s harmful attacks on Made-in-America energy,” Fox Business reported.
Amul Thapar, who serves as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, issued an injunction on part of the coronavirus stimulus law that determined which restaurant owners could receive government aid based on race and sex.
“This case is about whether the government can allocate limited coronavirus relief funds based on the race and sex of the applicants. We hold that it cannot,” Thapar wrote, according to Fox News.
“Because these race-neutral alternatives exist, the government’s use of race is unconstitutional.”
He added, “Aside from the existence of race-neutral alternatives, the government’s use of racial preferences is both overbroad and underinclusive.”
Fox News reported that District Judge Drew Tipton had issued an indefinite ban on the enforcement of Biden’s Jan. 20 memorandum regarding deportation.
“Texas’ claimed injury from unanticipated detention costs is sufficiently concrete and imminent,” the Trump-appointed judge wrote in his order, according to The Texas Tribune.
“The harm is concrete or de facto because Texas incurs real financial costs in detaining criminal aliens.”
