Multiple federal judges have lashed out at the Supreme Court for consistently siding with the Trump administration in a rare display of judicial disdain for the nation’s highest court.
Ten judges, including some appointed by President Donald Trump, voiced their frustrations to NBC News over the Supreme Court’s tendency to overturn lower court decisions with little explanation.
One judge said the conservative-majority court, which includes three Trump appointees, is making it appear that the lower courts are biased against the president or that their rulings are legally unsound when the justices reject them with minimal or no reasoning.
“It is inexcusable,” one judge told NBC News. “They don’t have our backs.”
Another judge said the Supreme Court is “undermining” the lower courts by overturning their rulings while leaving district and appeals judges “thrown under the bus.”
Trump has frequently benefited from the Supreme Court’s support, most notably when it ruled 6-3 that a president can cite immunity for “official acts” committed while in office—a decision that effectively derailed the federal criminal case into Trump’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Since leaving office, Trump has asked the Supreme Court 23 times to block lower court rulings through what was once a rarely used emergency process. The court has sided with him 17 times and ruled against him only twice. NBC News found that in five of the 17 rulings, the Supreme Court offered little or no reasoning, while another seven included less than three pages of explanation.
“Judges in the trenches need, and deserve, well-reasoned, bright-line guidance,” another judge told NBC. “Too often today, sweeping rulings arrive with breathtaking speed but minimal explanation, stripped of the rigor that full briefing and argument provide.”
On Wednesday, Trump once again turned to the Supreme Court for help in overturning a lower court’s decision that could shape the trajectory of his second term.
The administration filed a petition asking the justices to strike down an August ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which found Trump’s sweeping tariffs to be illegal and determined that he had overstepped his authority in imposing them.
Writing for Politico, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori suggested that Trump is effectively trying to “blackmail” the Supreme Court into protecting his flagship economic policy, even if it is “clearly unlawful or unconstitutional.”
Elsewhere, judges have also criticized Chief Justice John Roberts for not doing more to defend the judiciary against attacks, including from the Trump administration, particularly as threats and violence against judges have escalated in recent years.
Roberts was accused of taking a thinly-veiled swipe at Trump in his 2024 end-of-year report, when he condemned elected officials who had “raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings” after months of Trump berating judges handling his legal cases.
Judges told NBC News that Roberts, whose public statements are rare, should instead be “doing everything he can internally to insist on ordinary process” across the judiciary.
“If the entire foundation falls out from under your house, it does no good to have a really well-insulated attic,” one judge said. “It sure would be nice if someone had our backs.”
The Supreme Court has been contacted for comment by the Daily Beast.
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