Another day, another federal judge having to explain to the Trump administration that court orders are not optional suggestions.
This time, the lecture came from Judge Matthew Kennelly of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, who found that the Department of Homeland Security failed to comply with a prior order directing it to unfreeze migrant support funds owed to Chicago, Denver, and Pima County, Arizona. Because you don’t get to dodge your legal obligations just because you’d rather not follow them.
The case centers on reimbursement requests submitted by local governments under federal migrant support grants. Those requests were filed before Homeland Security formally terminated the grants, and the law requires agencies to process reimbursements within a statutory 30-day window. Instead of paying up or offering a lawful explanation for denying the requests, the administration froze the funds and then argued that it no longer had to meet the reimbursement deadline because the grants were now in “closeout.”
Judge Kennelly was not impressed.
The governing regulation, he explained, “does not contemplate allowing a federal agency to escape its regulatory obligations simply because it later terminates a grant.”
This ruling fits neatly into a growing stack of judicial orders documenting the administration’s increasingly casual relationship with the concept of a co-equal branch of government. Time and again, courts have had to spell out what should be basic civics: executive agencies don’t get to ignore deadlines, rewrite regulations on the fly, or treat judicial oversight as a nuisance to be managed rather than authority to be respected.
Judge Kennelly’s order doesn’t do anything flashy. It doesn’t grandstand. It simply insists that the government do what the law requires. But in the current climate, that insistence itself feels momentous.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.
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