A federal judge’s ruling against the Trump administration’s deportation policies veered off into a rambling personal attack against President Donald Trump, who the judge claimed “simply ignores” the Constitution, has a “fixation with ‘retribution,’” and goes around “wrecking institutions and careers simply because [he finds] them irksome.”
The unusual ruling—which also included long tangents involving the judge’s family members and his political philosophy—was framed as a response to a pro-Trump postcard Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts claimed to have received from an anonymous critic.
The handwritten, all-caps postcard, dated June 19, read: “TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS….WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” Young included a copy in the ruling.
“Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty,” Young wrote in the introduction to his ruling. “Together, We the People of the United States –- you and me — have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case –-“
Young in his ruling said Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio targeted “noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.” He wrote the administration has done so “in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively (and effectively) curbing lawful pro-Palestinian speech and intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right.”
He concluded the ruling with another note to the anonymous postcard writer.
“I hope you found this helpful,” Young wrote. “Thanks for writing. It shows you care. You should. Sincerely & respectfully, Bill Young.”
Young noted in the footnotes he signed his response “Bill Young” instead of “Judge Young” because this “is how my predecessor, Peleg Sprague (D. Mass. 1841- 1865), would sign official documents. Now that I’m a Senior District Judge I adopt this format in honor of all the judicial colleagues, state and federal, with whom I have had the privilege to serve over the past 47 years.”
The judge added a postscript to the ruling in which he once again addressed the anonymous postcard writer.
“P.S. The next time you’re in Boston [the postmark on the card is from the Philadelphia area] stop in at the Courthouse and watch your fellow citizens, sitting as jurors, reach out for justice,” Young wrote. “It is here, and in courthouses just like this one, both state and federal, spread throughout our land that our Constitution is most vibrantly alive, for it is well said that ‘Where a jury sits, there burns the lamp of liberty.’”
Young used a large portion of the ruling to expound on his own political philosophy and personal disdain for Trump. The judge quoted his wife—whom he described as a “half admiring, half quizzical … very wise woman”—as saying Trump “seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead.” Young said her line “perfectly captures the public persona of President Trump.”
“The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies — all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act,” wrote the judge.
Young went on to argue, “Triumphalism is the very essence of the Trump brand.”
“Let’s be honest. In our secret heart of hearts, many of us are tiny Trump wannabes,” Young added. “After all, who does not feel the urge to stride about, ‘sticking it to The Man,’ wrecking institutions and careers simply because we find them irksome? Most of us, however, ascribe to Shakespeare’s famous adage: ‘O, it is excellent To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.’”
Young made several other claims about Trump, saying the president “naturally seeks warm cheering and gladsome, welcoming acceptance of his views,” but “in the real world he’ll settle for sullen silence and obedience. What he will not countenance is dissent or disagreement.”
“He meets dissent from his orders in those other two branches by demonizing and disparaging the speakers, sometimes descending to personal vitriol,” he added.
Young also bemoaned Trump’s supposed success at quashing free speech.
“Behold President Trump’s successes in limiting free speech -– law firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the President, media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism,” he wrote.
Alan Dershowitz, who has argued cases in front of Young, told the Washington Free Beacon, while he believes there are some legitimate concerns about Trump’s deportation policy, Young’s ruling was “much more political than it needed to be” and abused “the authority of the judiciary.”
Dershowitz said Young, who has served on the bench for more than four decades, likely views this case as a “magnum opus” on which to end his career.
“[Young is] known as a very opinionated judge, and this case probably goes further than any other case that he’s written in kind of summarizing his philosophy, his traditional philosophy, about the First Amendment and politics, and it’s just not an appropriate role for a judge to play,” Dershowitz said. “It tells us more about Judge Young than it tells us about the First Amendment.”
Dershowitz told the Free Beacon the case will likely go to an appellate court where “at the very least we’ll see some narrowing of some of the implications.”
The ruling comes a month after Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh appeared to rebuke Judge Young for hearing cases brought by Democrats against the Trump administration’s grant policies despite a Supreme Court decision stating those cases were under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, according to Reuters.
“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote.
In another unusual move, Young publicly apologized to the Supreme Court justices in a hearing earlier this month.
“I really feel it’s incumbent upon me to, on the record here, apologize to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they think that anything this court has done has been done in defiance of a precedential action of the Supreme Court in the United States,” he said.
Caleb Houston, a spokesman for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, told the Free Beacon the document “was filed by the court” but did not elaborate on the relevance of the exchange between Young and the anonymous postcard author. Meanwhile, a Free Beacon analysis of the text reveals several spelling and grammatical errors in Young’s opinion.
For instance, he misspells “anti-Semitism” as “Ant-Semitism [sic]” when quoting a March press release from the Department of Health and Human Services. Elsewhere, he mangles “United States” into “United Sates [sic].” Additional lapses include his repeated use of “ought be” (rather than the proper “ought to be”); the omission of prepositions in phrases like “focus only those engaged in protests,” “its portrayal those individuals listed therein,” and “did so concert their actions”; and more sweeping issues, such as “with this constitution ruling.”
Jessica Costescu contributed to this report.
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