Timeline of events:
- January 2025, the Trump Administration issued executive orders ending federal NIH research grants for studies on “racial disparities” and LGBTQ+ “health equity.”
- April 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the executive orders.
- June 2025, U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young, accusing the Trump Administration of discrimination, found the orders “void and illegal.”
- August 2025, the Supreme Judicial Court stayed Young’s order, reminding him that “judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.”
- September 2025, Judge Young publicly apologized to the Supreme Court.
Yesterday U.S. Distrct Court Judge William G. Young, who sits in Boston, apologized to Supreme Court Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for failing to follow legal precedent.
I really feel it’s incumbent upon me to–on the record here–to 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 of the United States.
The 84-year-old judge went on to say,
I have served in judicial office now for over 47 years…Never before this admonition has any judge in any higher court ever thought to suggest that this court had defied the precedent of a higher court–that was never my intention.
Young’s divergence from Supreme Court precedence came when he attempted to void the Trump Administration’s executive orders curtailing federal (NIH) funding for LGBTQ+ and racial-disparity research.
(Here are the orders at issue: DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT and DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.)
Young’s decision came months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the same executive orders in a similar case.
Without regard to that precedent and in an incredibly moralizing tone, Young found the orders racially discriminatory and “arbitrary and capricious.”
I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this…Is it true of our society as a whole? Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?
He continues:
I am hesitant to draw this conclusion–but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it–that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community…That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.
Actually, Judge Young’s duty is to interpret the law. And for failing to do that Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh issued an order staying his ruling and reminding him to abide by their precedent:
The order begins,
Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.
The order goes on to say,
When this court issues a decision, it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lowers court.
Based on Tuesday’s very public apology, it seems Judge Young got the message.