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The order’s provisions—specifically those requiring documented proof of citizenship for voter registration and prohibiting the counting of ballots that arrive after Election Day—exceeded presidential authority, according to court findings.
Those lawsuits demand unredacted voter rolls including Social Security numbers and driver’s license information. Many explicitly cite the blocked directive as legal justification. Which raises a question: What stops federal agencies from enforcing policies that courts have invalidated?
The answer is surprisingly little.
Court Rulings vs. Agency Enforcement
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter’s ruling found the executive order exceeded constitutional authority and violated federal privacy laws, emphasizing the need to restore proper balance of power among branches of government. The constitutional analysis ran for pages, citing historical precedent about the dangers of concentrating electoral power in presidential hands.
But the court dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuit without leave to amend—a procedural decision indicating fundamental legal deficiency in the government’s claims rather than an explicit injunction forbidding federal agency action on the directive.
That distinction—between ruling on the constitutional question and commanding specific conduct to stop—creates a gap wide enough for the entire Justice Department to walk through. A ruling on the legal question declares what the law is. An injunction is a direct command to stop doing something, right now. In the chaotic period between a district court ruling and its appeal, federal agencies can claim they’re defending their legal theory while awaiting appellate review, not defying a court mandate.
The DOJ has chosen that interpretation. Their voter data lawsuits cite multiple statutory authorities beyond the directive: the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the Civil Rights Act of 1960. In individual state lawsuits, the department’s lawyers argue their authority comes from congressional legislation, not presidential action alone.
Federal courts have rejected this reasoning. Yet adverse decisions in California and Oregon haven’t deterred the Justice Department from pursuing identical lawsuits in other circuits. The DOJ filed the majority of these lawsuits starting in September 2025, before the California (January 15, 2026) and Oregon (January 14, 2026) dismissals. The strategy appears calculated: file suits in multiple federal districts, increase the probability that at least some courts rule differently, create a disagreement between different federal courts that could go to the Supreme Court on more favorable terrain.
From the DOJ’s institutional perspective, there’s no penalty for filing lawsuits where other courts have already rejected the same legal theory. Instead, there are benefits: chances to demand documents and information from the other side, opportunities to gather sensitive voter data during litigation even if the case gets dismissed, the possibility of favorable decisions in conservative districts.
A court ruling against a private citizen brings consequences—fines, injunctions, contempt citations—for non-compliance. An agency that loses and keeps pursuing similar claims elsewhere risks almost nothing.
Repackaging Rejected Demands
Judge Carter struck down the government’s demand for unredacted voter rolls in California. He specifically criticized the department’s invocation of the Civil Rights Act, writing that the DOJ “seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an amount of confidential voter data.”
That ruling didn’t halt the voter data litigation campaign. It forced the department to present the same demand with a slightly different legal wrapper in subsequent filings.
Georgia’s Secretary of State, responding to the DOJ’s December 18 lawsuit—filed well after earlier courts had rejected identical demands—stated that “Hardworking Georgians can rest easy knowing their Social Security numbers and other personal information are being protected from being shared with an outside, unknown party that has no clear limits or supervision.”
States face an immediate practical problem. Even if courts ultimately rule against the DOJ, the litigation process itself requires states to incur substantial legal expenses. They must commit officials’ time to depositions and discovery. They must maintain uncertainty about federal voter databases’ ultimate security.
This is what scholars call winning through intimidation rather than law. Even if states ultimately prevail in court, the psychological and financial burden of defending against 23 simultaneous lawsuits may cause some to capitulate rather than litigate to conclusion. Legal experts emphasize that courts have consistently found no constitutional or statutory authority for these presidential directives.
The asymmetry hits particularly hard for smaller states with limited administration budgets. States like Delaware, Hawaii, and New Hampshire—also being sued by the DOJ—may lack the legal resources to engage in protracted litigation even when they expect ultimate vindication.
Judicial Tools and Their Limitations
Federal law provides courts with several tools to compel compliance. Each faces practical limitations applied to federal agencies themselves.
The most direct mechanism is the preliminary injunction—a court directive specifically forbidding a party from taking certain actions. Courts routinely issue them against private parties. But many rulings against the election directive, while devastating judgments about constitutionality, don’t appear to have included explicit preliminary injunction language barring agencies from continuing related enforcement.
This technical distinction creates the gap. The court ruled on the constitutional question but didn’t affirmatively command that certain conduct cease. Absent an explicit injunction against specific conduct, agencies can defend their actions as representing honest legal disagreement with the ruling pending appellate review.
Federal courts that do issue explicit injunctions against agencies find enforcement more straightforward, though still subject to resistance.
In Minnesota’s immigration enforcement context, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez issued a temporary restraining directive on January 16, 2026, that “will ban federal agents from retaliating against, arresting, detaining, or using chemical irritants against people engaging in peaceful protest.” That directive explicitly commanded officers to refrain from specified conduct.
Yet even here, the mechanics of enforcement reveal the challenges. The directive had to be distributed to agents within 72 hours and remained in effect only “until the operation concludes or conditions on the ground change.” These time limits and conditions meant the directive, while clear, could be circumvented through decisions about when operations conclude or when conditions have changed.
Contempt of court exists as a more muscular enforcement mechanism. Courts can find individuals in contempt for violating their mandates, with contempt carrying fines or even imprisonment.
But in cases involving agencies, contempt has proven extraordinarily difficult to deploy. The Supreme Court has held that judges should only punish officials for ignoring mandates as a last resort, particularly against government officials who can claim they’re pursuing policy disagreements rather than willfully flouting clear commands. Federal agency officials targeted for contempt benefit from institutional support: the Justice Department itself can represent them, argue that their actions were reasonable interpretations of ambiguous law, defend the agency’s legal theories as honest attempts at compliance.
Agencies can continue acting on their preferred legal theories, accepting financial penalties if necessary, while awaiting appellate review or Supreme Court guidance that might vindicate their position.
Immigration Enforcement and Apparent Defiance
The clearest example of agencies appearing to defy explicit court mandates comes from immigration enforcement. These operations resulted in the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good during an ICE enforcement action on January 7, 2026. Protests erupted immediately.
The State of Minnesota, joined by Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued the Trump administration seeking to halt the operation, arguing it was “unconstitutional and unlawful.” Judge Menendez granted a temporary restraining directive explicitly banning agents from “retaliating against, arresting, detaining, or using chemical irritants against people engaging in peaceful protest.” The directive specifically barred agents from “stopping or detaining drivers and passengers in vehicles who are not interfering with or obstructing federal agents,” and prohibited use of nonlethal weapons against peaceful protesters and observers.
Within days of this explicit restraining directive, federal agents appeared to be operating in ways that challenged its boundaries. MPR News reported that agents used pepper spray and struck protesters with batons—behaviors the directive explicitly prohibited.
The state’s legal team documented what they characterized as “an ongoing, persistent pattern of Defendants’ chilling conduct.” Judge Menendez responded by noting that evidence showed agents had established “a common practice of conduct that chills observers’ and protesters’ First Amendment rights,” suggesting the agency’s conduct reflected deliberate policy rather than isolated incidents.
The temporary restraining directive was issued on January 17, but the directive itself acknowledged it was merely “temporary” with “additional discovery and legal proceedings to follow.” Officials could argue—and reportedly did argue to the court—that “the action of following officers or observing law enforcement actions can be threatening in some instances and rise to the level of impeding their work.” In other words, even within the same courtroom where the restraining directive was issued, the government’s attorneys were already articulating theories under which the prohibited conduct might be justified.
DHS continued insisting that ICE agents were “following the law and running the operations according to training,” even as the court was documenting apparent violations of the restraining directive. This disconnect reflects, in part, the difficulty of controlling thousands of field agents operating across multiple states. Once an operation like “Metro Surge” begins, with over 2,000 personnel deployed, stopping or redirecting that operation requires explicit command decisions that may take time to propagate through institutional hierarchies.
Concrete Costs of Continued Enforcement
Agencies enforcing court-blocked policies impose concrete costs. States defend themselves against litigation. Citizens face enforcement actions despite judicial decisions protecting them. Taxpayers fund litigation and legal fees on both sides.
States targeted by the DOJ’s 23 voter data lawsuits face immediate budgetary pressure. Officials must retain counsel to defend against litigation, conduct discovery proceedings to respond to DOJ demands, prepare for depositions and courtroom testimony, coordinate with state attorneys general. For populous states like California, New York, and Pennsylvania, the legal fees may reach millions of dollars across full litigation. For smaller states like Delaware, Hawaii, and New Hampshire facing proportionally equivalent DOJ demands, the per-capita burden on state budgets is even more severe.
The threat of litigation itself works as a policy lever even when courts have ruled against demands. States uncertain about whether their particular court circuit will follow Judge Carter’s reasoning must make decisions about voter data security policy while litigation remains pending. Some state officials have reported receiving communications from agents demanding voter information while litigation is ongoing, creating practical pressure even when the state’s ultimate legal position appears strong.
States get stuck: they can’t make changes while defending themselves. States must maintain their current data practices while defending against legal action, rather than making affirmative policy improvements, because any change might be characterized as admission of prior non-compliance.
For citizens, the costs manifest differently. Agencies continuing pursuit of enforcement actions despite court decisions blocking those actions leave citizens uncertain about which government actors to obey. ICE enforcement in Minnesota continued even after Judge Menendez’s restraining directive, leaving protesters and observers uncertain about what assembly rights protected them. Officials in states facing DOJ voter data demands became uncertain about whether to comply with requests despite courts having ruled such demands unlawful: to comply risked violating judicial mandates protecting voter privacy; to refuse risked prosecution for obstruction or contempt.
The financial toll on affected states is substantial and poorly tracked. Public Citizen compiled an accounting of Trump administration litigation challenging agencies, documenting that “since Donald Trump took office for his second term nearly one year ago, his administration has consistently flouted the rule of law — often with devastating consequences.”
Multiple lawsuits succeeded in obtaining preliminary injunctions that preserved the status quo while litigation proceeded, requiring agencies to spend resources defending their actions in court. The Council for Opportunity in Education documented that the Department of Education’s cancellation of TRIO grants forced states to commit substantial resources to litigation even before a court ruled the cancellations unlawful. Once the court issued a preliminary injunction preserving the grants, the department had to reverse course. But the damage to affected students and institutions had already occurred during the interim period when the grants were suspended.
Accountability Mechanisms
If agencies can continue enforcing blocked policies despite judicial decisions, what mechanisms exist to hold them accountable?
The most direct accountability mechanism is attorney discipline. Attorneys who practice before courts are bound by rules of professional conduct requiring honesty with the court and not filing baseless lawsuits. DOJ attorneys filing lawsuits against states for voter data after courts have ruled identical demands unconstitutional raise the question: are those attorneys violating professional conduct rules by continuing to assert legal theories courts have rejected?
State bars and the D.C. bar, which regulates many DOJ attorneys, could theoretically investigate whether continuing to file similar suits after judicial rejection constitutes a pattern of lawsuits with no real legal basis. Yet attorney discipline has proven rare against government attorneys, in part because government has reasons to appeal that private parties don’t. DOJ attorneys can defend continued enforcement by noting that appellate courts might reverse decisions, making it permissible to continue asserting rejected legal theories pending appellate review.
Congressional oversight provides a second potential accountability mechanism. Congress controls DOJ’s budget and could, in principle, condition appropriations on compliance with judicial decisions. The House Judiciary Committee could open investigations into whether DOJ is deliberately circumventing court mandates.
Six Democratic members of Congress sent a letter in January 2025 asking a court to compel the Department of Homeland Security to explain how its new policy requiring seven-day notice for congressional oversight visits didn’t violate a December 2025 court directive blocking nearly identical policies. This suggests Congress does attempt to use oversight tools to enforce judicial compliance. Yet congressional oversight remains something that happens only sometimes and depends on politics. The ruling party’s oversight committee may scrutinize the opposing party’s enforcement patterns, but the same party controlling both branches faces diminished oversight incentives.
Inspector General investigations provide a third mechanism. Agency Inspectors General can investigate whether officials are complying with legal obligations and can report findings to Congress and the agency head. But Inspector General investigators can only report findings: they can investigate and report, but they cannot directly punish agency officials or force compliance. An IG report finding that DOJ continued enforcing blocked policies despite judicial decisions might generate political embarrassment or congressional scrutiny, but the primary remedies—discipline of individual attorneys, changes in prosecutorial strategy—depend on the agency leadership’s voluntary response to the IG’s findings.
Enforcement of judicial mandates depends ultimately on the willingness of officials themselves to comply. The Supreme Court has held that officials have constitutional obligations to comply with judicial mandates even when they believe those mandates are unconstitutional. Yet this principle faces the practical problem that officials can rarely be compelled to comply if the branch chooses not to enforce compliance internally.
Agency leadership committed to pushing legal boundaries finds that enforcement mechanisms available to courts prove limited. Courts cannot directly command agencies; they can only instruct specific named defendants to cease conduct. If agency leadership chooses to defend the legal theories underlying enforcement, individual agency attorneys can continue filing lawsuits, with the expectation that appellate courts will sort out ultimate legality.
Judicial Power Under Threat
The continued enforcement of court-blocked policies raises fundamental questions about the meaning of judicial review itself. The American constitutional system rests on the premise that courts have ultimate power to interpret the Constitution and federal law. Chief Justice John Marshall established this principle in a famous 1803 case, asserting that it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”
But if agencies can continue enforcing policies courts have declared unconstitutional, the practical meaning of judicial review diminishes considerably. Law professor Harvey Reiter has documented how recent federal court decisions challenging agency power have created a concerning trend: issuing a court directive doesn’t guarantee agency compliance, particularly when appellate processes remain pending.
Courts have attempted to address this by issuing increasingly explicit injunctions that specify which conduct is prohibited, but the fundamental problem persists. Agencies operate on a presumption of power: absent a specific directive forbidding conduct, officials assume they have power to act. The burden thus falls on courts to issue affirmative mandates prohibiting conduct. But issuing specific prohibitory mandates requires that courts anticipate every way an agency might pursue similar goals under different legal theories—a task that becomes increasingly difficult as agencies develop sophistication in reframing legal justifications.
Agencies ignoring decisions, knowing that appellate reversal is possible, create uncertainty about whether courts have enforcement power over agencies. If the answer is “only when and to the extent agencies voluntarily accept judicial power,” then judicial review becomes merely an advisory function rather than a binding legal determination.
This has profound implications for the rule of law. If citizens can have court decisions in their favor, yet agencies can continue acting contrary to those decisions while appealing, the practical protection that courts offer diminishes substantially. This threatens the balance between branches of government. The Constitution’s structure depends on each branch respecting the others’ domains while checking overreach. Agencies continuing to pursue policies courts have found to exceed constitutional limits means they are deciding on their own that their legal view should win over courts’ legal judgment.
This assertion becomes more concerning when agencies know courts have ruled against them. Continued enforcement then appears not as honest legal disagreement but as deliberate defiance of judicially-established legal bounds.
The Unresolved Gap
The paradox of agencies enforcing court-blocked policies persists because American constitutional law has not fully resolved how courts should compel compliance when agencies disagree with judicial decisions. Legal mechanisms exist—preliminary injunctions, contempt citations, attorney discipline—but each faces institutional limitations applied to agencies pursuing policy goals the branch prioritizes. The result is a gap between what courts declare law to be and what officials do.
Judge Carter’s January 2026 ruling blocking the directive as unconstitutional was forceful and clear. Yet the Justice Department’s continued pursuit of 23 voter data lawsuits shows that clarity of judicial reasoning doesn’t automatically translate into compliance.
Agencies can continue asserting legal theories courts have rejected, accepting the litigation risk that appellate courts will eventually force compliance. For states defending against those lawsuits, for citizens uncertain about their legal protections, for the rule of law principle itself, this enforcement gap creates substantial costs.
Whether this pattern will change depends partly on how appellate and Supreme Court decisions ultimately resolve the underlying legal questions. It depends equally on whether courts will impose meaningful consequences—contempt findings, attorney sanctions, fee-shifting—against agencies that persist in enforcing clearly invalidated policies. Most fundamentally, it depends on whether leadership decides that institutional respect for judicial determinations outweighs policy objectives achieved through continued enforcement of blocked policies.
For now, courts have declared policies unconstitutional and invalid. Yet agencies continue acting as though those judicial declarations have not been made. This gap between judicial power and practice stands as perhaps the clearest illustration of the separation of powers tensions now defining American government. For the states being sued, the officials being pressured, the protesters being pepper-sprayed despite court mandates—the gap isn’t theoretical. It’s the space where the rule of law is supposed to exist, but increasingly doesn’t.
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