The Trump administration will undoubtedly appeal, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court. But for now, millions of people across the country will not have to make hard choices about how to feed themselves and their families. Several states that had already declared emergencies to tackle the impending crisis will have at least some temporary relief.
Best we have is Civil Contempt. It’s different than criminal contempt, which can be pardoned by the President and must be enforced throught the executive or the Marshalls service. A judge can appoint anyone to enforce civil contempt rulings, including someone who doesn’t report to the federal executive.
Lots of people’s don’t understand the difference between civil and criminal, and a automatically assume criminal is always stronger. But civil is a lot more flexible because civil and criminal have different goals and remedies.
Criminal penalties are punishment for committing crimes. People think of murder and theft, but by far the most common criminal convictions are traffic violations. You get caught speeding and you have to pay a pre-defined penalty or take a driver’s ed class or whatever. For the most part, criminal convictions can result in fines, imprisonment, or execution.
Civil is different. Civil cases aren’t seeking punishment - they’re seeking relief. That is, in a Civil case, the Court can make you do something or stop doing that thing.
For an easy example that I run into pretty often in municipal government, I’ll highlight the difference between Civil and criminal cases for the same offense: building a fence past your property line into the public right-of-way.
When I take someone to court in that case, I can go criminal or civil (or both).
If I take them to criminal court, the judge can make them pay a fine. But the judge can’t make them remove the fence. We can issue separate citations every day and have 14 charges on the docket each week, but that’s it. There are some billionaires in some areas who actually build illegal fences and just pay the $500/day in fines because money isn’t an object to them.
But when I take them to civil court, the city isn’t seeking punishment for what they’ve done - it’s seeking relief. That is, instead of a fine, the judge can order that the fence be removed, and (and this is the big point) that if it ISN’T removed after the order the judge can appoint someone else to go on the property and forcefully remove it.
We actually have a case in my city where we’re have a court-appointed third-party private firm preparing to tear down a large part of house that cost 9 figures because the owner is refusing to carry out the judge’s order regarding their illegal construction. The judge didn’t want to put the city in charge because the impact on property tax revenue of tearing down such an expensive piece of property might convince the city to turn a blind eye.
When an order isn’t obeyed, a judge can appoint someone to carry out the ruling, and unlike in a federal criminal case which requires that the judge appoint the Marshall’s Office, a civil ruling specifically doesn’t have that restriction on the judge.