Judge Apologizes to Conservative Justices in Case Over N.I.H. Cuts - The New York Times
The display of contrition came after Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh issued a stern warning directing judges to heed their orders in August.
Judge Young said on Tuesday that he had not realized he was expected to rely on a slim three-page order issued with minimal legal reasoning in April to his case dealing with a different agency.
“Before we do anything, 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,” said Judge Young, who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985.
“I can do nothing more than to say as honestly as I can: I certainly did not so intend, and that is foreign in every respect to the nature of how I have conducted myself as a judicial officer,” he added.
Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has sided with White House in nearly every case it has considered.