In the United States, there are more than 600 federal district judges. They sit in the ninety-four district courts that are spread across the country.
Only a few of them are well known beyond the areas in which they serve. However, this year, no group has been as important as federal district judges in the struggle to preserve constitutional government in this country.
There are many examples. Think about their rulings in immigration cases, their efforts to stop the DOGE-inspired dismantling of federal agencies, or to resist the administration’s pressure campaigns against universities.
In addition, they have spoken out in plain language about its use of the law for “partisan purposes” and its “assault on the rule of law.” They have pointed out the “bad faith” that has animated the administration’s response to judicial rulings with which it disagreed.
Such bad faith was evidenced by the fact that, as the Washington Post reported in July, the administration had flouted “courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling.”
For their efforts, the federal district judges who have stood up to the administration have been targeted by a campaign of reprisal. Threats directed against them and their families have reached unprecedented levels.
As Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put it in May, “The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity. The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy.”
More than ever, the roles, jurisdiction, and authority of federal district judges need to be respected and protected by Congress and the Supreme Court. Congress should respond promptly to a letter sent by the attorneys general of forty-seven states, asking it to increase funding for the Judiciary’s Court Security program, which has been subject to a “hard freeze” for the last two years.
Such funding is needed because no group has attracted as much enmity as federal district judges from forces seeking a radical expansion of the president’s authority. Politico notes that “Trump and his allies have spent all year leveling pointed attacks at Democratic judicial appointees, labeling them rogue insurrectionists and radicals.”
Typical was the attack mounted in April by Texas Republican Congressman August Pfluger, when he introduced the “No Rogue Ruling Act.”
As Pfluger explained, the act, which would have curbed the power of federal district judges, was necessary because “In 2025, unelected district judges have overstepped their bounds, inserting themselves into cases where they lack standing or subject matter expertise…. Simply put,” Pfluger continued, “injunctions and temporary restraining orders are being weaponized against the executive branch.”
The bill passed in the House of Representatives on a party-line vote. Not surprisingly, the Administration hailed its passage, saying it would curb “rogue judges who think they can control the president’s executive authority,”
In June, the Supreme Court did Pfluger’s work for him when it said that federal district judges could no longer issue nationwide injunctions. However, many of them have not been deterred by that ruling or the kind of criticism levelled by Congressman Pfluger.
We saw evidence of that on December 10, when Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California ruled that the Trump administration’s deployment of the California National Guard in Los Angeles was illegal and ordered it to return control of the Guard to the state.
This is the second time he has done so. His first order was reversed on appeal.
His new ruling halts an extension of federal authority that would have allowed it to keep 300 California National Guard troops under the administration’s control until February.
Breyer’s decision is important not just for what he did, but also for what he said.
He pulled no punches, saying in the first sentence of his thirty-five-page opinion, “The founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances. Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one.”
Judge Breyer used the word “shocking” to describe the administration’s effort to “circumvent” the law and its contention that “After an initial federalization, all extensions of federalization orders are utterly unreviewable, forever.”
He also clearly laid out the stakes. Agreeing with the administration’s position would, Breyer wrote, “permit a president to create a perpetual police force comprised of state troops…” and “wholly upend the federalism that is at the heart of our system of government.”
Finally, as Breyer explained, it is “The right of the people to be able to gather and protest their government and its policies even when doing so is provocative and even when doing so causes inconvenience…. [I]t is profoundly unamerican to suggest that people peacefully exercising their fundamental right to protest constitute a risk justifying the federalization of military forces.”
Whether or not his ruling is again overturned on appeal, Breyer has taken a courageous stance in defense of our constitutional republic. He is in good company.
Federal district judges who have been the first responders to threats to our rights and freedom are the heroes of 2025.
