Roberts rejects Trump's call for impeaching judge who ruled against his deportation plans

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an extraordinary display of conflict between the executive and judiciary branches, Chief Justice John Roberts rejected calls for impeaching judges Tuesday, shortly after President Donald Trump demanded the removal of one who ruled against his deportation plans.

The rebuke from the Supreme Court's leader demonstrated how the controversy over recent deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members has inflamed tensions over the judiciary's role, with a legal case challenging Trump's actions now threatening to spiral into a clash of constitutional powers.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

The rare statement came just hours after a social media post from Trump, who described U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg as an unelected “troublemaker and agitator.” Boasberg had issued an order blocking deportation flights that Trump was carrying out by invoking wartime authorities from an 18th century law.

“HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING! I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. “I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

Although Trump has routinely criticized judges, especially as they limit his efforts to expand presidential power, his latest post escalated his conflict with a judiciary that’s been one of the few restraints on his aggressive agenda. Impeachment is a rare step that is usually taken only in cases of grave ethical or criminal misconduct.

In an interview with Fox News later on Tuesday, Trump emphasized that Roberts “didn't mention my name in his statement,” suggesting that the chief justice could have been referring to other people who have said Boasberg should be impeached.

Trump said Boasberg had overstepped his authority by interfering with deportation plans.

“That's a presidential job," he said. "That's not for a local judge to be making that determination.”

Trump said he would not ignore a court order, a step that his administration has already been accused of taking.

“No, you can't do that. However, we have bad judges,” Trump said. He added that “at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.”

The relationship between Roberts and Trump has shifted through the years. Roberts emphasized judicial independence during Trump's first term, taking issue with the president’s description of a judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy as an “Obama judge" in 2018.

Before Trump was sworn in for his second term, Roberts warned against threats to the judiciary and called for even unpopular court decisions to be respected.

The chief justice also had a prominent role in a major ruling last year that said presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution. The decision helped Trump avoid one of his criminal trials before the election that returned him to the White House.

Trump greeted Roberts warmly earlier this month, thanking him and saying, “I won’t forget,” as the justices attended his address to a joint session of Congress. The president said later he was thanking Roberts for swearing him into office.

The latest dispute involving the judiciary comes after a court challenged his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. It has been used only three times before in U.S. history, all during congressionally declared wars. Trump issued a proclamation that the law was newly in effect due to what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. His administration is paying El Salvador to imprison alleged members of the gang.

Boasberg, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, convened a hearing on Monday to discuss what he called “possible defiance” of his order after two deportation flights continued to El Salvador despite his verbal order that they be turned around to the U.S.

Trump administration lawyers defended their actions, saying Boasberg's written order wasn't explicit, while an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said “I think we're getting very close” to a constitutional crisis.

The Justice Department is also pushing in court to have Boasberg removed from the case.

The Constitution gives the House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a slim majority, the power to impeach a judge with a simple majority vote. But, like a presidential impeachment, any removal requires a vote from a two-thirds majority of the Senate.

The president’s latest social media post aligns him more with allies like billionaire Elon Musk, who has made similar demands.

“What we are seeing is an attempt by one branch of government to intimidate another branch from performing its constitutional duty. It is a direct threat to judicial independence,” Marin Levy, a Duke University School of Law professor who specializes in the federal courts, said in an email.

Only one day earlier, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “I have not heard the president talk about impeaching judges.”

Just 15 judges have been impeached in the nation’s history, according to the U.S. court's governing body, and just eight have been removed.

The last judicial impeachment was in 2010. G. Thomas Porteous Jr. of New Orleans was impeached on charges he accepted bribes and then lied about it. He was convicted by the Senate and removed from office in December 2010.

Calls to impeach judges have been rising as Trump’s sweeping agenda faces pushback in the courts, and at least two members of Congress have said online they plan to introduce articles of impeachment against Boasberg. House Republicans already have filed articles of impeachment against two other judges, Amir Ali and Paul Engelmayer, over rulings they’ve made in Trump-related lawsuits.

Leavitt is one of three administration officials who face a lawsuit from The Associated Press on First- and Fifth-amendment grounds. The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

President Donald Trump, center, greets Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, right, as he arrives to address a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)

FILE - Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts smiles as he is introduced at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, in Lincoln, Neb., Sept. 19, 2014. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

FILE - Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts speaks at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, in Lincoln, Neb., Sept. 19, 2014. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

President Donald Trump walks as he tours the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Monday, March 17, 2025. (Pool via AP)

President Donald Trump waves to the media as he leaves after a luncheon with the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., and Ireland's Prime Minister Micheal Martin at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A federal appeals court in Cincinnati will hear arguments Wednesday in a legal dispute that pits a suburban Ohio school district’s gender pronoun policy against the free speech rights of classmates who believe there are only two genders.

The lawsuit brought by Parents Defending Education, a national membership organization, against the Olentangy Local School District in 2023 has captured broad national attention from groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative Manhattan Institute. Ohio's solicitor general has asked to participate in oral arguments on behalf of 22 U.S. states that have interests in the case.

A lower court rejected the group’s arguments that the policies violated students’ First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati affirmed that decision in July.

The full court will reconsider that decision in a rare en banc hearing Wednesday. Here’s what you need to know:

The lawsuit takes issue with overlapping district policies that prohibit the use of gender-related language that other students might deem insulting, dehumanizing, unwanted or offensive and call for the use of peers' “preferred pronouns.”

The district's electronic devices policy — which applies both on and off school time — prohibits transmitting “disruptive” material or material that could be seen as harassing or disparaging other students based on their gender identity or sexual orientation, among other categories.

A separate antidiscrimination policy prohibits students from engaging in “discriminatory language” during times when they're under the school's authority. That is defined as “verbal or written comments, jokes, and slurs that are derogatory towards an individual or group based on one or more of the following characteristics: race, color, national origin, sex (including sexual orientation and transgender identity), disability, age, religion, ancestry, or genetic information.”

The district's code of conduct echoes many of the same themes a third time.

Parents Defending Education, founded in 2021 amid the culture wars over schools’ teachings on race, diversity and sexuality, argues that the policies compel students and parents who belong to their group to “affirm an idea that gender is fluid” in contradiction of their religious beliefs.

“These students have views that the District disfavors,” the group wrote in a court filing. “Specifically, they believe that people are either male or female, that biological sex is immutable, and that sex does not change based on someone’s internal feelings. Accordingly, they ‘d(o) not want to be forced to ‘affirm’ that a biologically female classmate is actually a male — or vice versa — or that a classmate is ’nonbinary' and neither male nor female.”

The group argues that the policies unconstitutionally compel “viewpoint-based” speech by forcing students who believe in only two genders to use pronouns that suggest otherwise. They say that violates the First Amendment's guarantees to free speech and similar protections contained in the 14th Amendment, particularly since students are subject to punishment for violating the policies.

Parents Defending Education further challenges the electronic devices policy for applying outside school hours and off school property. The ACLU has sided with the parents' group on this point, arguing the district's policies are overbroad.

Olentangy Local School District outside Columbus, one of the state's largest districts, maintains the policies protect students against abuse and harassment and asserts that Parents Defending Education represents “Christian, cisgender” students "seeking dispensation under the free speech clause of the First Amendment to harass other students based on their gender identity.”

“They are not illegal immigrants subject to deportation. They are not gay soldiers under Don't Ask Don't Tell. They're not African-Americans in the Jim Crow south. They've not been systematically oppressed," the district's lawyers told the lower court in a written filing. "They're members of the majority who want to — under the guise of the First Amendment — openly voice their opposition to an historically maligned minority group, transgendered people.”

Olentangy argues that Parents Defending Education has failed to provide evidence of injury — as the lawsuit was filed before disciplinary action had been brought against any student. The district also says that its policies leave open other options for students who don't wish to use someone's pronouns. That includes calling the person by their first name, using a gender-neutral pronoun or simply not referring to them at all.

The availability of such options, an argument against the policies unconstitutionally compelling students to say certain things, played a role in the three-judge panel's 2-1 ruling in favor of the district last summer.

The story has been updated to correct that Parents Defending Education is nonsectarian membership group, not Christian.

FILE - Protesters advocating for transgender rights and healthcare stand outside of the Ohio Statehouse on Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Orsagos, File)