Back in April, Judge Boasberg all but announced that he would appoint a special counsel to bring criminal contempt proceedings against Trump Administration officials. I wrote about those orders here, here, and here. A divided D.C. Circuit panel granted a stay (Katsas and Rao), with Judge Pillard in dissent. Today, the panel issued a divided opinion. Judges Katsas and Rao granted the government's mandamus petition, while Judge Pillard would have denied it. Judges Katsas and Rao agree on the bottom line, but they disagree on the reasoning. One particular point of disagreement has some significance for future proceedings.
Judge Katsas found that Judge Boasberg lacks jurisdiction to initiate any further proceedings, since the Supreme Court found that this case belongs in Texas, not D.C.
The impact of jurisdictional defects in subsequent criminal-contempt proceedings is unclear. Many cases hold that a court may not impose criminal contempt for violation of an order that it lacked jurisdiction to enter. The Supreme Court explained: "When … a court of the United States undertakes, by its process of contempt, to punish a man for refusing to comply with an order which that court had no authority to make, the order itself, being without jurisdiction, is void, and the order punishing for the contempt is equally void." Ex parte Fisk, 113 U.S. 713, 718 (1885); see, e.g., Ex parte Burrus, 136 U.S. 586, 597 (1890); In re Sawyer, 124 U.S. 200, 221–22 (1888); Ex parte Ayers, 123 U.S. 443, 485 (1887); Ex parte Rowland, 104 U.S. 604, 612–13 (1881). Two subsequent cases arguably weakened this rule, though neither purported to overrule these precedents. United States v. United Mine Workers of Am., 330 U.S. 258, 289–95 (1947); United States v. USCA Case #25-5124 Document #2129262 Filed: 08/08/2025 Page 36 of 110 Shipp, 203 U.S. 563, 573–75 (1906). Accordingly, as late as 1991, several circuits still recognized the traditional rule. See, e.g., In re Novak, 932 F.2d 1397, 1401 (11th Cir. 1991); In re Establishment Inspection of Hern Iron Works, Inc., 881 F.2d 722, 726–27 (9th Cir. 1989). In rejecting this view, the district court rested primarily on Willy v. Coastal Corporation, 503 U.S. 131 (1992), which held that courts may impose Rule 11 sanctions even in cases where they lack subject-matter jurisdiction. See id. at 137–39; Mem. Op. at 19–20. But in Willy, the Supreme Court reasoned that sanctions are collateral to the merits, so judges may require "those practicing before the courts to conduct themselves in compliance with the applicable procedural rules" while a case remains pending. 503 U.S. at 139. This rationale has no obvious application to injunctions restricting the primary conduct of parties outside of court, as opposed to the secondary conduct of parties in litigation. Indeed, the matter at issue in Willy—a monetary sanction of counsel's "careless pleading," id. at 133—is leagues apart from an injunction restricting the Executive Branch from carrying out a significant, cross-border, national-security operation.
