The Supreme Court is Less Predictable Than You Think

And district court judges are even less!

Mar 27, 2025

I. The Wheel

Life is random and messy and full of coincidences. This can be beautiful, but also uncomfortable, which is one reason why many people cling to conspiracy theories, as a way to give order to the chaos around them.

One example of that sort of randomness is the process by which federal judges receive their cases. Different courts do things differently, but in the federal district court here in D.C., the process is run by a computerized program that randomly assigns each case to a judge. (The program is often known as “the wheel,” a vestige from when courts would use actual wooden wheels to make these selections.)

This week, Judge James Boasberg was assigned to a federal records lawsuit over the now-infamous Signal chat used by Trump administration officials. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Boasberg was also assigned the case over the administration’s use of the Alien and Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. His rulings in that case have drawn quite a bit of attention, including allegations that the administration flouted them.

President Trump finds this all very suspicious. “Boasberg, who is the Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court, seems to be grabbing the ‘Trump Cases’ all to himself, even though it is not supposed to happen that way,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post shortly after 1 a.m. this morning. “Is there still such a thing as the ‘wheel,’ where the Judges are chosen fairly, and at random?”

Noting that Boasberg had also received two other Trump-related cases, the president declared this coincidence to be “statistically IMPOSSIBLE.” But it isn’t. There are, according to Just Security, at least 80 Trump-related cases that have been filed in the D.C. district court. The court has 25 judges, 15 of whom are active, like Boasberg, and have a slightly greater chance of drawing a case.1 The idea that one judge out of 25 might draw four separate cases out of 80 is not absurd.

But my point today isn’t about probabilities. The only reason Trump is bringing up the assignment stats is because of an even more fundamental assumption baked into his post: that any case assigned to Boasberg automatically translates to a loss for Trump. “There is no way for a Republican, especially a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, to win before him,” the president wrote.

II. Bottom of the pyramid

This is an idea held far beyond the halls of Mar-a-Lago. I hear it all the time, from readers across the political spectrum who assume that a case’s outcome is automatically predetermined from the time it’s assigned to a judge.

Those on the right, including Trump, believe that the president cannot possibly receive a fair hearing from Democratic-appointed judges. Those on the left believe that any legal successes notched against Trump will are destined to die at the Supreme Court, where the six-justice conservative majority (three of whom were appointed by Trump himself) are bound to take Trump’s side.

If you’re in one of these groups: I see where you’re coming from. There is no question ideology plays a role in how federal judges make decisions. I’m not disputing that. But I’d encourage you to adjust your view of the federal bench and inject at least a little nuance into it. Leaping to conclusions in this manner — Well, there’s no way this judge will rule for Trump or There’s no way this Supreme Court will rule against him — just isn’t a very accurate way to think about judicial decisionmaking.

We can start with Boasberg. Trump’s assumption that Boasberg, an Obama appointee, will inevitably rule against him presumably stems from his clashes with the judge in the Alien and Enemies Act case. It certainly doesn’t take a very comprehensive view of the judge’s history, which actually includes several high-profile conservative successes.

Boasberg, after all, was the judge who ordered the State Department to release emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server. He’s also sided with Trump himself before, dismissing a lawsuit that would have compelled the IRS to release the president’s tax returns. In a 2020 ruling, he called for the declassification of information related to the Trump/Russia investigation that Republicans wanted released. And, per CNN, he was “known for giving lenient punishments to January 6 rioters.” Not exactly the profile of someone with “Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome,” as Trump claimed this morning.

In general — and this is a principle you can apply to any cases on the district court level — research by Christopher Zorn and Jennifer Barnes Bowie has found that the impact of ideology drops dramatically the further down the federal judicial hierarchy you go. For district court judges, they found, the effect of ideology was “effectively zero.” (In fact, Democratic-appointed judges were slightly more likely to make conservative rulings in the cases they sampled.)

This makes sense. As Zorn and Bowie write: “Institutional factors impose greater constraints on lower court judges’ ability to enact their policy preferences from the bench than on judges in higher tribunals.” District court judges are much more constrained by precedent; they have less room to maneuver than higher court judges, which is why it’s dangerous to assume that party will necessarily predominate on the lowest level.

III. The Nine

What about the highest level? Clearly, the effects of ideology are largest at the Supreme Court — especially on high-profile issues — but, still, if you look at the above chart, the likelihood of a justice ruling in a conservative direction only goes up from around 40% for a Democratic appointee to around 50% for a Republican appointee. Even at the high court, ideology isn’t destiny.

Consider a sampling of news from the Supreme Court just this week:

In a 7-2 ruling on Wednesday, the court sided with the Biden administration in a high-profile gun control case, upholding Biden’s move to regulate “ghost guns,” homemade kits that allow people to assemble otherwise difficult-to-trace firearms.2
In oral arguments on Wednesday, the court appeared likely to uphold a Federal Communications Commission subsidizing telecommunications services in low-income areas, appearing skeptical of a conservative group that wanted the justices to strike down the program and adopt a doctrine that would further limit the regulatory state.
In oral arguments on Monday, the court did not seem like it was rushing to strike down a Louisiana congressional district map with two majority-Black districts, which had been challenged by conservatives. In fact, by the New York Times’ estimation, the court appeared likely to uphold the map.
The court announced on Monday that it would not hear a case3 from a Trump ally seeking to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 libel precedent which Trump has also said should be repealed.

The court undoubtedly has a conservative majority, but these are not the actions of a court that rules in a reflexively conservative fashion. This matters because a whole bunch of Trump-related disputes are about to land on One First Street; on Wednesday, the president appealed his fifth case to the Supreme Court of his second term, asking the justices to lift a lower court order that temporarily requires the Education Department to continue paying teacher-training grants it had sought to cancel.

So far, Trump has yet to notch any successes at the court, although every case before them is still in the preliminary stage. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the liberal justices to reject his request that they overturn a lower court order on foreign aid; the court also declined to intervene in a case about his attempt to fire an independent agency official. The court is also moving unusually slowly in a case where Trump is asking them to end the practice of nationwide injunctions.

And, of course, Roberts rebuked Trump on the issue of judicial impeachments last week.

This might surprise some observers — but it shouldn’t if you paid attention to Trump’s last term. Trump, as I’ve noted before, had a lower win rate before the court than any president in the modern era, according to data by Rebecca Brown and Lee Epstein.

Ideology can be a helpful heuristic (or mental shortcut) when speculating about how a judge, or a court, will rule. But be careful about letting yourself make broad assumptions beyond that. If you’re skeptical that James Boasberg could ever rule for Trump, or that the Supreme Court could ever rule against him, it’s probably relevant to keep in mind: they both already have.

More news to know

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in 2022. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

A defense official familiar with the operation discussed in the national security Signal chat told CNN that the information shared in the thread by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was “highly classified at the time he wrote it.” Hegseth continues to deny that the information was classified.

Trump allies are reportedly “concerned, angry and confused” about the White House’s response to the controversy; internally, some believe national security adviser Michael Waltz should be fired. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to rule out firings on Wednesday, while reiterating that Trump has confidence in his team.

The Social Security Administration is “engulfed in crisis” amid DOGE-ordered cuts, per the Washington Post. The agency has backed away from changes that would have prevented disabled Americans from applying for benefits by phone. Phone service will still be cut off for those applying for retirement or survivor benefits, although the change will now take effect on April 14, instead of next week.

The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate U.S. financial support for Gavi, an organization that helps purchase vaccines for children in poor countries. The CEO of the Gates Foundation said that the move could lead to “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of preventable deaths.”

Here at home, the administration is pulling back about $11 billion for state and community health departments that was used for testing, vaccinations, and other projects related to Covid-109.

The administration was dealt several legal losses on Wednesday, as appeals court judges upheld district court orders temporarily blocking Trump from invoking the Alien and Enemies Act, freezing federal funding, and firing probationary employees at six agencies.

Trump announced new 25% tariffs on imported cars and car parts, which will go into effect on April 2 along with a slate of other tariffs. Meanwhile, the president signaled openness to reducing tariffs on China as part of a deal on TikTok.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) is refusing to apologize after referring to Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) — who uses a wheelchair — as “Governor Hot Wheels.” Crockett claims that she was referring to Abbott’s policies; a House Republican has introduced a censure resolution against her.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), who resigned amid a sexual misconduct scandal, is the frontrunner in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary by a large margin, according to a new poll.

Following up

Yesterday, I chronicled all the policy fights preventing Republicans from agreeing on a budget resolution, the first step in the reconciliation process. Later that day, GOP leaders signaled that they will try to move forward on a budget resolution without settling many of those disputes, punting the disagreements until later in the process. (WUTP / Politico)

Last month, I wrote that an under-discussed way that Trump won over young voters in 2024 was by appealing to their isolationist views on foreign policy. This week, the Republican polling firm Echelon Insights released a poll showing that both Democrats and Republicans under 50 are less likely than their older counterparts to say that U.S. interests and values are at stake in Ukraine. (WUTP / Echelon)

More headlines

The day ahead

White House

President Trump will receive his daily intelligence briefing, sign executive orders, and participate in an Iftar dinner to mark Ramadan.

Congress

The Senate will vote on a resolution to repeal a Biden-era rule capping most bank overdraft fees at $5 and on confirmation of Paul Lawrence’s nomination to be Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
The House will vote on a pair of resolutions repealing Biden-era rules setting energy conversation standards for walk-in coolers and freezers and for commercial refrigerators and freezers.

Courts

U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden will hold a second hearing on the Associated Press’ effort to have its full access to the White House restored.

Before I go…

Here’s an interesting read: Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has been emailing government employees, asking them to share five things they did in the last week.

A Brown University sophomore had a similar question for the people who run his university. Alex Shieh emailed 3,500 administrators and staff members at Brown, asking them to explain “what tasks you performed in the past week” and “how Brown students would be impacted if your position was eliminated.” The university has twice as many nonfaculty employees as it does professors.

Shieh received only about 20 responses, including one that told him to “F— off.” The university is now considering disciplinary charges against Shieh for potentially violating its Code of Student Conduct. Read more from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“The wheel” is also modulated by the fact that judges with fewer cases at any given time are more likely to receive a new case, so — in addition to the greater weight placed on active judges — case assignments are never a pure 1-in-25 spin.

One interesting note is that this case came from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, often seen as the most conservative in the country, which had ruled against the Biden administration. The Fifth Circuit is probably the best proxy for what liberals think the Supreme Court is, often reflexively taking the conservative position in key cases. But whether SCOTUS does the same is best reflected by how often the high court overrules the Fifth Circuit: in eight of 11 cases in the 2023 term. Wednesday’s ruling is yet another high-profile reversal to add to their long list.

The cases that the Supreme Court takes up usually get the most attention, but the court declining to hear a case is a form of deciding it, too: since there is no higher court in the country, the Supremes opting not to hear something means that the lower court ruling in the case will stand. That means it’s equally important to pay attention to the cases the court isn’t hearing, since the court is effectively declaring a result in those matters, too.

To give another recent example, the court also declined this month to hear a case from conservative college students alleging ideological bias at their universities. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who were also the dissenters in Wednesday’s gun decision, said they would have taken up the case.