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Why don’t we have the Donald Trump immunity ruling yet?
It’s been more than two weeks and still no word from the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit panel that heard argument Jan. 9. While there’s no single satisfying answer to this pressing question, there are some factors we can identify to help understand what’s at play.
First, the judges know that this opinion needs to be airtight. Whatever they decide will inevitably be appealed, which would mean not only their colleagues on the full D.C. Circuit — in what’s known as en banc review — but also potentially Supreme Court justices reviewing their work. While some observers are eager for a ruling as soon as possible to avoid further delay of Trump’s federal election interference trial, which technically is set to start March 4, whether the opinion takes weeks instead of days isn’t the judges’ greatest concern. That said, the court agreed to consider the case on an expedited timeline — they didn’t do that to take months to issue a ruling, even if they might wish they had more time for this historic case.
While some observers are eager for a ruling as soon as possible to avoid further delay of Trump’s federal election interference trial, which technically is set to start March 4, whether the opinion takes weeks instead of days isn’t the judges’ greatest concern.
There’s also the possibility that even if all three judges on the panel conclude that Trump isn’t immune, they might have different rationales and may think that certain issues deserve more analysis than others. If they can’t incorporate those views into a single opinion, then a judge who agrees on the bottom line but for different reasons might write a concurring opinion that explains their separate views. It’s possible that after a judge initially indicated they wanted to take a separate view, the panel is taking time to synthesize any disagreement into a single, coherent opinion.
Among the multiple aspects of the case that could be addressed in the opinion is, in addition to the immunity issue itself, the question of whether the court even has jurisdiction to hear the appeal pretrial. It’s not just the “yes” or “no” question of Trump’s immunity that can be addressed in the ruling. The judges on the panel are two Joe Biden appointees, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, and a George H.W. Bush appointee, Karen Henderson.
Of course, some disagreements are insurmountable, which leads to dissent. If a judge is intent on dissenting here, then that could take more time for the respective opinions to respond to one another. That is, if you look at decisions that have dissents in them, you may see majority and dissenting opinions responding to the other opinion’s position, which can take more time to sort out with the back-and-forth. Sometimes a dissenter can be brought along to the majority view during the drafting process.
Under any of these scenarios, then, you can see what may build additional time into the process. Again, that doesn’t specifically answer the question of why it would take, say, three weeks instead of two weeks to reach a ruling, but those might be some of the things that the judges are grappling with.
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