62 years ago today - Good Friday - Martin Luther King was jailed for marching against segregation in violation of a facially unconstitutional injunction issued without notice. The Supreme Court majority found that even an unconstitutional order must be obeyed - unless and until set aside by a court.
In Walker v. Birmingham (1967) a divided Supreme Court upheld the contempt convictions of Rev. ML King and other leaders who defied an ex parte TRO forbidding a march on Good Friday 1963. The order was unconstitutional on its face. The day chosen was of particular symbolic meaning to King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as it commemorated the forced march and martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth.
But the Supreme Court majority held that such an order must be obeyed unless set aside on appeal. The ex parte order made appeal unfeasible before the symbolic date passed.
As Joyce White explains [below], Judge Boasberg in the El Salvador case embraced the Walker principle demanding obedience to an extant court order. Judge Boasberg is moving to punish the contempt by the defiant Trump government. He wrote:
"The Supreme Court has already set aside the temporary restraining order (TRO) the government allegedly violated and cases refiled in other jurisdictions per that Court’s orders. But, Judge Boasberg explained, as we’ve discussed here, that contempt is still appropriate: “One might nonetheless ask how this inquiry into compliance is able to proceed at all given that the Supreme Court vacated the TRO after the events in question. That Court’s later determination that the TRO suffered from a legal defect, however, does not excuse the Government’s violation. Instead, it is a foundational legal precept that every judicial order ‘must be obeyed’ — no matter how ‘erroneous’ it ‘may be’ — until a court reverses it…. If a party chooses to disobey the order — rather than wait for it to be reversed through the judicial process — such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later-revealed deficiencies in the order.”
Joyce Vance, a former Federal prosecutor, now a law professor, has an excellent discussion at this link:
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