Executive Summary

How do Americans perceive the role of the courts? The independence of court decisions from executive and legislative politics plays an important role in maintaining the balance of power in the U.S. government. In the past few weeks the courts have been increasingly called on to adjudicate the legality of executive orders such as those concerning birthright citizenship, government funding for research, and deportation of immigrants, underlining the importance of bipartisan respect for these decisions. However, data from PRL’s weekly pulse survey shows that since early 2025 there has been a divergence in support for respecting decisions made by out-party judges, with Republicans increasingly indicating that they should sometimes be ignored.

Key findings include:

Divergence in support for ignoring out-party court decisions. Historically we have seen low support from both Republicans and Democrats for ignoring out-party court decisions, usually around 15% or below. However, starting in 2025 this diverges with increasing Republican support and decreasing Democratic support.
Since January there has been a large increase in Republican support for ignorning out-party court decisions. Between the first week of January and the peak in support in April 2025 there was a 14% increase in support for ignoring court decisions from Republicans.
Aggregate support for ignoring court decisions remains low. Despite the large increase in Republican support, the percentage of individuals who agree with it remains at less than a quarter of the total respondents.

Main Results

This report is part of a series on the state of partisan animosity conducted by the Polarization Research Lab (PRL) at Dartmouth College, University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University. This report looks at survey responses from 2,000 weekly respondents between January 2024 and May 2025 on the YouGov platform.

The focus of this May 2025 report is support for ignoring out-party court decisions. In this report, we consider how Americans view the role of the courts when the courts oppose their preferred party.

The courts play an important role in checking the power of the executive and legislative branches of government. However, many judges such as those on the Supreme Court serve long terms and are often deciding cases brought forth by a party different than their own. The purpose of these long terms is to encourage justices to make decisions based on the constitution rather than partisan leanings. However, the judicial nomination process has become increasingly partisan with presidents notably appointing Supreme Court justices who align with their views and the Senate blocking nominations for the opposing party.

These tactics can be traced back as far as 1987 with the rejection of Robert Bork by the Senate Democrats, and the politicization of the judicial nomination process has only increased since then. Recent notable cases include the 2016 rejection of Merrick Garland by Senate Republicans, the 2017 elimination of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations to push Gorsuch through, and the Democrats surfacing uncorroborated allegations during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Despite this politicization, the majority of Americans recognize the importance of the courts in upholding the constitution and deciding important cases related to U.S. law, as well as holding the other branches accountable for the legality of their processes. In keeping with this support, we find that most survey respondents do not support ignoring out-party court decisions. However, with the increasing pressure put on the courts by the Trump administration’s executive orders we also note divergence in this measure across parties since January 2025.

Recent injunctions by district courts which limit the power of Trump’s executive orders may be responsible for some of these shifts. In late February and early March several states including Washington and 22 states who sued with Rhode Island ordered the administration not to cut billions in federal funding to the states. These initial federal funding policies and blocks may be responsible for the sharp increase in party divergence for ignoring court decisions starting in February. Injunctions blocking Trump’s executive orders have continued, including courts in New Hampshire blocking attempts to cut federal funding for schools with DEI initiatives in late April. A case involving the legality of injunctions blocking the end of birthright citizenship is currently being heard by the Supreme Court.

Longitudinal Support for Ignoring Out-party Court Decisions

As can be seen in the top figure, starting in January 2025 there has been an increase in Republican support for ignoring court decisions from the opposing party, starting at a similar Democratic and Republican baseline of 12% in early 2025. This divergence reached a peak in early April, when close to 24% of Republicans supported this versus 10% of Democrats. In recent weeks this gap may be slightly decreasing again, with the most recent wave in May showing 18% of Republicans and 10% of Democrats. Individuals who identify as MAGA Republicans are even more likely to support ignoring out-party court decisions, but follow the same aggregate trends as Republicans. They reach a peak of 30% support for ignoring such orders in early April.

Appendix

About The Polarization Research Lab and our Data

The Polarization Research Lab works to understand and strengthen democracy by conducting rigorous science, producing public goods, and training the next generation of scholars. The Lab is led by PIs Sean J. Westwood at Dartmouth College and Yphtach Lelkes at the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania.
PRL studies the political attitudes of Americans and the behavior of elected officials. Our goals are to:
- Dispel rumors and show hard data on the democratic attitudes of citizens. We conduct the largest continuous tracking poll on YouGov, collecting 1,000 interviews of Americans a week.
- Identify the behavior of elected officials that contributes to toxic polarization.
- Produce publicly available reports and tools to help stakeholders advance responses to toxic polarization that are based in data and evidence. PRL works directly with journalists, democracy practitioners, and policymakers.

PRL Is Supported by

The Charles Koch Foundation
The Hewlett Foundation
The Knight Foundation
The Templeton World Charity Foundation
The Carnegie Corporation
New Pluralists

Survey Questions: Democratic Norms

Do you agree or disagree: {inparty: Democratic/Republican} elected officials should sometimes consider ignoring court decisions when the judges who issued those decisions were appointed by {out-party: Democratic/Republican} presidents.

Response options: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree