Re. a judge holding up ACIP

Not sure, but this may be a consequence of the Supreme Court overturning Chevron deference. Since the 1980s, federal courts had held that federal agencies could and should interpret their own rules, and the courts should not intervene. The problem with this was that unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats were interpreting the law by themselves. This was overturned last year, and so now the courts are basically mandated to intervene if they believe a federal agency is acting contrary to the law governing them. Not to say the courts are necessarily interpreting the law as they should. I’ve seen plenty of court cases where that didn’t happen, but the point being they now have the authority to intervene in agency decisions.

Some might argue we’ve just rearranged the deck chairs, since we now have unelected, unaccountable judges doing what bureaucracies used to do. It feels like there is truth to that, because it’s so rare when a judge is held accountable for abuse of power, but at least the mechanism to hold them accountable exists, and politicians we elect have authority to exercise it.