Americans Agree: The President Should Respect Court Rulings
Within the first few weeks of the Trump administration’s second term, courts have deemed several of the president’s executive orders unlawful and directed the Executive Branch to stop work to implement them.
The executive branch has failed to comply with more than one of these court orders. In a case brought by state attorneys general over the administration’s attempt to freeze federal funds, federal judges have now issued multiple temporary restraining orders after the first orders were violated and funds continued to be inaccessible. At the same time, senior officials within the administration – as well as the president and vice president – have made false and concerning statements that the judicial system cannot check executive power.
States United partnered with YouGov on a national survey of 1,019 adults between February 19 and 21 to better understand Americans’ views on this issue.
- Nearly 70% of Americans agree that Trump should respect court rulings even when they declare that his administration’s actions are illegal or unconstitutional.
- Majorities of Americans across parties agree that Trump should respect court rulings. Very large shares of Democrats (86%) and independents (74%) agree, as do most Republicans (53%).
- From other polling, we know that Americans broadly trust and support our constitutional system of checks and balances. When thinking about respecting court rulings, Republicans in particular may respond positively to a reminder about the importance of this system.
- Recommendation for leaders: In regular communications, clearly and directly emphasize that the president must respect court rulings. Each time the system of checks and balances is threatened, share specific information about the situation with a reminder about how our system of government is intended to work.
As shown below, more than half of Americans (52%) strongly agree that President Trump should respect court rulings even when courts declare that his administration has acted in an illegal or unconstitutional manner. Just under 70% somewhat or strongly agree, including a majority from all partisan backgrounds. These levels of somewhat or strongly agree are much higher among Democrats (86%) and independents (74%). Just over half of Republicans (53%) also somewhat or strongly agree that Trump should respect these kinds of court rulings. Nearly a quarter of Republicans (23%) “neither” agree nor disagree, which suggests their perspective may be dependent on both the specific scenario, and on them getting facts or hearing from leaders about each specific case.
From other polling, we know that Americans broadly trust and support our constitutional system of checks and balances. In this experiment, we explored the connection between that idea and the concept of respect for court rulings.
Agreement that Trump should respect court rulings was just as high whether or not respondents were reminded that our constitutional system of checks and balances exists to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. The survey question contained an experiment, and the results above are combined responses across two versions of the question.
In the survey experiment, participants were randomly assigned a question that either did not (the control condition) or did mention checks and balances and their purpose. . People in the control condition only saw the second sentence below while those in the treatment condition also saw the first sentence wrapped by bolded brackets.
[As you may know, the U.S. Constitution lays out a system of checks and balances so that no single branch of government becomes too powerful.] How much do you [agree or disagree] that President Trump should respect rulings from the courts even when they declare that his administration’s actions are illegal or unconstitutional?
- Strongly agree
- Somewhat agree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Somewhat disagree
- Strongly disagree
- Don’t know/not sure
The treatment does not generally affect how people react to our question, which suggests that cuing people to think about the Constitutional set of checks and balances doesn’t lead people to think differently about whether Trump ought to respect judicial rulings.
Doing so may help bolster agreement among Republicans. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans who answered the checks and balances version of the question strongly or somewhat agreed, while only 49% agreed who did not answer that version. However, this difference is not statistically significant (p=0.25). The following are the results just among members of the control group.
These are the topline results among only those who received the treatment condition.
This survey is based on 1,019 interviews conducted on the internet of U.S. adults. Participants were drawn from YouGov’s online panel and were interviewed between February 19 and 21, 2025. Respondents were selected to be representative of American adults. Responses were additionally weighted to match population characteristics with respect to gender, age, race/ethnicity, education of registered voters, and U.S. Census region based on voter registration lists, the U.S. Census American Community Survey, and the U.S. Census Current Population Survey, as well as 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error for this survey is approximately ± 3.3 percentage points, though it is larger for the analysis of partisan subgroups described above. Therefore, sample estimates should differ from their expected value by less than the margin of error in 95% of all samples. This figure does not reflect non-sampling errors, including potential selection bias in panel participation or measurement error.