Disciplinary referrals are issued against lawyers who break the court rules. Contempt of court is used against anyone (lawyer or not) who violates a direct order from the court. A lawyer who blatantly violates an order may receive both a disciplinary referral and also a contempt of court penalty.

Before a court issues a penalty of any kind against anyone, they usually issue what is called an order to show cause, which essentially means the party accused of violating the rules must appear before the judge and explain why they should not receive a penalty.

Disciplinary referrals are addressed to the state bar association, which are organisations comparable to guilds which license lawyers. The bar association can impose penalties against the lawyer which include:

• Censure, a formal finger-wagging which leaves a permanent mark on their licence and is generally considered detrimental to future job prospects
• Mandatory ethics training or re-take bar exam
• Temporary suspension of their licence to practise law
• Disbarment and expulsion from the bar association, which permanently revokes the lawyer's licence to practise law. This typically cascades to all bar associations across the country.

An example: Rudy Guiliani was a Trump lawyer who filed submissions before several courts containing information he knew to be false and raising allegations he knew were unsubstantiated, as a part of Trump's scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The New York bar association disbarred him for this, and the DC bar association took note and automatically disbarred him as well. His legal career is finished; he cannot legally be employed as a lawyer anywhere in the country.

Contempt of court is an inherent power of the court to punish people who violate its orders. A judge can, on their own initiative, declare someone guilty of contempt of court and impose a punishment for it, which could include:

• A fine, possibly an increasing fine until the order is complied with. The fine is paid personally by the person found guilty of contempt of court and no immunities apply.
• Imprisonment for a fixed term, usually not more than a month
• Imprisonment until the person complies with the order
• Anything else the judge comes up with, that does not violate Amendment 8 of the US Constitution or relevant laws

Example: A lawyer was fined $10,000 in March 2026 by my state's Court of Appeal for submitting a brief containing AI hallucinations.

I know that the courts are still ruling against Trump and the Republicans fairly regularly, but then I hear about situations where they’re simply ignoring the courts’ rulings and little seems to actually happen as a result.

There has to be a mechanism of enforcement for an order to having meaning. For non-lawyer disobeyers, normally what a judge would do is hold someone in contempt and have federal marshals or sheriffs arrest the person. In this situation, no federal judge is going to request the US Marshals arrest a member of the Trump administration because it would create a constitutional crisis and because the executive legal team would immediately appeal it to his Supreme Court who would overrule them. So a smart judge doesn't want the crisis and knows they will get overruled and won't use federal Marshal arrest power. As a result, there is no mechanism for non-lawyers. A lawyer like Janine Pirro may have to deal with an ethics complaint, but most of the people in the executive branch doing arguably illegal things aren't lawyers. So then what? There's no solution to this, it's uncharted territory and a complete disaster.