A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered US District Judge James Boasberg to end his efforts to hold Trump administration officials accountable for flouting his orders in a high-stakes immigration case.

The decision comes almost exactly a year after Boasberg, the chief judge of the federal trial-level court in Washington, DC, said in a blockbuster ruling that “probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt” for defying his orders to temporarily halt the deportation of migrants under a powerful wartime authority invoked by Donald Trump.

The Trump administration appealed several times to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals so the contempt proceedings never fully got underway, halting the judge’s work while it considered whether he had the power to move ahead with the inquiry.