WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court ruled Friday that nationwide injunctions issued by lower-court judges “likely exceed” the judicial branch’s constitutional authority — handing a major boost to President Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship.
The case, Trump v. CASA, Inc., revolved around the administration’s challenge to multiple lower courts’ sweeping injunctions against the president’s Day One order overturning the longstanding constitutional protection.
The Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump’s actual order in its opinion, only the extent to which one of the nearly 700 district judges in the US could block an executive action from taking effect.
At the White House, Trump called the ruling a “monumental victory for the Constitution” and announced plans to advance his birthright citizenship order as well as other policies that have been blocked by federal courts.
“[F]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,” conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court’s majority.
“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.
“The Government’s applications to partially stay the preliminary injunctions are granted,” Barrett wrote, “but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
Nationwide injunctions have frequently been used by lower courts to stop executive actions from applying across the board rather than just granting relief to plaintiffs who sued.
Trump’s actions had been the subject of 25 injunctions between the start of his term in January and the end of April, more than any other president over the same time period, according to data from the Congressional Research Service and a Harvard Law Review tally.
Justices from across the ideological spectrum have long raised concerns about lower courts overstepping their authority. But during oral arguments, the nation’s top court still struggled over how or whether to draw the line.
Barrett wrote that universal injunctions lack “a historical pedigree” and were not authorized under the 1789 Judiciary Act. But she and other conservative justices in their concurring opinion seemingly suggested that class-action lawsuits are a viable tool that can be used against illegal presidential actions.
Class-action suits require lawyers to go through a more rigorous process to seek relief than for cases brought by individuals.
“The class action is a powerful tool, and we have accordingly held that class ‘certification is proper only if the trial court is satisfied, after a rigorous analysis,’” conservative Justice Samuel Alito noted in his concurring opinion.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the official dissent, which she read from the bench in a rare gesture of public disagreement with her colleagues, but it was the concurring dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that drew a rare rebuke from Barrett.
Jackson had agreed with Sotomayor’s dissent but emphasized that the Trump administration’s push to nix nationwide injunctions was effectively a “request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior.
“Quite unlike a rule-of-kings governing system, in a rule of law regime, nearly ‘[e]very act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law,’ ” Jackson wrote. “At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.
“The majority now does what none of the lower courts that have considered,” she added. “Notably, the Court has not determined that any of the lower courts were wrong about their conclusion that the executive order likely violates the Constitution.”
“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” wrote Barrett in a jaw-dropping rebuke of her colleague. “We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
“Waving away attention to the limits on judicial power as a ‘mind-numbingly technical query’ … she offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.”
“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” Sotomayor warned. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”
Turning to Trump’s order, Sotomayor raged that its “patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority’s error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case. As every conceivable source of law confirms, birthright citizenship is the law of the land.
“The Executive Branch has no right to enforce the Citizenship Order against anyone.”
Trump’s order contradicts the 14th Amendment, which states that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The amendment, enacted after the Civil War, initially applied to the children of freed slaves. Trump and his allies have argued it should no longer apply to migrants who enter the US while several months pregnant to ensure their children enjoy the privileges of citizenship, a practice known as “birth tourism.”
Under his order, only children who have at least one parent who is a US citizen or is a permanent resident would be automatically granted citizenship.
Three federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state imposed sweeping injunctions halting the order from taking effect in response to lawsuits from plaintiffs including immigration groups and nearly two dozen states.
Trump v CASA was the most high-profile proceeding before the Supreme Court this term, which has now wrapped up.
The Supreme Court will convene for its next term Oct. 6.
