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Supreme Court Sides With Trump, Limits Nationwide Injunctions In Birthright Citizenship Fight

Lower courts have blocked Trump's executive orders nationwide.

The Supreme Court handed down an opinion on Friday in a case regarding President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, ruling that lower courts do not have the unilateral authority to block Trump’s agenda.

The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines, allowing Trump to try to end birthright citizenship in some parts of the country while legal challenges against his order proceed in others.

The ruling did not address the question of birthright citizenship itself. Birthright citizenship is the practice of granting automatic citizenship rights for babies born on United States soil, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status.

Previously, lower courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington state had issued nationwide injunctions that blocked Trump’s order from taking effect.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett penned the opinion for the majority.

She wrote that “federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them.”

“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” Barrett said.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion saying, “For good reason, the Court today puts an end to the “increasingly common” practice of federal courts issuing universal injunctions.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.

Jackson also wrote her own dissent, which stated that “the Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”

Barrett blistered Jackson’s dissent in the court’s opinion.

“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. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court! Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard. It had to do with the babies of slaves (same year!), not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process. Congratulations to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Solicitor General John Sauer, and the entire DOJ. News Conference at the White House, 11:30 A.M. EST.

Since Trump signed his very first executive order, judges have been blasting back with their own pseudo-presidential orders promptly countermanding him. Conservative outrage rightly ensued. ...

Things got bad fast. There are currently over 40 national injunctions stopping that many Trump policies —a historic record— and nearly all of them were excreted from five blue federal districts (out of 90+). People demanded Trump pack the court, or Congress start impeaching district judges in droves, or Judge Barrett resign in disgrace, or for Hegseth to drop bunker busters on SCOTUS. Something!

Here, courtesy of Bloomberg News, is a small sample of Trump policies currently frozen solid by so-called national injunctions:




Despite all the chaos, I advised (admittedly, it was hard advice to take): be patient, Jedi, it’ll take a minute because the courts work ponderously, but processes exist to put rogue judges in their place.

And yesterday, the Supreme Court dropped its own bunker-buster, in the form of one of the most irascible, testy, and scolding decisions that ever emitted from the Court’s dark bowels, delivered unsweetly in her Mom Voice by none other than one Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The implications are vast; Trump’s entire agenda just received a mid-flight refueling. ... Unhinged BlueSkiers apoplectically tore loose from their last remaining hinges. ...

In yesterday’s order, the Supreme Court ended for all time one of the most abusive (or helpful, depending on your point of view) quasi-legal tools that district judges had in their judicial tool bags: the national injunction. National injunctions involve a finding that a presidential order or a new law is presumptively unconstitutional— and thus to be chucked in the legal freezer, becoming a spent force or dead letter, at least for a couple years, till the case wound and wended its way in slow motion through the court’s docket.

As Justice Barrett observed from the first sentence of her order, nothing in the Constitution or federal statute empowers district courts to override the Executive Branch in this particular way. In concurrence, Justice Thomas pointed out that, even in the same district, one judge’s orders are not binding on any other judge in that district— so how could national injunctions magically bind judges in other districts?

As we celebrate the victorious unleashing of scores of Trump’s pent-up policies, we must also count the cost. National injunctions halted most of Biden’s worst excesses, like covid mandates, student loan forgiveness, and so on. That’s ended, too. At least they got us through the pandemic.

Justice Alito, in his fine concurrence, correctly opined that, if Congress wants courts to have this power, it could go ahead and expand judicial jurisdiction by passing an authorizing law. But it hasn’t (and almost certainly won’t), so judges must work with what they have been given.

Justice Barrett and the 6-3 majority didn’t just throw shade on national injunctions; they put a lead-lined concrete containment dome over the whole practice. It’s finished.

“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. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”