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“The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s request to partially pause rulings by three federal judges that had blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship… By a vote of 6-3, the justices repudiated the concept of universal or nationwide injunctions, which prohibit the government from enforcing a law or policy anywhere in the country. The justices did not, however, weigh in on the question at the center of the three lawsuits before the court: whether the birthright citizenship order itself is constitutional…
“The Trump administration will also likely continue to be barred from enforcing the order – which will not go into effect for 30 days – against the individual pregnant plaintiffs who had challenged it. But the court’s opinion, by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, left open the prospect of additional litigation in the lower courts about how much more the injunctions should be narrowed, as well as the possibility of class action litigation to challenge the order on behalf of groups of plaintiffs who were not part of the litigation before the court but would be affected by the order.” SCOTUSblog
Here’s our previous coverage of the case. The Flip Side
The left is critical of the ruling, arguing that it will now be much harder to challenge unconstitutional actions from the president.
“With the legal sleight of hand so beloved by the Roberts court, the ruling doesn’t actually allow Trump to end birthright citizenship. It just makes it incredibly difficult for courts to stop him from ending birthright citizenship… Lower courts are now limited to issuing rulings that apply only to the litigants who happen to be before them in their local court. Injunctions now must be narrowly tailored to give the active litigants only what they personally need, and nothing more…
“In other words, if Trump violates my constitutional rights in New York, I can sue and potentially win. But if Trump violates your constitutional rights in exactly the same way in New Jersey, you have to sue for yourself…
“The idea that citizenship depends on which state recognizes your citizenship has literally been tried before in this country, with Black people and Native Americans having citizenship rights in some states and… not in others. We have already fought over this. It was called the Civil War.”
Elie Mystal, The Nation
“Saying that people who are no longer protected by universal injunctions can simply file a class action is like taking away someone’s key and giving them a lock-picking kit instead: Sure, with some effort, it might work at some point in the future, but they would probably feel more comfortable if they had the thing that could just open the door and get them inside already…
“For one thing, courts have in recent years made the process of certifying a class much more onerous, costly, and time-consuming; for another, when asked at oral argument, Solicitor General D. John Sauer indicated that the Trump administration would fight class certification if plaintiffs sought it… Every universal injunction that temporarily limited Trump’s ability to act is now vulnerable to challenge, and the ability of people to protect their rights is contingent on whether they can attach themselves to the right case.”
Jay Willis, Balls and Strikes
Some argue, “Nationwide injunctions are equal-opportunity offenders, thwarting Republican and Democratic initiatives alike. Today, it’s Trump’s birthright-citizenship order and USAID spending freezes. Yesterday it was mifepristone, the cancellation of student debt, and a COVID-vaccine mandate. Why should one federal judge—perhaps a very extreme judge, on either side—have the power to dictate government policy for the entire country? Good riddance.”
Nicholas Bagley, The Atlantic
The right applauds the ruling, arguing that district court judges should not be able to veto presidential policies.
The right applauds the ruling, arguing that district court judges should not be able to veto presidential policies.
“The fundamental message of Trump v. Casa is 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.’ In other words, if voters, the media, or judges, dislike President’s Trump’s policies, the place to defeat him is at the ballot box…
“No single district court judge has or should have the authority to exercise a veto power over the duly elected president of a nation of 340 million people, under our Constitution. The Supreme Court’s enunciation of that principle is hardly revolutionary; it was the status quo up until the resistance to Trump I.”
Rachel K. Paulose, Spectator World
“Nationwide injunctions were virtually unknown until the 21st Century… As late as President Barack Obama’s administration, it appears the lower courts had only issued about 19 such injunctions. In 2019, Attorney General William Barr stated that the federal courts had issued only 27 in the twentieth century. But by April 2024, 127 nationwide injunctions had been issued since 1963, with 96 packed into 2001 to 2023…
“Casa rejects the notion that a single district court could force a president to obey its reading of the Constitution… Abraham Lincoln went furthest in claiming that presidents had the right to pursue their own interpretation of the Constitution at odds with the view of the Judiciary. In his famous debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln argued that the Dred Scott decision applied only to the parties in the case…
“While Lincoln conceded that he would obey judicial decisions, he argued that he could continue to enforce his policies against individuals outside the parties in Dred Scott. And Lincoln believed he had no constitutional obligation to apply Dred Scott to new cases. Judges would have to issue orders in each future case ordering him to return free blacks to slavery under Dred Scott.”
John Yoo, Fox News
“This is a positive development in many ways, given the dysfunctions that universal injunctions encourage. If halting any new White House policy requires convincing only a single federal judge in any favorable forum anywhere in the U.S., Democrats will gladly run to California, and Republicans to Texas. All-or-nothing emergency appeals then rise to the Supreme Court, as critics accuse the Justices of settling substantive questions on a ‘shadow docket.’ That’s the experience of recent years.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
