The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration in its efforts to block a lower court’s preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants.
According to the Court, lower courts exceeded their authority in issuing nationwide blocks on Trump’s order.
In a 6-3 opinion, the Court found, “Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett explained, “The injunctions before us today reflect a more recent development: district courts asserting the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone. These injunctions—known as ‘universal injunctions’—likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts. We therefore grant the Government’s applications to partially stay the injunctions entered below.”
“The applications do not raise — and thus we do not address — the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act,” she added. “The issue before us is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan dissented.
Sotomayor condemned the majority opinion, arguing that the decision allows the Executive Branch to “violate countless individuals’ constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its actions fully.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the decision, declaring on social media that the Court’s ruling “instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump. This would not have been possible without tireless work from our excellent lawyers” at the Justice Department and Solicitor General John Sauer.” She added that the DOj will continue to “zealously defend” Trump’s policies.
President Trump’s January executive order asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” but has “always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
