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.
More at:
| Constitutional Law
Supreme Court delivers bombshell ruling on Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that individual judges lack the power to issue nationwide injunctions as it delivered a historic ruling in a case about the right to birthright citizenship.
It was a landmark decision that was seen as a major victory for President Donald Trump in his ongoing battle with the judiciary.
Trump has complained about individual judges in liberal states being able to issue orders against his policies that apply across the country.
The ruling allows Trump’s executive order halting birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants to take effect in states and jurisdictions that did not directly challenge his action in court.
It could mean citizenship rules vary from state to state, pending ongoing litigation.
The court ruled 6-3 in favor of Trump, with all six conservative justices – including the three he appointed – siding with the president.
Speaking at the White House, Trump said: ‘This was a big one. Amazing decision, one we’re very happy about. This really brings back the Constitution. This is what it’s all about.’
Basking in his victory during an impromptu appearance in the White House briefing room, the president vowed to push through ‘many’ more of his policies after the court win, including curbs to birthright citizenship.
The president said he would ‘promptly file’ to advance policies that have previously been blocked by judges.
He said: ‘This morning the Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions to interfere with the normal functioning of the executive branch.’
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the ruling meant ‘not one district court judge can think they’re an emperor over this administration and his executive powers, and why the people of the United States elected him.’
In a dissenting opinion, liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson described the decision as an ‘existential threat to the rule of law.’
The case arose after a battle between Trump and various judges in states far from Washington over his plan to end the right to birthright citizenship.
Trump had issued an executive order that would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally, and several judges issued injunctions against that.
The Supreme Court justices have now ruled those lower judges did not have the power to block Trump’s policies nationwide.
However, in a complex ruling, the justices did leave open the possibility that Trump’s specific birthright citizenship policy could still remain blocked.
It did not let Trump’s birthright citizenship policy go into effect immediately and did not address its legality, which sill be decided at a later date.
…
Friday’s case stemmed from an executive order Trump signed as soon as he took office that ended birthright citizenship – the legal principle that U.S. citizenship is automatically granted to individuals upon birth.
Under the directive, children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become citizens, radically altering the interpretation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment for over 150 years.
The Supreme Court did not rule on the legality of Trump’s order purporting to end birthright citizenship and left open a legal path to challenge it.
Trump claims birthright citizenship was tied to ‘slavery’ and should be immediately dismantled.
‘That’s not about tourists coming in and touching a piece of sand and then all of the sudden there’s citizenship, you know they’re a citizen, that is all about slavery,’ the president argued.
‘If you look at it that way, that case is an easy case to win,’ he had previously stated.
The 6-3 Supreme Court decision was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
‘Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,’ she wrote.
However, Trump’s executive order will not go into effect for 30 days, the justices said in their opinion, which allows is legality to be further challenged.
In a concurring opinion with Barrett, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said another way to challenge the executive order is to ‘ask a court to award preliminary class wide relief that may, for example, be statewide, regionwide or even nationwide.’
But the larger implication of the ruling affects the power of individual judges.
The court’s decision upends the ability of a single federal judge to freeze presidential policies on a nationwide basis.
More at:
HUGE WIN! Supreme Court Rules Nationwide Injunctions by District Courts EXCEED Congressional Authority — Clears Path for Citizenship Crackdown
FINALLY!
In a historic decision, the United States Supreme Court delivered a powerful rebuke of activist judges and handed President Trump a pivotal legal victory on Friday.
The decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., reaffirms the rightful balance of power between the judiciary and the executive, curbing the ability of unelected district judges to paralyze the will of a duly elected president.
In a 6–3 decision, the Court sided with the Trump administration, ruling that federal district courts lack the constitutional or statutory authority to issue so-called ‘universal injunctions’ — sweeping orders that block government policies nationwide, often at the request of left-wing advocacy groups.
The case stemmed from challenges to President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order No. 14160, titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship (90 Fed. Reg. 8449, 2025).
This bold order sought to clarify the scope of birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment, addressing long-standing concerns about its misapplication to those not fully “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
Predictably, liberal strongholds in Maryland, Washington, and Massachusetts saw district courts issue universal injunctions, attempting to block the order’s enforcement not just for the plaintiffs but for everyone, everywhere.
These injunctions, cheered by open-borders advocates and far-left elites, threatened to derail a policy aimed at safeguarding the integrity of American citizenship.
Shockingly, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, dismantled the legal foundation of these injunctions with surgical precision.
Joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, Barrett declared that such “universal” remedies lack any historical basis in the equitable traditions of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
In contrast, the liberal justices — Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson — issued fiery dissents dripping with ideological panic. Jackson even suggested the ruling could inflict a “mortal wound” on the Constitution.
The Court stopped short of ruling on the constitutionality of the executive order itself, but the implications are massive.
By gutting the lower court’s ability to halt implementation nationwide, the path is now clear for the Trump administration to enforce its definition of birthright citizenship.
More at:
More Stories
The Chief Justice and His Wife Took $20 Million From Firms He Rules On. I’m Filing for His Disbarment Today
Surprise! En-Banc Appellate Court Restores ‘Ten Commandments’ Law in Texas
NEW: Iran Caves, Declares Strait of Hormuz “Completely Open” for All Commercial Ships – Trump Responds