Trump hails “tremendous win” as justices limit lower courts’ power

The Supreme Court took steps to reverse a judicial trend that has vexed both political parties: universal injunctions. President Donald Trump welcomed the decision Friday, saying that he would immediately start working to implement policies that courts had blocked, including his order to end automatic birthright citizenship in the United States.

The birthright citizenship question sparked the case, but Friday’s decision focused only on whether judges in federal district courts had the power to issue rulings that apply to the whole country.

“District Court judges have entered nationwide injunctions that essentially forbid the government from taking any different position in any other court. And that is not only novel, it’s quite harmful,” said Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “It causes tremendous chaos if any one judge can issue a ruling governing the entire nation.”

Courts levied 12 nationwide injunctions during George W. Bush’s presidency, 19 during President Barack Obama’s tenure, 64 during the first Trump administration, and 14 during the Biden administration. In the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, courts issued 25 nationwide injunctions.

“The problem that the Supreme Court felt it needed to deal with is actually a problem for each party,” Larkin said. “It’s a problem that has bedeviled each administration, Republican or Democrat, since Bush Jr.” He said only the Supreme Court should be issuing rulings that pertain to the entire country, while district judges should only issue injunctions for the specific plaintiffs in their districts who bring a case.

“The issuance of a universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “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.”

The practice of bestowing birthright citizenship dates back to British colonial days. Children born in the American colonies were considered subjects of the king. After the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers continued the practice but for citizenship in the United States. Since then, every child born within the United States’ borders, territories, or on military bases is considered a U.S. citizen regardless of the parents’ nationalities.

But Trump has argued the practice has been abused by immigrants who cross the border illegally and then have children who then have legal protected status in the country. The parents can then apply to become naturalized citizens as relatives of their children. The executive order would make a new policy: any child born to parents without legal status, in the country on a temporary basis, or who have overstayed a visa is not considered a citizen.

“It would be a dissent-based system as opposed to a birthplace-based system,” University of Michigan law professor Samuel Erman said. “Systems where you don’t grant citizenship based on birthplace have the downside that you then end up with potentially generations of people living within your country who don’t have a say in its government and don’t have an investment in its future.”

While the United States has had birthright citizenship since its founding, it did not always apply it to every group. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that free African Americans were not citizens. The ruling later prompted the passage of the 14th Amendment to prevent race-based discrimination. “The point of the 14th Amendment in large part was to reaffirm that being born in the United States made you a U.S. citizen, full stop, regardless of race. The Trump administration’s rule would also be restricting what was understood after the Civil War to be a very expansive understanding of birthplace-based citizenship,” Erman said.

In February, immigrant advocacy groups and several pregnant women sued the Trump administration over its plan to end birthright citizenship. Maryland District Judge Deborah Boardman granted their motion for a preliminary injunction, ruling that the executive order would cause irrevocable harm if it went into effect and then was declared unconstitutional. At the same time, the states of Washington and New Jersey launched similar suits against the Trump administration. Boardman made her injunction nationwide, meaning it would cover all current and potential future plaintiffs. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal from the Trump administration, so government attorneys asked the Supreme Court for a partial stay. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the case in a rare emergency docket oral argument in May.

At the time, Sauer asked the justices to consider only the question on injunctions, not whether Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship was constitutional. When asked how the government would enforce the citizenship order, Sauer said he did not know. Justice Barrett asked Sauer if the government would abide by court rulings, to which he responded that the president would make every effort to comply with lower court rulings but is not required to. He argued that activist judges were extending injunctions because of their political opposition to Trump.

Eighteen members of Congress and 22 states filed friend-of-the-court briefs to support the Trump administration’s appeal. Several advocacy groups like the League of Women Voters and Common Cause submitted briefs favoring the use of universal injunctions. Democratic lawmakers in Washington also signed an amicus brief.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissenting opinion from the bench. She argued that the Trump administration only asked for a partial stay and not to completely block the lower court orders to avoid a decision on the constitutionality of the birthright citizen order, which she thinks the government cannot defend.

“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent, and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along,” Sotomayor said.

University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost said the benefits of universal injunctions outweigh the risks.

“Essentially, it prevents the administration, the Trump administration here, but any presidential administration from blatantly violating people’s rights over the year or longer it can take a case to get decided on the merits before the Supreme Court,” Frost said. She argued that if courts may only provide injunctions for plaintiffs who bring a case, the system could be swamped with thousands or millions of identical cases. “I would rather face the risk of a policy not being placed for a few months or a year than having an unconstitutional policy be in place for all of us for some length of time, causing at times irreparable injury.”

In the meantime, Trump’s birthright citizenship order will take effect in 30 days, except in areas where judges have granted injunctions to individual plaintiffs or states. On Friday, he praised the Supreme Court’s ruling and the work of Attorney General Pam Bondi on the case.

“We’ve had tremendous wins,” he said. “But this was a tremendous win today.”