The United States Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling on Friday stating that federal judges do not have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions.
The Justices did not, however, weigh in directly on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s (R) executive order regarding birthright citizenship, the matter underpinning the injunctions at issue in this case.
Friday’s ruling marks a victory for the Trump Administration, which has frequently raised concerns about individual judges making decisions that impact the entire country through nationwide, or universal, injunctions.
According to a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), there were twenty-five nationwide injunctions issued against the Trump Administration during the president’s first one hundred days in office. By comparison, CRS found that there were a total of twenty-eight such injunctions issued during the entirety of former President Joe Biden’s (D) term.
Although the broad injunction requests were initially granted by lower court judges based on the merits of the case, the Trump Administration’s appeals focused on the scope of these actions, arguing that the judges had exceeded their authority in issuing such broad blocks on the enforcement of the President’s executive order.
For this reason, the Supreme Court was tasked with providing guidance on the permissibility of universal injunctions, not the constitutionality of the President’s executive order itself.
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The Court’s ruling Friday was authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Jackson also filed a separate dissent that was explicitly referenced in the majority opinion.
According to the majority of Justices, the lower courts “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted [them]” when issuing universal injunctions.
“Traditionally, courts issued injunctions prohibiting executive officials from enforcing a challenged law or policy only against the plaintiffs in the lawsuit,” the Court said. “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.”
“A universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power,” the Court explained.
In a legal context, “equitable authority” refers to the judiciary’s power to grant alternative forms of relief when monetary damages are insufficient to bring complete relief to the injured party.
“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” said the Justices.
It is explained throughout the course of the ruling that class action lawsuits, as opposed to universal injunctions, are an appropriate means by which federal policies can be challenged on a broader scale.
“Why bother with a [class action lawsuit] when the quick fix of a universal injunction is on the table?” the Justices posited.
Also in their opinion, the majority offered stark criticism of the arguments put forward in Justice Jackson’s dissent.
“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,” they said. “We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
As a result of this ruling, the government’s request to partially stay the preliminary injunctions issued by the lower courts has been granted, but only to the extent that they are “broader than necessary.”
Executive agencies will now be permitted to develop and issue public guidance regarding the branch’s plans to implement President Trump’s executive order as the merits of these cases are considered by the lower courts.
New, more targeted injunctions may soon be issued by the lower courts blocking enforcement of the executive order as it relates to the plaintiffs in those cases specifically.
[RELATED: Pres. Trump’s Executive Order Redefining Birthright Citizenship Temporarily Blocked by Federal Judge]
Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion argues that “no right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” as judges no longer have the authority to issue broad injunctions against “plainly unlawful policies.”
“Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent,” she wrote.
Unlike the majority opinion, which focuses almost exclusively on the issue of universal injunctions, the dissenting opinion dives more deeply into the question of birthright citizenship, arguing that the President’s executive order is in violation of the Constitution.
“The Citizenship Order’s patent unlawfulness is reason enough to deny the Government’s applications,” she said.
“The Court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution,” she argued. “The Executive Branch can now enforce policies that flout settled law and violate countless individuals’ constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its actions fully.”
“The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival,” the dissent concludes. “Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort.”
Justice Jackson expressed full agreement with Sotomayor but added that it is an “existential threat to the rule of law” to allow the Executive to “to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued.”
“What the Executive wants, in effect, is for this Court to bless and facilitate its desire to operate in two different zones moving forward: one in which it is required to follow the law (because a particular plaintiff has secured a personal injunction prohibiting its unlawful conduct), and another in which it can choose to violate the law with respect to certain people (those who have yet to sue),” Jackson said.
“The majority’s ruling thus not only diverges from first principles, it is also profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate,” she argued.
Almost immediately after the Court’s ruling was released, Trump responded in a Truth Social post.
“GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court! Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard,” wrote the President. “It had to do with the babies of slaves (same year!), not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process.”
When speaking to reporters are the White House, the president called the ruling “an amazing decision, one that we’re very happy about.”
Trump went on to say that the Court “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.”
Lawyers representing the other parties in the case have also spoken out in response to this ruling.
“Even without a universal injunction, we will continue to litigate this case to ensure that every child born in the United States receives the citizenship that the 14th Amendment promises them, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.” said William Powell, one of the attorneys representing challengers from Maryland.
The executive order at the root of this case, titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, was signed just hours after the inauguration and states that “the privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift.”
“The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” Trump wrote. “The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United State but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”
Ratified in 1868, this Fourteenth Amendment states: All 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.
Currently, the United States grants full citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil regardless of whether their parents are in the country legally or illegally.
Incorporated into the Constitution in the wake of the Civil War, this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to ensure that all formerly enslaved people would be granted citizenship.
By ratifying this amendment, the nation overturned the infamous 1857 Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford wherein the Justices decided that enslaved people were not United States citizens.
A few decades after the amendment was officially added to the Constitution, it came before the Court in the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, wherein the citizenship status Wong Kim Ark — who was born in the San Fransisco to parents who were Chinese citizens living and working in America — was called into question.
Under the Naturalization Act of 1802, Ark’s parents were ineligible to become naturalized citizens, as Congress continued to limit eligibility for naturalization to “free white persons
.”
The 6-2 majority opinion in the Wong Kim Ark case, authored by Justice Horace Gray, established the principle of jus soli, or right of soil, forming the foundation of birthright citizenship as it is generally understood in America today.
In 1940, Congress passed a law that included language mirroring that of the Fourteenth Amendment, stating that “person[s] born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” “shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.”
Trump’s executive order now establishes, however, that “it is the policy of the United States” that citizenship shall not be granted to those whose “mother was unlawfully present in the United States and [whose] father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
Under this order, birthright citizenship would also not be extended to those whose “mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and [whose] father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
This clause of the executive order would likely impact the ability of children born to those with pending asylum claims, as well as those who are in the United States on temporary work, student or tourist visas, to obtain birthright citizenship.
As cases concerning the constitutionality of the President’s birthright citizenship executive order are still pending before the courts, it is likely that the Supreme Court will eventually be asked to weigh in on the issue more directly in the future.
