On June 27th, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark opinion that effectively limits the ability of judges to issue nationwide injunctions blocking presidential policies. These injunctions, also known as “nationwide injunctions,” saw a significant increase in issuance during the presidency of Donald Trump.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court stated that Congress did not authorize judges to grant broad legal remedies to individuals who have not appeared in court. While some details of the ruling still need to be clarified, the fate of Trump’s policies remains to be observed. However, the Supreme Court’s decision has indeed granted the government some power to push back against to what extent federal judges can restrict presidential policies.
At a practical level, the ruling has suspended three nationwide injunctions that were hindering Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in delivering the court’s decision, noted that the Supreme Court only temporarily halted parts of the injunctions because they were overly broad, extending beyond what was necessary to protect the plaintiffs’ rights.
The judges who issued the injunctions are expected to reconsider them in light of the Supreme Court ruling. Ultimately, their future orders may still come before the Supreme Court, and further debate on whether Trump’s policy on birthright citizenship complies with the Constitution may be revisited.
Here are some key points from the ruling and its potential implications for future policies:
The majority of justices focused on the 1789 Judiciary Act and whether it allows judges to issue nationwide injunctions. However, they did not make a decision on whether Article III of the Constitution permits judges to issue such orders. Article III outlines the overall jurisdiction of federal courts, which Republicans and the Trump administration had invoked to challenge nationwide injunctions regarding birthright citizenship.
Nevertheless, Justice Barrett’s main opinion indicates that nationwide injunctions do not align with the operations of American and British courts historically.
“For most of our history, nationwide injunctions have been truly extraordinary,” Barrett said. “They were not a feature of the equitable practice in the 18th and 19th centuries, which resolved the authority issue.”
A crucial aspect of Barrett’s opinion indicates that broad legal remedies are not inherently bad but depend on who the plaintiff is in a specific case. She argued that courts can issue orders providing “complete” legal remedies for parties in court, rather than for others in similar situations.
One obstacle faced by Trump’s policy came from an organization called Citizens Assisting and Sheltering Abused (CASA). Barrett mentioned that in the case of CASA Inc. v. Trump, the court could offer legal remedies by blocking Trump’s policy as it affected the woman bringing the lawsuit.
“Extending the injunction to all other individuals in similar situations would not complete her relief,” she said.
The Supreme Court did not solely handle this case. The Court also weighed in on two nationwide injunctions brought by states, which were more complex as the injunctions were issued to provide legal remedies to the states themselves.
For example, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour deemed in February that geographically bound injunctions would be “futile” as the plaintiff states would have to bear the costs for unlawfully residing immigrant children from other states.
Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh both expressed support, stating that courts could provide broad legal remedies through class certification. In this scenario, courts could issue orders extending relief to the relevant groups represented by individuals actually bringing the lawsuits.
In the CASA case, the plaintiffs swiftly requested the court to issue new orders after the Supreme Court’s ruling on June 27 to protect specific groups of people. The outcome of this request and others in court is currently unclear. While expressing agreement, Justice Alito also seemed concerned that lower court judges might use class certification to circumvent the majority opinion of the Supreme Court.
“Lax enforcement of the requirements for third-party standing and class certification may have serious consequences for today’s decision,” he said.
Justice Barrett’s opinion did not delve deeply into the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship or whether he could successfully argue that the order complies with the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. This issue will likely be discussed in the future, possibly awaiting decisions after lower courts update orders blocking Trump’s policy.
However, from the opinion, it is clear that Barrett believes judges should exercise restraint when obstructing executive branch policies.
“The executive branch has a duty to follow the law, that much is clear,” Barrett said. “However, the judicial branch does not possess unlimited power to compel the government to meet this obligation. In fact, at times, the law prevents the judiciary from doing so.”
The focus of the related cases is whether President Trump violated the guarantee under the Fourteenth Amendment that “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.”
In 1898, the Supreme Court held that this clause meant that children born to lawful residents in the US were citizens. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and others believed that the case addressed this issue, but Trump disagreed.
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor stated that in order to understand why nationwide injunctions were necessary, one must first discuss the constitutionality of Trump’s order. She argued that Trump’s order was “plainly illegal,” highlighting a serious error in the majority ruling and why courts should issue nationwide injunctions.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penned her own dissent, differing from Barrett and colleagues in a disagreement with Sotomayor.
“In the new legal regime the Court is establishing, no right is safe,” Sotomayor said. She added that while today birthright citizenship might be under threat, “tomorrow, a different government might try to seize the guns of law-abiding citizens, or prevent people of certain faiths from assembling to worship.”
Sotomayor claimed that because the majority decision only provides legal remedies to litigants in court, the “Constitutional protection for all non-litigants is effectively nullified.”
Meanwhile, Jackson characterized the majority ruling as a “threat to the rule of law” in her dissent. She argued that Barrett focused too much on history and not enough on broader, more fundamental principles such as whether the judiciary could prevent illegal conduct.
“Therefore, the majority’s ruling not only departs from first principles but is also dangerous because it sometimes allows the executive to exercise unchecked, arbitrary power, which our Founders sought to prevent by enacting our Constitution,” she said.
In Barrett’s main opinion, she and other justices criticized Jackson’s dissent in several parts.
First, Barrett stated that Jackson’s position was “uncertain.” After briefly discussing Jackson’s dissent, Barrett added that the majority opinion “would not entertain Jackson’s arguments, which are contrary to two centuries of precedent, let alone the Constitution itself.”
Additionally, Barrett contrasted Jackson’s approach with Sotomayor’s handling of issues such as the 1789 Judiciary Act and court precedents, indicating that Jackson “opted for a surprising attack, her attack had no tether to these sources, and candidly, no tether to any doctrine.”
Barrett further noted that Jackson’s understanding of the judiciary “might even cause the most ardent defenders of judicial supremacy to blush.”
(Moved the article to the next comment for space constraint)