Supreme Court Limits Nationwide Injunctions in Win for Trump Administration
The decision was 6-3, with Justices voting along party lines.
Right off the bat, it’s important to understand that the question of birthright citizenship WAS NOT answered in this case; Instead, the Trump Administration was arguing that lower courts shouldn’t be allowed to issue nationwide injunctions on orders handed down from the President. Today, the Supreme Court agreed.
This is...a massive shift. It limits one of the only tools federal judges had to stop wildly unconstitutional executive actions before real harm is done. Which is why, from the bench, Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn’t mince words: “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates... I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law. I dissent.”
And in case you missed the stakes, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson went even further: calling the ruling an “existential threat to the rule of law.”
The order is set to take effect 30 days from now, but only in the 28 states that did not sue Trump. This gives opponents and plaintiffs a chance to seek relief through class-action lawsuits. Still, the change is huge. To explore it, let’s go back to Inauguration Day; January 20, 2025.
Remember when the administration handed down an executive order that rewrote the constitutional right of citizenship to any person born on our land? Well, shortly after the executive order was issued, a judge handed down a nationwide injunction. The judge believed the executive order was unconstitutional, so the injunction was put in place ensuring no babies’ citizenship was affected while this was being decided in court. Today’s decision essentially bars THAT from happening… instead of placing a pause on the policy while it goes through the courts, the administration will be allowed to continue the policy in any state who does not challenge his order. That means a baby born in Seattle might be a citizen, but another baby born in Phoenix might not be. The patchwork of policy from state to state will make challenging the administration’s moves that much more difficult.