US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders

2025-06-2717:38365656www.theguardian.com

Ruling to limit nationwide injunctions could see president’s order to ban birthright citizenship partially implemented

The US supreme court has supported Donald Trump’s attempt to limit federal judges’ power to block his orders on a nationwide basis, in a controversial ruling on an emergency appeal related to the birthright citizenship case that has wide implications for the executive branch’s power and which Trump claimed as a “giant win”.

The decision represents a fundamental shift in how US federal courts can constrain presidential power. Previously, any of the country’s more than 1,000 judges in its 94 district courts – the lowest level of federal court, which handles trials and initial rulings – could issue nationwide injunctions that immediately halt government policies across all 50 states.

Under the supreme court ruling, however, those court orders only apply to the specific plaintiffs – for example, groups of states or non-profit organizations – that brought the case.

The court’s opinion on the constitutionality of whether some American-born children can be deprived of citizenship remains undecided and the fate of the US president’s order to overturn birthright citizenship rights was left unclear, despite Trump claiming a “giant win”.

The decision on Friday morning, however, decided by six votes to three by the nine-member bench of the highest court in the land, sided with the Trump administration in a historic case that tested presidential power and judicial oversight.

The conservative majority wrote that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts”, granting “the government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue”.

The ruling, written by the conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not let Trump’s policy seeking a ban on birthright citizenship go into effect immediately and did not address the policy’s legality. The fate of the policy remains imprecise.

With the court’s conservatives in the majority and its liberals dissenting, the ruling specified that Trump’s executive order cannot take effect until 30 days after Friday’s ruling.

Trump celebrated the ruling as vindication of his broader agenda to roll back judicial constraints on executive power. “Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” Trump said from the White House press briefing room on Friday. “It wasn’t meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a scathing dissent. She argued that the majority’s decision, restricting federal court powers to grant national legal relief in cases, allows Trump to enforce unconstitutional policies against people who haven’t filed lawsuits, meaning only those with the resources and legal standing to challenge the order in court would be protected.

“The court’s decision to permit the executive to violate the constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law,” Jackson wrote.Given the critical role of the judiciary in maintaining the rule of law … it is odd, to say the least, that the court would grant the executive’s wish to be freed from the constraints of law by prohibiting district courts from ordering complete compliance with the constitution.”

Barrett also delivered a particularly sharp rebuke directed at Jackson in the majority opinion, writing: “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.”

Speaking from the bench, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor called the court’s majority decision “a travesty for the rule of law”.

Trump added from the podium in the West Wing of the White House that birthright citizenship “was meant for the babies of slaves” and claimed “hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship and it wasn’t meant for that reason”.

Birthright citizenship was enshrined in the 14th amendment following the US civil war in 1868, specifically to overturn the supreme court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision that denied citizenship to Black Americans.

The principle has stood since 1898, when the supreme court granted citizenship to Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who could not naturalize.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned the ruling as opening the door to partial enforcement of a ban on automatic birthright citizenship for almost everyone born in the US, in what it called an illegal policy.

“The executive order is blatantly illegal and cruel. It should never be applied to anyone,” Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

Democratic attorneys general who brought the original challenge said in a press conference that while the ruling had been disappointing, the silver lining was that the supreme court left open pathways for continued protection and that “birthright citizenship remains the law of the land”.

“We fought a civil war to address whether babies born on United States soil are, in fact, citizens of this country,” New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew Platkin, said, speaking alongside colleagues from Washington, California, Massachusetts and Connecticut. “For a century and a half, this has not been in dispute.”

The court’s ruling in Trump v Casa Inc will boost Trump’s potential to enforce citizenship restrictions, in this and other cases in future, in states where courts had not specifically blocked them, creating a chaotic patchwork.

Trump’s January executive order sought to deny birthright citizenship to babies born on US soil if their parents lack legal immigration status – defying the 14th amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens – and made justices wary during the hearing.

The real fight in Trump v Casa Inc, wasn’t about immigration but judicial power. Trump’s lawyers demanded that nationwide injunctions blocking presidential orders be scrapped, arguing judges should only protect specific plaintiffs who sue – not the entire country.

Three judges blocked Trump’s order nationwide after he signed it on inauguration day, which would enforce citizenship restrictions in states where courts had not specifically blocked them. The policy targeted children of both undocumented immigrants and legal visa holders, demanding that at least one parent be a lawful permanent resident or US citizen.

Reuters contributed reporting


Read the original article

Comments

  • By acoustics 2025-06-2720:578 reply

    The majority seems too trusting that the government will appeal its losses.

    Strategically, the government could enact a policy affecting a million people, be sued, lose, provide relief to the named plaintiffs, and then not appeal the decision. The upper courts never get the opportunity to make binding precedent, the lower courts do not get to extend relief to non-plaintiffs, and the government gets to enforce its illegal policies on the vast majority of people who did not (likely could not) sue.

    • By cyanmagenta 2025-06-2723:561 reply

      That was a concern noted by the dissent.

      That said, the procedure here is to just use class action lawsuits to get nationwide injunctions. The opinion explicitly notes that it is an option. And today there was a big flurry of people amending their complaints to do just that.

      • By Spivak 2025-06-281:501 reply

        I actually have some insider info on this. While it sounds like in theory all you have to do is take your existing lawsuit and add the additional step on certifying your class, that option isn't available for the vast majority of legal challenges. In the history of the ACLU they have had less than ten cases where they could have been converted into a class action. As a real life example the "trans women being moved to men's prisons" case isn't eligible to be made into a class action. Tangentially related if you want to see a painfully explicit example of "the cruelty is the point" read that EO. Even if you're someone who broadly agrees with the order it's a lot.

        Unfortunately "the set of people who are affected by this law" doesn't define a class.

    • By Spooky23 2025-06-2722:012 reply

      Since we’re rendering people to El Salvador, there’s no reason some ICE bounty hunter can’t grab you in Massachusetts, and dump you in some Home Depot parking lot in the Carolinas.

    • By grogers 2025-06-2723:524 reply

      IANAL but isn't any ruling by even a lower court precedent? Like if I sue the government for thing A and a lower court rules in my favor, doesn't that make the next plaintiff's case for sueing the government for thing A much easier? All it seems to do is make everything much less efficient.

      • By nwallin 2025-06-280:143 reply

        It's only binding in that district.

        So here's how the loophole works. There are 12 courts of appeals. You (ICE) does a bad thing. (renditions a US citizen to an El Salvador concentration camp without due process) You get sued, appeal it to that court of appeals. Let's say it's the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, let's say you lose. You take the L and move on. You never do the bad thing in the 9th circuit again: that decision is binding. Then you do it again in a different circuit. Let's say you do the bad thing in Texas, where the 9th circuit decision was not binding. Let's say you win this time. Now the 5th circuit is your playground.

        From now on, every time you arrest someone in the 9th circuit, you put them on an express flight to anywhere in the 5th district within an hour or so of arresting them, before they can get a lawyer to talk to a judge. The precedent that matters is the 5th circuit precedent, where the detainee is right now, not the 9th district (or anywhere else) where they were detained.

        Because the Supreme Court has now ruled that this is a lower court problem, they've effectively blocked anyone from ever getting justice ever again.

        • By diogocp 2025-06-281:252 reply

          There is no loophole. Defendants in the 5th circuit can appeal to the Supreme Court.

          That is one of the main roles of the Supreme Court: resolving circuit splits.

          • By theptip 2025-06-281:441 reply

            In this scenario the precedent has already been set in the 5th, why would the Supreme Court hear it again?

            The 9th has nothing to do with an immigration hearing in the 5th, the individual’s personal history is irrelevant here.

            Matter of Rahman, 20 I&N Dec. 480 (BIA 1992) seems to cover this. (IANAL)

            • By nradov 2025-06-282:021 reply

              The parties involved can always petition the Supreme Court. They're free to take up any case even if there isn't a split between lower courts.

              • By ceejayoz 2025-06-282:19

                They're also free not to take up the case, and leave the circuit split unresolved. If you want to leave the loophole open, that's a win.

        • By AnimalMuppet 2025-06-281:191 reply

          No, the way this works is, now you have a circuit split (the 9th says one thing, the 5th says the opposite). So when the person who lost in the 5th circuit appeals, the Supreme Court takes it, and whatever they decide is binding on both the 5th and 9th circuits (and everyone else).

        • By goodluckchuck 2025-06-280:342 reply

          [flagged]

          • By acdha 2025-06-281:22

            It’s easy to believe because they’re already doing similar things. The best publicized case was Rümeysa Öztürk, whose student visa was silently canceled over her exercise of protected 1st amendment rights. Normally, if there was a question about a visa they could handle the entire process in Massachusetts, which has a massive federal presence and where immigration cases have been handled without issues since about as long as we’ve had immigration law. Instead, the squad which abducted her off the street quickly took her through New Hampshire and Vermont on the way to Louisiana. There’s no reason to spend so much money on someone who isn’t a threat to anyone other than the Israeli government’s PR department unless the goal is to get them into a friendlier district before a judge can stop it.

          • By sylos 2025-06-280:56

            If some guy on hacker news can think of it, you know the lawyers working with the doj/ice have.

      • By rufus_foreman 2025-06-284:19

        I love this.

        Courts, how do they work?

      • By goodluckchuck 2025-06-280:312 reply

        Universal injunctions are superfluous. If the law says the government cannot do X, then who is a judge to command that the government not do X? That’s the legislature’s job. Judges have no authority to create rules saying people shall and shall not do certain things. That’s called passing a law. Similarly, when a party violates an injunction, who is the Judge to enforce his command? If it within a case or controversy between litigants, then that is one thing. When the judge they’re going to proactively punish someone any time the law as against anyone… that’s a purely executive function.

        In terms of efficiency, it’s more efficient. Those in favor of universal injunctions are saying there should be hundreds of judges all racing to rule over the government, and to have their opinions control in the abstract as to cases that aren’t even before them.

        If the government forces the same issue over and over there are plenty of remedies at hand: 1983 civil penalties against officers, sanctions against attorneys for frivolous arguments, and ultimately the court can hand the legislature everything it needs to impeach and remove a president by ruling that he / she is intentionally failing to enforce the law.

        • By unsnap_biceps 2025-06-281:451 reply

          So the purpose of the judiciary branch is to interpret the laws. If a judge rules that the government is violating the law, you want the government to continue to be allowed to violate the law until the legislature convenes a hearing and rules and then what? The judiciary branch was able to rule on punishment for violating the rules, fines and jail time and what not. You would push all that to the legislature as well? Or would the legislature run a hearing and then ask the judiciary branch to pick the punishment and then have the legislature apply it?

          I just don't understand how you expect this to work unless the point is to make the judiciary branch entirely pointless (for government level check and balances).

          • By tmountain 2025-06-288:16

            This is the same Supreme Court that granted the president immunity from any and all criminal charges as long they were made under the umbrella of the presidency. None of this is normal, and these are radical interpretations of the law explicitly designed to grant the president king like powers and reform the government into an authoritarian regime.

        • By intermerda 2025-06-282:281 reply

          > Universal injunctions are superfluous.

          No they are not.

          > If the law says the government cannot do X, then who is a judge to command that the government not do X?

          The judge is the one that tells you that you are violating the law. The congress doesn't tell you that.

          > Judges have no authority to create rules saying people shall and shall not do certain things. That’s called passing a law.

          There is no law that bars a foreigner from becoming the US President. The judges have the authority to tell them that they cannot become the US President.

          I've typed enough. Best case scenario is that you are have a spectacularly poor understanding of the US government. Worst case scenario is that you are concern trolling for the Mango Mussolini.

          • By manwe150 2025-06-283:13

            The constitution is the supreme law for that: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, … shall be eligible to the Office of President” “This Constitution, … shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

            Curiously also, there is legal scholarly debate about whether judges would have the right to enforce this clause, or only congress: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause_...

    • By Aloisius 2025-06-282:041 reply

      Does the government have to appeal their losses to go to a higher court?

      Seems like all one would need is a case where the government won at a lower court, allowing the other party can appeal.

      And if they never win, then the issue is more about legal resources than anything else, no?

      • By acoustics 2025-06-283:09

        > And if they never win, then the issue is more about legal resources than anything else, no?

        Right. If the government wants to take a very broad action, it is happy to eat some individual losses here and there. Most people won't be able to sue.

    • By DarknessFalls 2025-06-2721:081 reply

      This administration does not really care about the rule of law. It cares to some degree about public perception. The timing of this ruling is about revoking birthright citizenship, which is a huge Constitutional trampling. There were opportunities four years ago for the SC to step in and they refused to intercede. For example, why didn't they rule in favor of executive authority when President Biden he tried to forgive student loan debt and a Federal Judge in Texas deemed it "unlawful"?

      Now we get to see Americans have their legitimacy removed so they can be sent to "Alligator Alcatraz", the new prison being built just for them in the Everglades.

    • By djoldman 2025-06-2723:501 reply

      I'm not a lawyer.

      What's the chance that this could be addressed via class action?

      • By CyanLite2 2025-06-281:58

        High likelihood and even Mustice Thomas mentioned it being high.

        Even then, it only affects those in the class. E.g., it wouldn’t stop across the board federal enforcement as unconstitutional. It would take take a better part of a decade for that class action to move forward.

    • By rufus_foreman 2025-06-281:261 reply

      [flagged]

      • By magicalist 2025-06-282:561 reply

        >> The majority seems too trusting that the government will appeal its losses

        > You seem too skeptical that the Supreme Court wouldn't see right through that.

        See right through what? If it's never brought to the Supreme Court, it's never brought to the Supreme Court.

        • By rufus_foreman 2025-06-284:331 reply

          The Supreme Court decides what gets brought to the Supreme Court.

          You don't like the outcome so you're shitting on the process.

          • By aspenmayer 2025-06-287:13

            > The Supreme Court decides what gets brought to the Supreme Court.

            The Supreme Court decides whether to take a given case once it is brought.

    • By SrslyJosh 2025-06-2723:27

      They're complicit. Their power is (hypothetically) intact, and they don't care about potential harm to anyone else.

  • By dayofthedaleks 2025-06-2720:553 reply

    This is functionally equivalent to the Enabling Act of 1933. [0]

    [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

    • By macawfish 2025-06-2720:571 reply

      Only eerily not legislated

      • By tshaddox 2025-06-2721:082 reply

        Our legislature willingly gave up its power quite a while ago.

        • By blackqueeriroh 2025-06-288:22

          Incorrect, one party in the legislature gave up its power

    • By roenxi 2025-06-280:171 reply

      Can you outline the argument as to how? It seems quite different according to the article. The courts still assert supremacy when it comes to interpreting and vetting the law, and Trump isn't allowed to overrule the legislature's lawmaking powers.

      • By bravesoul2 2025-06-280:43

        Also it is not a constitutional change.

    • By 827a 2025-06-2721:27

      [flagged]

  • By jaggajasoos33 2025-06-2723:394 reply

    A lot of our systems work because everyone at least half heartedly sort of goes by the rules. Yes, everyone sort of pretends to obey the rule and hence it works. In reality these systems are extremely fragile and a small committed minority can totally break years of precedent and systems. I think we are at that phase right now from the right side and soonish we will see the same from right left as well.

    • By smeej 2025-06-2723:47

      Makes me think of the latter part of this quotation:

      "But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist." - Lysander Spooner (emphasis mine)

      Resilient systems have to align incentives such that they work whether or not everybody has enough good will or agreeability to play along.

      250 years isn't a bad run. Maybe the next Constitution can iterate and fix the incentive alignment.

    • By intended 2025-06-283:58

      Time! Time is the lever which a small group has used to make these changes.

      It’s been ~40 years of Talk Radio in America and ~30 years of TV, which has sold entertainment as news and fine tuned the ability to have a captive voting bloc.

      Producing accurate content is laborious, narratives are cheap. Facts are essentially luxury goods, and the left+center is selling them as public goods. This can never work, it takes too much to pay for and maintain the institutions which make this possible.

      The right is on the other hand, being organized and “flooding the zone”, in an unending effort to reduce faith in institutions. On top of it, information from the center and left doesn’t get consumed on the right.

      This took decades to set up. Today Trump’s approval ratings are down overall, but Republican support for Trump remains at its March number - 88%.

      Edit: If I could introduce another metaphor; it’s hard to sell your goods, where half the market is locked behind a monopoly that cuts corners, and sells junk food but can label it as health food. Oh, and they spend their profits, accusing health food of being spurious.

    • By markus_zhang 2025-06-280:05

      That small minority probably showed up like a hundred years ago, or earlier.

    • By ethbr1 2025-06-2723:51

      There are few ways to secure rules against every contingency that don't come at a cost in efficiency.

      Either you can have watchers all the way down and nothing gets done, or there are limits.

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