BREAKING: SCOTUS rules 6-3 against nationwide injunctions in birthright citizenship case

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration in its attempt to block a lower court’s nationwide preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The court wrote in its 6-3 opinion, "Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants 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."

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court that one study found there had been around 127 universal injunctions issued between 1963 and 2023, most of which were issued under Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. "The bottom line? The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history."

"Its absence from 18th- and 19th-century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority. That the absence continued into the 20th century renders any claim of historical pedigree still more implausible."

She added, "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. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."

She concluded, "The lower courts shall move expeditiously to ensure that, with respect to each plaintiff, the injunctions comport with this rule and otherwise comply with principles of equity. The injunctions are also stayed to the extent that they prohibit executive agencies from developing and issuing public guidance about the Executive’s plans to implement the Executive Order."

"Consistent with the Solicitor General’s representation, §2 of the Executive Order shall not take effect until 30 days after the date of this opinion."

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion, "importantly, today’s decision will require district courts to follow proper legal procedures when awarding such relief. Most significantly, district courts can no longer award preliminary nationwide or classwide relief except when such relief is legally authorized. And that salutary development will help bring substantially more order and discipline to the ubiquitous preliminary litigation over new federal statutes and executive actions."

In the administration’s petition to the court, attorneys wrote that the court should "stay the preliminary injunction" in the consolidated cases except as to those respondents identified in the complaints.

"To put it mildly, universal injunctions irreparably harm the Executive Branch by preventing a branch of government from carrying out its work. The President holds 'the mandate of the people to exercise his executive power.' The Executive Branch exists to carry out his policies. Courts play an important role in adjudicating the lawfulness of those policies in justiciable cases, but they irreparably injure our democratic system when they forbid the government from effectuating those policies against anyone anywhere in the Nation," the petition stated.

"Aggravating that irreparable harm, the district courts’ universal injunctions interfere with internal Executive Branch operations by prohibiting agencies from developing and issuing guidance explaining how the Order would be implemented. This Court should grant stays to correct that 'improper intrusion by a federal court into the workings of a coordinate branch of the Government.’"

The administration said that the universal injunctions "impair the President’s efforts to address the crisis at the Nation’s southern border."

During the May arguments, Justice Elena Kagan said, "as far as I see it, this order violates four Supreme Court precedents, and you are claiming that not just the Supreme Court and no lower court can stop an executive from universally, from violating that holding, those holdings by this court."

Counsel John Sauer said that the "the original meaning of the citizenship clause extended citizenship to the children of former slaves, not to people who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States. The merits arguments we are presenting to the lower courts are compelling. We cite, for example, a host of 19th-century authorities that point out that domicile was the touchstone of noncitizens being treated as having their offspring treated as citizens."
 

Senator Eric Schmitt said in May that two-thirds of all injunctions ever issued in the US were against Trump, adding that there were more issued in Trump’s first 100 days than Barack Obama and Biden’s presidential terms combined.  

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