The Supreme Court on Friday limited the use of nationwide injunctions, reining in federal judges’ ability to issue sweeping orders that have in recent years stymied implementation of policies from Republican and Democratic presidential administrations alike.
In a widely anticipated decision stemming from President Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, the high court said that universal orders likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to the federal courts. Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the majority opinion for the 6-3 court, with the liberal justices in dissent.
The court granted the Trump administration request to narrow the reach of the injunctions blocking the president’s executive order while proceedings move forward, but “only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief” to plaintiffs who can sue, Barrett wrote. The justices did not address the question of whether Mr. Trump’s order is constitutional, and the administration has said agencies have 30 days to issue public guidance about implementation of the policy, allowing time for more challenges to be filed.
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In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of abdicating its role in protecting the rule of law. She read portions of her dissenting opinion from the bench.
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At a White House news conference following the decision, Mr. Trump praised it as “a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.”
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The court’s ruling came in a trio of emergency appeals by the Trump administration arising out of the president’s executive order seeking to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, which means that everyone born in the U.S. is a citizen, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The Justice Department had asked the Supreme Court to narrow the scope of three separate injunctions that blocked implementation of Mr. Trump’s policy nationwide while legal challenges brought by 22 states, immigrants’ rights groups and seven individuals moved forward.
But instead of swiftly deciding whether to grant the Trump administration emergency relief, the Supreme Court held arguments on whether to restrict the use of nationwide, or universal, injunctions, which are judicial orders that prevent the government from enforcing a policy anywhere in the country and against anyone, including individuals who are not involved in the litigation before them.
The dispute over the president’s attempt to unwind birthright citizenship has become intertwined with the administration’s battle against nationwide injunctions. These sweeping orders have frustrated both Democratic and Republican presidents seeking to implement their agendas among gridlock in Congress, and the fight over them has been simmering for several years.
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The president’s birthright citizenship order was one of the first that he signed on his first day back in office. While the 14th Amendment has for more than a century been understood to guarantee citizenship to all people born in the U.S., Mr. Trump’s order denied birthright citizenship to children born to a mother who is unlawfully present in the U.S. or who is lawfully present on a temporary basis; or whose father is neither a citizen nor lawful permanent resident. The president directed federal agencies to stop issuing documents recognizing U.S. citizenship to children in those categories born after Feb. 19.
More than half-a-dozen lawsuits challenging the measure were filed before it took effect, and three federal district courts in Washington, Maryland and Massachusetts each blocked the government from implementing the order. Federal appeals courts in California, Massachusetts and Virginia then refused requests by the Trump administration to partly block the lower court orders.
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Writing for the majority, Barrett looked to the nation’s history and said that nationwide injunctions were “conspicuously nonexistent” in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. If federal courts had such a tool, she said, “surely they would not have let it lay idle.”
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