Supreme Court hands Trump ‘Giant Win' in birthright citizenship case
The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a 'GIANT WIN' on Friday by ruling against 'universal injunctions' and limiting court injunctions after a lower court issued a preliminary injunction against the president's executive order blocking birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants.
In a 6-3 ruling on Friday, the Supreme Court wrote, '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.'
In Friday's ruling, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett claimed that the 'universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent' for the majority of U.S. history.
'Its absence from 18th- and 19th-century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority,' Barrett wrote. 'That the absence continued into the 20th century renders any claim of historical pedigree still more implausible.'
Barrett explained that the Supreme Court's ruling does not address whether the president's executive order on birthright citizenship violates the Nationality Act of the Citizenship Clause. Instead, Barrett said the issue presented to the Supreme Court 'is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.'
READ MORE: Supreme Court issues major deportation ruling
Barrett added, 'A universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power.'
In a concurring opinion, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that the court's decision will now require district courts throughout the country to 'follow proper legal procedures' with regard to injunctions.
'Most significantly, district courts can no longer award preliminary nationwide or classwide relief except when such relief is legally authorized,' Kavanaugh stated.
Following Friday's Supreme Court ruling, Trump issued a statement on Truth Social, saying, 'GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court! Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard. It had to do with the babies of slaves (same year!), not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process.'
Vice President J.D. Vance also released a statement regarding the Supreme Court's decision, describing it as a 'huge ruling.' Vance claimed that the ruling will stop the 'ridiculous process of nationwide injunctions' that Democrat judges have used to continually block the president's executive orders.
'Under our system, everyone has to follow the law–including judges!' Vance tweeted.
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USA Today
29 minutes ago
- USA Today
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Fast Company
33 minutes ago
- Fast Company
WhatsApp just got banned on Capitol Hill. Here's how you can make the Meta messaging platform more secure
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New York Times
35 minutes ago
- New York Times
With Supreme Court Ruling, Another Check on Trump's Power Fades
The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Trump pushes to amass more power. The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6 to 3, will allow Mr. Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country — even though every court that has looked at the directive has ruled it unconstitutional. That means some infants born to undocumented immigrants or foreign visitors without green cards can be denied citizenship-affirming documentation like Social Security numbers. But the diminishing of judicial authority as a potential counterweight to exercises of presidential power carries implications far beyond the issue of citizenship. The Supreme Court is effectively tying the hands of lower-court judges at a time when they are trying to respond to a steady geyser of aggressive executive branch orders and policies. The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that already took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind. Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the 'imperial presidency.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
