SCOTUS birthright citizenship decision reveals deeper issue
Barrett orchestrated a complete smackdown of Jackson's dissent. The overtly hostile nature of Barrett's attack on Jackson reveals heightened tensions within the Supreme Court.
Barrett's hostilities toward Jackson reveal tensions in Supreme Court
In her majority opinion, Barrett repeatedly calls out Jackson by name, a practice often avoided by the writers of majority opinions, who opt to criticize "the dissent" as a general category instead. Justices accosting each other by name is rare - even in Justice Neil Gorsuch's own spat with Jackson just a few days prior, he was not this hostile.
Jackson's dissent isn't heroic. It exposes big problem with Supreme Court. | Opinion
Even as the dissents have tended to be on the dramatic side in recent years, rarely have they become outright hostile toward one another. However, Barrett in particular seems to be fed up with Jackson's liberal jurisprudence.
"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," Barrett wrote for the majority. "We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."
In a single line, Barrett simultaneously dismisses the opinion of Jackson while also levying a legitimate criticism against her dissent. Jackson advocates for universal injunctions as a check against presidential overreach, but trading in one branch's overreach of their authority for another's does not produce a balanced system of government.
Opinion: Trump gets a win on injunctions, but will birthright citizenship order hold?
In the judicial equivalent of the People's Elbow, Barrett uses Jackson's own words against her to further advance that point. "JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: '[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.' That goes for judges too."
Barrett's critiques of Jackson reveal a growing tension between the court's two youngest judges, who in all likelihood will be serving alongside each other for the next couple of decades. Just three years into their tenure together, Barrett is already fed up with Jackson's misunderstanding of the constitutional role of judges.
Barrett and Jackson disagree over the role of judges
Today's argument reveals a stark difference in the judicial philosophies of Barrett and Jackson.
Their chief disagreement on the issue of nationwide injunctions is whether they are the constitutionally proper form of relief against executive actions suspected of being unconstitutional.
Barrett contends that "The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation's history."
"Universal injunctions were not a feature of federal court litigation until sometime in the 20th century," Barrett wrote in her majority opinion. "Yet such injunctions remained rare until the turn of the 21st century, when their use gradually accelerated."
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The primary dissent, authored by Justice Sonya Sotomayor and signed on to by all three liberal justices, charges that "By stripping all federal courts, including itself, of that power, the Court kneecaps the Judiciary's authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies."
Jackson filed a separate dissenting opinion, in addition to her joining of Sotomayor's, which goes further.
"In a constitutional Republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the Executive to follow the law -- and it must," Jackson wrote in her dissent. "Made up of 'free, impartial, and independent' judges and justices, the Judiciary checks the political branches of Government by explaining what the law is and 'securing obedience' with it."
Both dissents insist this decision gives the executive branch unbound authority to act unconstitutionally without any check against it. But it's not as if universal injunctions are the only option for relief. As the conservatives in the majority highlight, traditional class action lawsuits offer relief in a similar way to these injunctions, but with a higher procedural burden than sweeping judicial orders.
The issue with injunctions is that they are a blunt instrument, often used in cases that require a scalpel. The conservatives on the court understand that these orders exceed the constitutional role of judges and are willing to rein them in because of that. The liberal justices are comfortable with combating executive overreach with judicial overreach.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
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Reuters
34 minutes ago
- Reuters
Immigrants scramble for clarity after Supreme Court birthright ruling
WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications. The court's conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges' power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship. That outcome has raised more questions than answers about a right long understood to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution: that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents' citizenship or legal status. Lorena, a 24-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and is due to give birth in September, pored over media reports on Friday morning. She was looking for details about how her baby might be affected, but said she was left confused and worried. "There are not many specifics," said Lorena, who like others interviewed by Reuters asked to be identified by her first name out of fear for her safety. "I don't understand it well." She is concerned that her baby could end up with no nationality. "I don't know if I can give her mine," she said. "I also don't know how it would work, if I can add her to my asylum case. I don't want her to be adrift with no nationality." Trump, a Republican, issued an order after taking office in January that directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order was blocked by three separate U.S. district court judges, sending the case on a path to the Supreme Court. The resulting decision said Trump's policy could go into effect in 30 days but appeared to leave open the possibility of further proceedings in the lower courts that could keep the policy blocked. On Friday afternoon, plaintiffs filed an amended lawsuit, opens new tab in federal court in Maryland seeking to establish a nationwide class of people whose children could be denied citizenship. If they are not blocked nationwide, the restrictions could be applied in the 28 states that did not contest them in court, creating "an extremely confusing patchwork" across the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. "Would individual doctors, individual hospitals be having to try to figure out how to determine the citizenship of babies and their parents?" she said. The drive to restrict birthright citizenship is part of Trump's broader immigration crackdown, and he has framed automatic citizenship as a magnet for people to come to give birth. "Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn't meant for that reason," he said during a White House press briefing on Friday. Immigration advocates and lawyers in some Republican-led states said they received calls from a wide range of pregnant immigrants and their partners following the ruling. They were grappling with how to explain it to clients who could be dramatically affected, given all the unknowns of how future litigation would play out or how the executive order would be implemented state by state. Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said she got a call on Friday from an East Asian temporary visa holder with a pregnant wife. He was anxious because Ohio is not one of the plaintiff states and wanted to know how he could protect his child's rights. "He kept stressing that he was very interested in the rights included in the Constitution," she said. Advocates underscored the gravity of Trump's restrictions, which would block an estimated 150,000 children born in the U.S. annually from receiving automatic citizenship. "It really creates different classes of people in the country with different types of rights," said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for the immigrant rights organization United We Dream. "That is really chaotic." Adding uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled that members of two plaintiff groups in the litigation - CASA, an immigrant advocacy service in Maryland, and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project - would still be covered by lower court blocks on the policy. Whether someone in a state where Trump's policy could go into effect could join one of the organizations to avoid the restrictions or how state or federal officials would check for membership remained unclear. Betsy, a U.S. citizen who recently graduated from high school in Virginia and a CASA member, said both of her parents came to the U.S. from El Salvador two decades ago and lacked legal status when she was born. "I feel like it targets these innocent kids who haven't even been born," she said, declining to give her last name for concerns over her family's safety. Nivida, a Honduran asylum seeker in Louisiana, is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and recently gave birth. She heard on Friday from a friend without legal status who is pregnant and wonders about the situation under Louisiana's Republican governor, since the state is not one of those fighting Trump's order. "She called me very worried and asked what's going to happen," she said. "If her child is born in Louisiana … is the baby going to be a citizen?"
Reuters
38 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trump wins as Supreme Court curbs judges, but may yet lose on birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling blunting a potent weapon that federal judges have used to block government policies nationwide during legal challenges was in many ways a victory for President Donald Trump, except perhaps on the very policy he is seeking to enforce. An executive order that the Republican president signed on his first day back in office in January would restrict birthright citizenship - a far-reaching plan that three federal judges, questioning its constitutionality, quickly halted nationwide through so-called "universal" injunctions. But the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday, while announcing a dramatic shift in how judges have operated for years deploying such relief, left enough room for the challengers to Trump's directive to try to prevent it from taking effect while litigation over its legality plays out. "I do not expect the president's executive order on birthright citizenship will ever go into effect," said Samuel Bray, a Notre Dame Law School professor and a prominent critic of universal injunctions whose work the court's majority cited extensively in Friday's ruling. Trump's executive order directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. The three judges found that the order likely violates citizenship language in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. The directive remains blocked while lower courts reconsider the scope of their injunctions, and the Supreme Court said it cannot take effect for 30 days, a window that gives the challengers time to seek further protection from those courts. The court's six conservative justices delivered the majority ruling, granting Trump's request to narrow the injunctions issued by the judges in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts. Its three liberal members dissented. The ruling by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020, emphasized the need to hem in the power of judges, warning against an "imperial" judiciary. Judges can provide "complete relief" only to the plaintiffs before them, Barrett wrote. That outcome was a major victory for Trump and his allies, who have repeatedly denounced judges who have impeded his agenda. It could make it easier for the administration to implement his policies, including to accelerate deportations of migrants, restrict transgender rights, curtail diversity and inclusion efforts, and downsize the federal government - many of which have tested the limits of executive power. In the birthright citizenship dispute, the ruling left open the potential for individual plaintiffs to seek relief beyond themselves through class action lawsuits targeting a policy that would upend the long-held understanding that the Constitution confers citizenship on virtually anyone born on U.S. soil. Bray said he expects a surge of new class action cases, resulting in "class-protective" injunctions. "Given that the birthright-citizenship executive order is unconstitutional, I expect courts will grant those preliminary injunctions, and they will be affirmed on appeal," Bray said. Some of the challengers have already taken that path. Plaintiffs in the Maryland case, including expectant mothers and immigrant advocacy groups, asked the presiding judge who had issued a universal injunction to treat the case as a class action to protect all children who would be ineligible for birthright citizenship if the executive order takes effect. "I think in terms of the scope of the relief that we'll ultimately get, there is no difference," said William Powell, one of the lawyers for the Maryland plaintiffs. "We're going to be able to get protection through the class action for everyone in the country whose baby could potentially be covered by the executive order, assuming we succeed." The ruling also sidestepped a key question over whether states that bring lawsuits might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to address their alleged harms, directing lower courts to answer it first. The challenge to Trump's directive also included 22 states, most of them Democratic-governed, who argued that the financial and administrative burdens they would face required a nationwide block on Trump's order. George Mason University constitutional law expert Ilya Somin said the practical consequences of the ruling will depend on various issues not decided so far by the Supreme Court. "As the majority recognizes, states may be entitled to much broader relief than individuals or private groups," Somin said. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Democrat who helped lead the case brought in Massachusetts, disagreed with the ruling but sketched out a path forward on Friday. The ruling, Platkin said in a statement, "recognized that nationwide orders can be appropriate to protect the plaintiffs themselves from harm - which is true, and has always been true, in our case." Platkin committed to "keep challenging President Trump's flagrantly unlawful order, which strips American babies of citizenship for the first time since the Civil War" of 1861-1865. Legal experts said they expect a lot of legal maneuvering in lower courts in the weeks ahead, and the challengers still face an uphill battle. Compared to injunctions in individual cases, class actions are often harder to successfully mount. States, too, still do not know whether they have the requisite legal entitlement to sue. Trump's administration said they do not, but the court left that debate unresolved. Meanwhile, the 30-day clock is ticking. If the challengers are unsuccessful going forward, Trump's order could apply in some parts of the country, but not others. "The ruling is set to go into effect 30 days from now and leaves families in states across the country in deep uncertainty about whether their children will be born as U.S. citizens," said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School's immigrants' rights clinic.
Belfast Telegraph
an hour ago
- Belfast Telegraph
DUP MP hits out over latest twist to Supreme Court gender ruling as Windsor Framework causes NI uncertainty
The DUP MP spoke out after the commission said the ruling, which determined the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex, would have applied in Northern Ireland if it was not for the Windsor Framework. Instead, the matter will brought before the High Court in Belfast, which will likely take more than a year. The Supreme Court judgement has implications for transgender people's access to single-sex spaces. As the ruling relates to an interpretation of the Equality Act 2010, which does not apply in Northern Ireland, the Equality Commission has to assess how it may be interpreted here. It believes the judgment will be 'highly persuasive' in Northern Ireland courts, but the situation is 'much more nuanced and complicated, and there is significant uncertainty due to our unique legal landscape,' chief commissioner Geraldine McGahey said. Specifically, the Supreme Court did not consider Article 2 commitments under the Windsor Framework agreed between the UK and EU in 2023. Article 2 underlines the Government's commitment to ensure that people in Northern Ireland do not lose equality and human rights contained in the Good Friday Agreement. The agreement is underpinned by EU law, and under the Windsor Framework, aspects of EU law continue to apply to Northern Ireland. Ms McGahey said much local equality legislation used words such as 'sex', 'men' and 'women' without providing 'comprehensive definitions'. But Ms Lockhart said the Supreme Court judgment was a 'victory for the rights of women and girls', and it was 'deeply regrettable' that the commission's response 'appears to cast doubt on the implementation of this landmark decision'. She continued: 'The suggestion that EU law should continue to dictate matters of such importance to women's rights in Northern Ireland is entirely unacceptable. 'Whether it be immigration policy, equality protections or indeed any other area, the Windsor Framework should not be seized upon to place the rights of local people in limbo. Article 2 is about 'no diminution of rights', yet the Equality Commission does not seem able to set out in plain terms which right was in place and has now supposedly been lost. 'The Government must act swiftly and decisively to make it absolutely clear that EU law is not binding in respect of the Supreme Court judgement and cannot stymie efforts to reassert and protect the hard-won rights of women and girls in our society.' Scott Cuthbertson, of the Rainbow Project, said: 'We have worked hard to understand the ruling and communicate our view, and welcome that the Equality Commission has accepted that Article 2 of the Windsor Framework could have implications for how this judgment is read in Northern Ireland. 'We're working through the commission's paper, including its interim guidance for employees and service providers, and considering its implications for trans people as well as our next steps to defend their rights.' Hundreds of trans rights activists descend on City Hall to protest Supreme Court ruling The commission said it would ask the High Court in Belfast to issue a declaration to clarify key questions. Given the unique legal landscape, the commission said it was possible 'sex' could be interpreted differently in Northern Ireland to how it was interpreted by the Supreme Court. Ms McGahey said if it wasn't for Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, 'we would actually be saying very clearly that the Supreme Court judgment applies here in Northern Ireland'. She added: 'That is why we're saying it's highly persuasive for our courts and tribunals here in Northern Ireland. 'Article 2 is about ensuring there's no diminution of rights that are protected or safeguarded within the Good Friday Agreement.' Ms McGahey said there was a debate as to which rights were being referred to, civil rights or rights relating to gender discrimination. Until the High Court process is completed, the commission can only issue 'interim guidance' to employers and service users. One suggestion is for employers to consider universal shower and toilet facilities, consisting of self-contained lockable rooms that can be used by one person at a time, regardless of their gender. The intention of this would be for these universal facilities to be designed 'so no one could infer a person's gender or sex simply because they were selected', thus avoiding risking 'outing' transgender people.
