Supreme Court ruling means ‘harder work' for Illinois and others fighting Trump administration actions

Chicago Tribune

15 hours ago

A Supreme Court decision limiting federal judges from issuing nationwide injunctions is expected to make it more difficult for blue states fighting President Donald Trump's executive orders to get widespread relief and could further stretch the resources of Illinois' attorney general's office as it pushes back against the administration.
For Americans opposed to Trump administration actions that include funding cuts and immigration matters, 'it creates a greater reliance on your state to take action for you, your state attorneys general,' Attorney General Kwame Raoul in an interview, 'because it's harder to get broad protection as an individual.'
Since the start of the Trump administration, Raoul and other mostly blue state attorneys general have filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump's actions in federal courts, some of which led to nationwide injunctions blocking the president's orders. The high court's ruling has limited those injunctions.
Illinois has joined more than 20 lawsuits against the Trump administration on issues ranging from funding issues to birthright citizenship.
The court's ruling was a win for Trump, who has said he believes federal judges have overstepped in blocking some of his administration's actions. For those opposing the administration, 'It means that it's going to be harder work,' said Ed Yohnka, spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union Illinois, which has fought many of the Trump administration's actions.
Still, given Illinois' aggressive stance against the administration's orders and involvement in so many lawsuits, 'we can hope that the impact will be minimal in our state,' Yohnka said.
At this point, no one knows the full implications of last week's decision, said Carolyn Shapiro, former Illinois solicitor general.
In the decision, the Supreme Court said lower courts generally can't issue an injunction to prevent the federal government — or any defendant — 'from doing an illegal thing to people who aren't in front of the court,' Shapiro said.
In the opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, members of the court's conservative majority said, 'federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them.'
It left exceptions, including class-action lawsuits and cases in which a broad injunction would be necessary to bring relief to the people or states that filed the lawsuit.
The court didn't rule on whether Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship — the matter that was before the high court — was constitutional. The court instead gave lower courts 30 days from its ruling to determine how to move forward with the challenges to the executive order. It could be a year before the high court weighs in on the substance of those challenges.
In one of the most recent actions, Raoul's office this week filed a lawsuit in federal court in California against the administration for sharing Medicaid health records with immigration authorities, as the federal government says it looks to end unlawful benefits. In the lawsuit, the coalition of states argued that the resulting confusion could lead to people refusing to enroll in benefits for which they'd otherwise be eligible, leaving states and safety net hospitals to pay for needed health care.
One of the cases involving Illinois and resulting in an injunction was a suit by 22 state governments against the National Institutes of Health, seeking to stop a new policy that limited reimbursements for medical research grants. A court blocked the policy nationwide in March, but NIH has since appealed.
In another case, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against a Department of Health and Human Services directive to fire thousands HHS workers — though the court also recently asked for additional information on how the Supreme Court ruling on injunctions could affect the order, according to a tracker of actions against the administration from the law and policy journal Just Security.
Raoul said he believes it's still easy to argue that there should be a nationwide stoppage on the birthright citizenship order, because people move across state borders, and having a 'state to state landscape' of citizenship would cause issues for the states that filed the lawsuit.
But some other areas are more difficult to argue, Shapiro said — for example, arguing whether federal funding would need to be restored to universities nationwide in order to get relief for the states that file a lawsuit.
'It actually puts the red state AGs in a complicated position,' said Shapiro, who is also a law professor and co-director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States at Illinois Tech Chicago-Kent. That's because they too could benefit from relief from nationwide orders that restore funding for education systems or health care systems, she said.
As for the class-action option, the ACLU already filed a class-action lawsuit on the birthright citizenship issue, seeking broad relief from the Trump administration's order. But that kind of action can also come with obstacles for people or organizations filing lawsuits, Yohnka of the ACLU Illinois said, including the time and effort it takes to recruit people into the class.
The ongoing legal fights come as Raoul's office has maintained essentially a flat overall budget for the fiscal year that began this month, despite a push during session to get additional funding. A line item for the AG's operations increased this year, but it was largely offset by anticipated dips in other funding streams, Raoul said.
'It was aspirational,' Raoul said of the push for additional funding for his office. 'However, we are — we're clearly busy.'
He argued that rulings on some of the issues that states like Illinois are fighting shouldn't be applied differently around the nation.
'We have one Constitution that applies the same to all 50 states,' Raoul said, noting that a judge in Washington had said the birthright order was unconstitutional. 'If you think about that from that context, if it's unconstitutional and clearly unconstitutional … then why shouldn't it be stopped everywhere?'