Trump's big win and other takeaways from final Supreme Court decisions
Last year, the court said formers presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, a decision that helped Trump avoid being tried for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
And Trump has also been on a winning streak on emergency appeals that the justices decide relatively quickly, without oral arguments.
Those emergency actions will continue over the summer, while the court is in recess.
But June 27 was the final day for decisions on cases the justices have been considering for months.
In addition to ruling on the holds judges put on Trump's changes to birthright citizenship, they handed down opinions about LGBTQ+ schoolbooks, online porn, Obamacare and internet subsidies.
Here are the highlights.
Justices halt nationwide blocks on Trump policies from lower courts
Rather than deal directly with birthright citizenship, the high court instead ordered lower courts to review nationwide blocks on Trump policies.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the 6-3 majority that nationwide orders "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts." Judges have 30 days to review their rulings.
"These judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation," Trump said. "This was a colossal abuse of power."
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who complained that 35 of 40 national blocks on Trump policies came from five jurisdictions, said the decision would stop regional judges from becoming "emperors."
But states and immigration advocates had warned such a decision would leave a patchwork where newborns are recognized as citizens in nearly half the states where judges have blocked Trump's order but not in other jurisdictions. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit to halt Trump's birthright order in the wake of the high court's decision.
"Every court to have looked at this cruel order agrees that it is unconstitutional," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.
Varu Chilakamarri, a partner at K&L Gates, said the decision could result in more class-action lawsuits or fast-tracking litigation to get decisions from the Supreme Court faster.
"The Supreme Court's sweeping rejection of nationwide injunctions sharply limits the power of lower courts to block controversial executive actions," Chilakarmarri said. "But all of those paths will inevitably take longer to unfold - making it harder to stop the broad implementation of highly contested policies."
The high court didn't consider the constitutionality of whether Trump's order limiting birthright citizenship for the children of parents in the country temporarily or without legal authorization. Bondi said that decision could come in the court's next session starting in October.
Conservaties like Amy Coney Barrett again
Maybe Justice Amy Coney Barrett will stop being vilified by Trump supporters.
Some of the president's loudest supporters called her diversity, equity and inclusion hire after Barrett (and Chief Justice John Roberts) sided with the court's three liberal justices in a March decision that the Trump administration has to pay foreign aid organizations for work they already did for the government.
But Barrett authored the big win for Trump.
Conservative commentator Sean Davis said on social media that in Barrett's opinion "nuking universal injunctions," she also "juked" the dissent written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
"I want to thank Justice Barrett who wrote the opinion brilliantly," Trump told reporters at the White House.
Trump said he wasn't familiar with conservative criticism of Barrett as a "squishy" or "rattled" law professor.
"I don't know about that. I just have great respect for her. I always have," Trump said. "Her decision was brilliantly written today, from all accounts."
Liberals said conservatives gave in to Trump's 'mockery' of the Constitution
While the justices like to emphasize how many of the decisions they hand down are unanimous, the ones that split along ideological lines are more common at the end of the term.
In three of the five full opinions handed down on June 27, the court's six conservatives were on one side and the three liberals were on the other.
In the decision, limiting how judges can block Trump's policies, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the president "has made a `solemn mockery' of our Constitution."
"Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way," she wrote in her dissent.
In response to the majority upholding Texas' age verification law for pornographic websites, Justice Elena Kagan said the court should've pushed Texas on whether there's a way to stop minors from seeing sexually explicit content with less of a burden on the First Amendment rights of adults to view the content.
In the third decision, Sotomayor said requiring schools to let parents remove their children from class when books with LGBTQ+ characters are being read "threatens the very essence of public education."
Conservatives joined with liberals to reject conservative cases
Two more decisions also broke 6-3, but for a different reason.
Three of the court's conservatives - Roberts, Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh - joined the three liberals in rejecting conservative challenges to Obamacare and to an internet subsidy program.
The court's other three conservatives - Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch - dissented.
In the latest challenge to the 2010 Affordable Care Act - commonly known as Obamacare - the majority turned aside an attack on free access to cancer screenings, drugs that prevent HIV, cholesterol-lowering medication and other preventive health care services.
And in a case rooted in a longstanding conservative complaint about Congress delegating too much authority to agencies, the majority said Congress didn't do that when it created a program that subsidizes high-speed internet and phone service for millions of Americans.
In a surprise, the court punted on a racial gerrymandering challenge
The court was supposed to announce whether Louisiana could keep its congressional map, a decision that would potentially affect the 2026 elections and states' ability to consider race when drawing legislative boundaries.
Instead, the court said it wants to hear more arguments first. Why? They didn't say. When? They didn't say that either, except that they will be laying out a timeline "in due course."
The case tests the balancing act states must strike when complying with a civil rights law that protects the voting power of a racial minority while not discriminating against other voters.
A group of non-Black voters challenged the map as unconstitutional, arguing it relied too heavily on race to sort voters.
The state says it drew the lines to protect powerful incumbents like House Speaker Mike Johnson and to comply with a court's decision that it could reasonably create a second majority-Black district.
Democrats have the advantage in that district, which could be a factor when voters decide in 2026 which party will control the closely divided House.
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The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
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But at least the ideal existed. There was a shared moral framework – shaky, yes, but sincere – built on the conviction that humanity must never repeat the atrocities of the first half of the 20th century and that dialogue and diplomacy were better. That conviction has now evaporated, not least in the minds of those who should cherish it most. This is an unprecedented moment. The architects of the previous global disorder – Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao – were all in their 30s or 40s when they rose to power. A new generation built a new world, and lived with its consequences. Today, that new world is being unmade by an old generation – one that will not live to see the wreckage it leaves behind. It's easier to shout 'drill, baby, drill' when you're statistically unlikely to experience the worst of climate collapse. Après nous le déluge, as the French say. 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The kind who think about legacy not as personal glory, but as the world they leave behind. In this age of age, what we need is not domination, but wisdom. And that, in the end, is what separates a ruler from a leader. David Van Reybrouck is philosopher laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders. His books include Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World and Congo: The Epic History of a People Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Reuters
37 minutes ago
- Reuters
Immigrants scramble for clarity after Supreme Court birthright ruling
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"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. 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Reuters
41 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.
