Latest news with #judicialPower
Japan Times
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Japan Times
Trump's court win opens a path to clear hurdles to his agenda
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling curbing the power of judges to block government actions on a nationwide basis has raised questions about whether dozens of orders that have halted President Donald Trump's policies will stand. The conservative majority's ruling Friday came in a fight over Trump's plan to limit automatic birthright citizenship. But it may have far-reaching consequences for the ability of U.S. courts to issue orders that apply to anyone affected by a policy, not just the parties who filed lawsuits. Judges entered nationwide preliminary orders halting Trump administration actions in at least four dozen of the 400 lawsuits filed since he took office in January, according to a Bloomberg News analysis. Some were later put on hold on appeal. Nationwide orders currently in place include blocks on the administration's revocation of foreign students' legal status, freezes of domestic spending and foreign aid, funding cuts related to gender-affirming care and legal services for migrant children, and proof-of-citizenship rules for voting. The Supreme Court's new precedent doesn't instantly invalidate injunctions in those cases. But the Justice Department could quickly ask federal judges to revisit the scope of these and other earlier orders in light of the opinion. 'Fair game' "Everything is fair game,' said Dan Huff, a lawyer who served in the White House counsel's office during Trump's first term. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. Trump said at a news conference in the White House Friday that the administration will "promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis.' Trump listed cases that they would target, including suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding and "stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries.' The Trump administration has made it a priority to contest court orders that block policies on a nationwide, or universal, basis, although the controversy over whether those types of rulings are an appropriate use of judicial power has been brewing for years. Conservative advocates won such orders when Democratic presidents were in office as well. Noting the mounting pushback and debate, judges in dozens of other cases involving Trump's policies have limited their orders against the administration to the parties that sued or within certain geographical boundaries. Anastasia Boden, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation whose practice includes suing the federal government, said she didn't see the ruling as a total "retreat' from judges' authority to enter universal orders going forward. Multiple paths "It's addressing the case where a plaintiff is getting relief that applies to everyone across the country merely because judges think that it's an important issue,' she said. "But it doesn't change the case where the plaintiff needs that relief.' Boden offered the example of a challenge to government spending, in which the only way to halt an unlawful action would be to stop payment of federal dollars across the country, not just to individual plaintiffs or in certain areas. Trump's opponents say the justices' decision still leaves them with multiple paths to sue the administration over actions they contend are unlawful and even to argue for nationwide relief. Those options include class action lawsuits, cases seeking to set aside agency actions under a U.S. law known as the Administrative Procedure Act and even continuing to argue that nationwide relief is the only way to stop harm to individual plaintiffs, like parties did in the birthright citizenship cases. But they also acknowledged the court significantly raised the burden of what they have to prove to win those types of orders. "This is going to make it more challenging, more complicated, potentially more expensive to seek orders that more broadly stop illegal government action,' Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, said. "It is watering down the power of federal courts to check government misconduct.' The Supreme Court sent the birthright citizenship cases back to lower court judges to reconsider the scope of orders pausing Trump's restrictions while the legal fight on its constitutionality continues. The justices did not rule on the core question of whether the policy itself is lawful. The administration can't fully enforce the birthright policy for at least another 30 days. Democratic state attorneys general involved in the birthright litigation highlighted language in Justice Amy Coney Barrett's majority opinion that the court didn't shut off the possibility that the states could still successfully argue for a nationwide order. Speaking with reporters after the ruling, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said that he and his Democratic colleagues would "assess' the impact on other cases. He said they already had been judicious in asking judges for nationwide relief as opposed to orders that restricted administration policies in specific states. "The court confirmed what we've thought all along — nationwide relief should be limited, but it is available to states when appropriate,' Platkin said.
Bloomberg
16 hours ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Trump's Court Win Opens a Path to Clear Hurdles to His Agenda
The US Supreme Court's ruling curbing the power of judges to block government actions on a nationwide basis has raised questions about whether dozens of orders that have halted President Donald Trump's policies will stand. The conservative majority's ruling Friday came in a fight over Trump's plan to limit automatic birthright citizenship. But it may have far-reaching consequences for the ability of US courts to issue orders that apply to anyone affected by a policy, not just the parties who filed lawsuits.
Fox News
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Trump celebrates Supreme Court limits on 'colossal abuse of power' by federal judges
President Donald Trump celebrated after the Supreme Court moved to block lower courts from issuing universal injunctions, something that had impacted his executive orders. The president held a news conference just over an hour after the ruling was issued and said the Supreme Court had stopped a "colossal abuse of power." "I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we've seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers," Trump said on Friday. This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Washington Post
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Sen. Grassley: Rein in nationwide injunctions. Readers: No thanks.
Regarding the May 29 editorial, 'In defense of nationwide injunctions': The Post's Editorial Board argued that, in spite of the lack of historical precedent and constitutional basis for universal injunctions, this judicial maneuver is ostensibly a necessary 'check on presidential power.' But allowing district judges to exert bloated authority beyond the cases and controversies before them only creates further imbalance among the branches of government. The Post should have taken into serious consideration Article III of the Constitution, which limits courts to deciding 'cases' or 'controversies' — as well as the first 150 years of American history, during which time, as the board acknowledged, scholars have found no documented use of a universal injunction. It's not the judiciary's responsibility to set policy; that power is vested in the people through their elected leaders. For decades, Congress has failed to write specific legislation, leaving the door open for a variety of interpretations. Congress can and must pass clearer laws, but the legislative branch's past mistakes aren't a free pass for district judges to overstep constitutional guardrails and play policymaker. The continued use of universal injunctions does far more harm than good to our nation's system of checks and balances. What's more, injunctions place severe pressure on the Supreme Court by frequently forcing it to respond to emergency appeals. The bill I introduced to eliminate universal injunctions would instead encourage appropriate appellate action by making temporary restraining orders immediately appealable. In those cases where widespread judicial relief is appropriate, Congress has already provided a mechanism: class-action lawsuits. Courts should no longer be permitted to avoid the class certification process by opting instead for universal injunctions. I hope the Supreme Court steps in quickly to address injunctions. In the meantime, I'll keep moving my legislative fixes toward the finish line, including through reconciliation. I continue to encourage my Democratic colleagues to join me in this effort. Many Democrats have sharply criticized the practice in the past — including in the case of the mifepristone ban The Post's editorial referenced — but have shelved their opposition to universal injunctions since President Donald Trump returned to office. The Post itself argued for limiting injunctions in a separate editorial last June. The constitutional dangers posed by universal injunctions haven't changed over the past year; the only thing that has is the White House's current occupant. We shouldn't let politics overcome principle by failing to address this bipartisan problem now. Chuck Grassley, Washington The writer, a Republican, represents Iowa in the U.S. Senate and is chair of the Judiciary Committee. Not only does President Donald Trump's 'big beautiful bill,' now under consideration by the Senate, threaten to balloon the deficit, but its passage also heightens the risk that the United States could succumb to autocratic rule. Buried in this bill are provisions that make it easier for the administration to ignore court orders by limiting the courts' powers to hold the president and Congress in contempt for failing to abide by an order unless a plaintiff in a case posted a financial bond. This provision would apply for court cases not only going forward but also retroactively. Additionally, the bill would limit the judiciary's ability to implement nationwide injunctions for Trump's executive orders. Thus far, the courts have been the only branch of government that is effectively preventing Trump and his team from carrying out blatantly unconstitutional executive orders. In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), several Democratic lawmakers correctly noted that provisions limiting the judiciary's power to enforce its orders 'would neutralize valid injunctions and leave courts powerless to act in the face of open defiance.' The drafters of the Constitution created three independent branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. This Republican Congress has abdicated its role of providing a check on the executive branch. The executive branch cannot be permitted to evade its obligations to follow the judiciary's orders. To permit such defiance would strike at the heart of the separation of powers that defines our Constitution and system of government. This bill should not pass for many other reasons, but lawmakers must not ignore these dangerous provisions. Jill Leiner, Baltimore As The Post noted in its editorial, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to decide the question of 'whether federal district judges went overboard in issuing nationwide injunctions against Trump's executive order doing away with birthright citizenship.' It appears to me that the answer to the question should depend on the nature of the administration action being challenged in the cases before the district judges. In the cases the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to consider, the district judges reviewed a challenge to the administration's nationwide declaration and order that birthright citizenship will no longer be available to all babies born in the country. Three district court judges have held that this nationwide order is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. The Trump administration can appeal these rulings and can ask for a stay of the rulings during appeals. But in the absence of a stay pending appeal, it seems that when district courts rule a nationwide executive order invalid, that necessarily means it is unconstitutional to enforce that order anywhere in the nation. Stated differently, all three courts have held that the defendant in the three cases — the U.S. government — has no authority at all to enforce its nationwide order. The courts' rulings, by the nature of both the executive order and the ruling against it, bar the government from enforcing its order anywhere in the nation. There is, therefore, no appropriate way to issue a localized injunction against nationwide orders such as the ones in the birthright citizenship cases. The Supreme Court established in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison that it is the role of the courts to say what the law is. Once the courts have done so, all parties to cases before the courts must abide by the courts' rulings unless and until the rulings are stayed or overturned. That is how the rule of law works under our Constitution, and the Trump administration should be held accountable to it. Walter Smith, Washington The writer is a lawyer who has argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court recently considered whether to put restrictions on the ability of lower-level judges to issue nationwide injunctions. This is an issue that has raised bipartisan concerns. On one hand, it doesn't seem right that a single district judge should have the power to dictate policy for the whole country while an issue works its way through the court system. On the other hand, there should be some safeguard so the government can't violate people's rights while the legal process is pending. Is there a principled solution to this problem? Here's a suggestion: The Supreme Court should allow a single judge to issue a nationwide injunction when doing so would uphold the status quo, but not when doing so would overturn the status quo. For instance, the status quo is that all children born in the United States have citizenship. The Trump administration is trying to change the status quo by declaring that children born in the U.S. to noncitizens should not be given citizenship. In this case, a single judge should be able to issue a nationwide injunction to preserve the status quo until the courts definitively determine whether President Donald Trump's executive order regarding birthright citizenship is constitutional. As another example, the Biden administration tried to cancel student loan debt for millions of borrowers by reinterpreting existing law. The status quo was that these loans needed to be repaid. Given that, under the standard I am proposing, it was proper that a single judge could declare an injunction on this policy while the case was working its way through the courts. On the other hand, the plaintiffs in the Texas mifepristone case were trying to force the Food and Drug Administration to remove that drug from the market. The status quo was that the drug had been sold legally for many years. In this case, therefore, a judge should not have been allowed to issue a nationwide injunction, since that would have immediately overturned the status quo before the case had made its way through the legal system. Creating a bias in favor of the status quo appears to be the right way to balance the need to protect rules and rights that people have long relied on while still allowing challenges to the status quo to succeed in the long run if they have constitutional merit. John Shea, Ellicott City Got brickbats, bouquets or brilliant headline ideas for The Post? Join Ryan Vogt and the rest of the Letters and Community team for the next Free For All live chat at 1 p.m. on June 25. Submit your questions here:
