The United States (US) Supreme Court has ruled that lower courts likely overstepped their authority in issuing nationwide injunctions against presidential actions, limiting the ability of the judicial branch to check executive power.
The decision came in response to injunctions from federal courts in Washington, Maryland, and Massachusetts, which sought to block President Donald Trump’s ability to curtail the right to birthright citizenship.
The court’s majority, led by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, stated that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.” The majority added that its decision applies “only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary.” The injunctions could still apply to the plaintiffs in the cases at hand.
The ruling split the court along party lines, with its six conservative judges forming the majority and its three liberal judges issuing a dissent. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing on behalf of the dissent, argued that the court had sidestepped the real issue of the day: the constitutionality of birthright citizenship. “As every conceivable source of law confirms, birthright citizenship is the law of the land,” she wrote.
The Supreme Court’s decision was a major victory for the Trump administration, which has denounced “judicial overreach” as an unconstitutional obstacle to its policies. Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the decision, writing on social media that the Supreme Court had “instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump.”
Trump himself celebrated the decision on his platform Truth Social, calling it a “GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!” He repeated his accusations that judges who blocked his policies are part of the “radical left” and impeding the will of the voters who elected him. “The Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions to interfere with the normal functioning of the executive branch,” Trump said.
The Supreme Court’s ruling did not allow Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship to come into immediate effect. It provided a 30-day period before Trump’s order could be applied and ordered the lower courts to bring their injunctions in line with the new decision. Class action appeals are expected to be filed within that window.
The case centered on Trump’s efforts to redefine birthright citizenship, a right established under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The amendment declares that “all persons born” in the US and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” would be citizens. The courts have repeatedly interpreted that text as granting citizenship to nearly all people born in the US, regardless of their parents’ nationalities.
In her majority opinion, Justice Barrett advanced an argument with threads of originalism, saying that the judicial system had strayed from its original mandate with such wide-reaching injunctions. “Nothing like a universal injunction was available at the founding, or for that matter, for more than a century thereafter,” she wrote.
In contrast, Justice Sotomayor argued that universal injunctions were a necessary tool to protect large groups of people from the harmful effects of such policies. “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,” she wrote. “Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent.”.