By Katelynn Richardson
The Supreme Court curbed lower courts’ ability to block policies issued by the Trump administration using nationwide injunctions on Friday.
In a 6-3 ruling, the majority found that lower courts exceeded their authority by issuing a nationwide block on President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions.
“The injunctions before us today reflect a more recent development: district courts asserting the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “These injunctions—known as ‘universal injunctions’—likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts. We therefore grant the Government’s applications to partially stay the injunctions entered below.”
The Trump administration appealed three lower court orders blocking the birthright citizenship ban from taking effect in April, asking the Supreme Court to limit the ability of district courts judges to block policies nationwide through universal injunctions.
Trump issued his “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” executive order, which ends guaranteed citizenship for children of illegal aliens or migrants on temporary visas, in January during his first day in office.
During oral arguments in May, Solicitor General John Saur noted judges have issued 40 universal injunctions issued against the administration since Trump took office.
The Supreme Court’s ruling means that people challenging government policies will usually only be able to get an injunction barring the government from enforcing its policy against them, not against other people, such as people who didn’t bring the lawsuit. This will result in more people trying to bring class action lawsuits, because a class action lawsuit defines an entire class of people as the people bringing the lawsuit. If a class action lawsuit defines an entire national class of people as the plaintiff in a lawsuit, maybe the class-action lawsuit will be able to seek the functional equivalent of a universal injunction.
