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Justice Amy Coney Barrett had pointed words for her colleague Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, accusing Jackson of taking an “extreme” position on the role of the judiciary branch.
Writing in her Supreme Court opinion on nationwide injunctions on Friday, Barrett said Jackson’s dissent contained “rhetoric,” and she signaled that the liberal justice’s arguments were not worth much attention.
“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Barrett wrote. “We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
The Supreme Court’s decision came as part of an emergency request from the Trump administration asking the high court to put an end to judges issuing universal injunctions, including those that judges have placed on President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order.
Barrett, who was appointed by Trump, wrote that when judges issue injunctions to block policies, like those the Trump administration is trying to implement, they cannot apply the injunction to more than the parties involved in the case. Barrett said that type of order, often called a “nationwide injunction,” is judicial overreach.
But Barrett’s opinion left open numerous other ways that plaintiffs can seek broad forms of relief from the courts, including by bringing class action lawsuits or statewide lawsuits.
Jackson wrote that nationwide injunctions should be permissible because the courts should not allow the president to “violate the Constitution.” Barrett said that was not based on any existing legal doctrine.
“She offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush,” Barrett wrote.
Sotomayor, meanwhile, wrote in her own dissenting opinion that the Supreme Court was being “complicit” by allowing the Trump administration to extract a perceived win out of the high court over birthright citizenship.
Sotomayor said that every court that has reviewed Trump’s birthright citizenship plan thus far has blocked Trump from carrying it out. Trump played a “different game,” Sotomayor said, by bringing the case before the Supreme Court without actually asking the justices to analyze the merits of his plan. Trump instead asked the justices to weigh in on the legality of nationwide injunctions in general.
Trump’s birthright citizenship order would eliminate the 150-year-old right under the 14th Amendment that allows babies born in the United States to receive automatic citizenship regardless of their parents’ citizenship status.
The Supreme Court’s decision still allows for the high possibility that judges will continue to widely block Trump’s birthright citizenship order, but with different legal maneuvering on the part of the plaintiffs and the courts.
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