The Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines Friday allowing President Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship to go into effect in some areas of the country, for now, by curtailing judges’ ability to block the president’s policies nationwide.
Ruling that three federal district judges went too far in issuing nationwide injunctions against Trump’s order, the high court’s decision claws back a key tool plaintiffs have used to hamper the president’s agenda in dozens of lawsuits.
“These injunctions — known as ‘universal injunctions’ — likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court’s six Republican-appointed justices.
But it does not yet definitively resolve whether Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship are constitutional, a hefty legal question that could ultimately return to the justices.
For now, the justices narrowed the lower court rulings to only block Trump’s order as applied to the 22 Democratic-led states, expectant mothers and immigration organizations that are suing.
The Trump administration can now resume developing guidance to implement the order, though it must wait 30 days before attempting to deny citizenship to anyone.
However, the majority left the door open for plaintiffs to still try to seek broad relief by filing class action lawsuits.
In dissent, the court’s three Democratic-appointed justices accused the administration of “gamesmanship” and condemned their colleagues for “shamefully” playing along.
“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship,” Sotomayor continued.
She read her dissent aloud from the bench, which the justices reserve for only a few cases each term to express their deep disagreement.
Signed on his first day in office, Trump’s order curbs birthright citizenship for children born on U.S. soil if they don’t have at least one parent with permanent legal status. The sweeping restrictions upend the conventional understanding of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, long recognized to only have few exceptions.
Every court to directly confront the legality of Trump’s order so far has found it likely unconstitutional. The administration went to the Supreme Court on its emergency docket to narrow nationwide injunctions issued by federal judges in Greenbelt, Md., Seattle and Boston.
The cases will now return to the lower courts for further proceedings as Trump’s order partially goes into effect. The parties could bring the case back to the justices once the appeals courts issue their final rulings.
In a rare move, the high court agreed to hear oral arguments in the case, despite typically handling emergency applications solely based on a round of written briefing. The arguments took place in May, a special session scheduled after the normal window that ended in April.
The Trump administration raised alarm about the dozens of nationwide injunctions imposed by judges since the president’s inauguration, a sharp rise that the Justice Department insisted demonstrates judicial overreach intruding on Trump’s authority.
Trump’s critics, however, have pushed back, saying the smattering of court injunctions reflects that the president has been acting lawlessly on birthright citizenship and other areas.
Updated at 10:20 a.m. EDT
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