Trump handed ‘giant win’ as Supreme Court curbs judges’ power to block his orders

The three liberal justices on the bench dissented, and in their dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision was “a grave an attack on our system of law” and warned: “No right is safe in the new legal regime the court creates.”

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Writing the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett – Trump’s 2020 appointee to the court to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg – said federal courts did not exercise general oversight of the government’s executive branch. Rather, they resolved cases and controversies consistent with the authority given to them by Congress.

“When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” she wrote.

One of the key reasons the majority ruled against the universal injunction was its finding that it was a modern phenomenon that “lacks a historical pedigree” as a form of relief laid out by the US Constitution.

“Nothing like a universal injunction was available at the founding, or for that matter, for more than a century thereafter,” Barrett wrote. “Thus, under the Judiciary Act, federal courts lack authority to issue them.”

In her dissent, Sotomayor said the government had asked the court to find that “no matter how illegal” a law or policy was, the courts could never tell the executive to stop enforcing it against anyone except the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit.

“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this court plays along,” she wrote.

“Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from lawabiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”

Sotomayor said the majority opinion meant unless there was a class action lawsuit, courts could not completely enjoin even plainly unlawful policies. Constitutional protections were therefore rendered meaningless for anyone not party to the case.

“Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent,” Sotomayor wrote.

In a separate dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the decision of the majority posed “an existential threat to the rule of law”.

The Supreme Court did not contemplate the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, nor whether it violated the Nationality Act. Such questions were not raised in this case, but will likely be decided in October under pending litigation.

The long-standing principle and entitlement of birthright citizenship arises from the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states: “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump’s executive order asserted the clause should not be interpreted as extending citizenship to every person born in the US. Specifically, it says the clause does not apply when a person’s mother was unlawfully present in the US and their father was not a US citizen or permanent resident the time of their birth.

Furthermore, the order asserted the clause did not apply when a person’s mother was lawfully but temporarily present in the US and the father was not a US citizen or permanent resident at the time of their birth. That included a mother visiting the US on a student, work or tourist visa.

Attorney-General Pam Bondi said the administration’s plans for ending birthright citizenship would depend on the outcome of litigation due to be decided by the Supreme Court in October.

The priority was removing violent criminals from the US, Bondi said. “You should all safer now that President Trump can deport all of these gangs and not one District Court judge can think they’re an emperor over this administration and his executive powers and why the people of the United States elected him.”