(The Center Square) – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday to allow President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship to go into effect in some areas of the country by limiting the power of judges to block the president’s policies nationwide.
The high court didn’t decide the issue of birthright citizenship but limited the lower court rulings to apply only to those who sue to block Trump’s order. A group of Democrat-led states sued along with expectant mothers and immigration organizations who filed suit.
The Trump administration can implement the birthright citizenship order, but must wait 30 days before trying to deny anyone citizenship.
The court’s conservative majority knocked lower courts for issuing broad injunctions blocking Trump’s policy nationwide. The court said that because such orders go beyond providing relief to the plaintiffs, they “likely exceed” the authority Congress granted to district judges.
“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the decision for the majority. “But only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
The ruling came out of Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship. A flurry of states and organizations sued in response to the president’s order, which caused the Trump administration to request emergency relief from the Supreme Court regarding the scope of national injunctions employed in three cases.
The high court agreed to hear arguments in three cases on May 15 when justices debated the scope of nationwide injunctions rather than the merits of the president’s order ending birthright citizenship.
The three cases in oral arguments before the nation’s highest court were Trump v. CASA Inc., Trump v. Washington, and Trump v. New Jersey.
In a brief to the court, lawyers representing Citizens Assisting and Sheltering the Abused, or CASA, defended the use of the nationwide injunction.
“The only workable way to ensure that the government respects the constitutionally guaranteed citizenship of all children born to those members during the pendency of this litigation is through a universal injunction,” attorneys for CASA wrote.
In oral arguments, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared in favor of nationwide injunctions. The justices said courts should be able to issue larger rulings against executive actions that they deem illegal.
“Even in those courts that say the [executive order] is illegal, you’re going to be saying ‘No, we only commit to saying it’s illegal to this one guy who brought the suit,'” Justice Kagan said.
Trump has been highly critical of nationwide injunctions, calling the actions “toxic and unprecedented.”
