Supreme Court limits judges’ ability to block Trump’s birthright citizenship ban
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- The ruling prevents a single district judge in Boston or San Francisco from blocking Trump’s policies from taking effect nationwide.
- The court’s three liberals dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the Trump administration’s efforts “gamesmanship.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday sharply limited the power of federal district judges to issue nationwide orders that block new rules or policies coming from the White House or federal agencies.
The 6-3 ruling was a procedural victory for President Trump and a setback for advocates who seek to block his executive orders in federal district courts, a tactic that has been exercised frequently to check his sweeping use of presidential power.
But the court’s conservative majority did not answer the question that triggered three nationwide orders: Can Trump limit birthright citizenship, which is set out in the 14th Amendment?
“The birthright citizenship issue is not before us,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a former Notre Dame law professor who taught legal procedure.
She said the court’s decision would not take effect for 30 days.
Hours after the decision was released, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit challenging Trump’s order restricting birthright citizenship. More lawyers and state attorneys may soon file additional suits seeking a broad shield from other executive orders.
Some legal experts feared that such a ruling could lead to a “patchwork” under which all newborns in some states would be citizens but not those in other states.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said the justices would not allow that to happen.
“In my view, there should be a nationally uniform answer on whether a major new federal statute, rule, or executive order can be enforced throughout the United States,” he wrote in a concurring opinion. A “patchwork scheme” is not “workable or sustainable.”
He said the justices would rule quickly to settle a constitutional dispute. Friday’s ruling concerns only the power of district judges, he said.
Notre Dame law professor Samuel Bray, an expert and critic of nationwide injunctions, hailed Friday’s ruling but predicted it will not allow Trump’s birthright citizenship order to take effect.
Can one federal judge block Trump’s plan to deny citizenship to babies whose parents are not U.S. citizens?
“After today, the universal injunction will no longer be the default remedy in challenges to executive action,” he said. “Given that the birthright-citizenship executive order is unconstitutional, I expect courts will grant those preliminary injunctions, and they will be affirmed on appeal. I do not expect the President’s executive order on birthright citizenship will ever go into effect.”
Barrett said these broad judicial orders arising from a single lawsuit were “conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history.” Yet they have taken off in recent years to thwart Democratic and Republican presidents, she said.
“During the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions,” Barrett said.
She said judges have overstepped their authority. Rather deciding individual lawsuits, they too often rule broadly, she argued.
“Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch,” Barrett wrote. And while judges can give full relief to plaintiffs, including groups of people, their injunctions should not be “broader than necessary” to shield those people.
The court’s three liberals dissented.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Trump administration is trying to defend a blatantly unconstitutional order repealing birthright citizenship.
“Few constitutional questions can be answered by resort to the text of the Constitution alone, but this is one. The 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship,” she said.
Rather than appeal that issue to the court, she said the Trump administration raised a procedural detour.
“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along,” she said. “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. ... Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saw the decision as threat to the rule of law.
“Courts must have the power to order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law — full stop. To conclude otherwise is to endorse the creation of a zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes, and where individuals who would otherwise be entitled to the law’s protection become subject to the Executive’s whims instead,” she said.
The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order disagreeing with the traditional understanding and asserting the Constitution does not “extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
He said it would be U.S. policy to not recognize citizenship for newborns if the child’s mother or father was “not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
Three federal district judges — in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington — issued nationwide orders declaring Trump’s plan unconstitutional.
A judge temporarily blocks Trump’s executive order ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. California’s attorney general praises ruling.
In quick succession, judges declared that Trump’s order may not be enforced across the nation. They said his proposed restrictions violated the federal law and Supreme Court precedent as well as the plain words of the 14th Amendment.
Rather than challenge those rulings directly, Trump’s lawyers sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court with “a modest request.”
Rather than rule on birthright citizenship, they urged the justices to rein in the practice of district judges handing down nationwide orders. They have “reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” they said.
During a press briefing in which he thanked the conservative Supreme Court justices, Trump called the decision “a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law.”
“In recent months, we’ve seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers,” he said. “It was a grave threat to democracy, frankly, and instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation.”
In practice, he said, if any one of the nearly 700 federal judges disagreed with a federal policy, they could block it from taking effect or delay it for years by tying it up in the court system.
Trump said that thanks to Friday’s decision, his administration can now move forward with many cases, including those about ending birthright citizenship, stripping sanctuary cities of federal funding and suspending refugee resettlement.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said that 35 of the 40 nationwide injunctions filed against Trump’s policies came from five district courts: Maryland, Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, California and Washington state.
Bondi said the Supreme Court will take up the constitutionality of Trump’s order limiting birthright citizenship during their next session in October.
In a news conference Friday, attorneys general from California, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts and Connecticut said the Supreme Court ruling is merely a procedural hurdle that they intend to overcome.
“If you are living in a state that did not participate in this coalition of action against the Trump administration, then your rights are in question,” said Washington Atty. Gen. Nick Brown.
The Supreme Court left room for district judges to decide whether a nationwide injunction is necessary, they said.
New Jersey Atty. Gen. Matt Platkin said the plaintiff states have been clear that they need nationwide relief to protect from the harms inflicted by Trump’s executive order. He said they are confident the district court will agree.
“We fought a civil war to address whether babies born on United States soil are, in fact, citizens of this country,” he said. “For a century and a half, this has not been in dispute, and we are confident that as we litigate this case, that fact will remain.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said he is hopeful the circuit court will see that a patchwork of state injunctions, where birthright citizenship stands for some states but not for others, will create administrative chaos and widespread confusion.
“We’re a nation of immigrants,” he said. “It’s our legacy and it’s our identity, especially here in California — home to more immigrants than any other state — including my own mom, who immigrated from the Philippines.”
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