The Supreme Court‘s ruling on universal injunctions Friday is expected to have effects beyond the legal challenges to President Donald Trump‘s birthright citizenship order. It is poised to change the landscape of various legal fights over Trump’s actions.
While the Supreme Court ruling has thwarted one massive tool used to block the president’s agenda set up by district courts, opponents will likely seek other avenues to block orders as legal challenges work through the lower courts. The high court’s ruling will significantly affect various legal challenges, ranging from a litany of matters.
Supreme Court ruling is sweeping
The majority opinion in Trump v. CASA held that universal injunctions, blocking laws or policies from being enforced against anyone, “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court’s 6-3 majority, reined in the rulings of lower courts to issue universal injunctions, affirming that “federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them.”
“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” Barrett wrote.
Barrett slammed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent, which decried “an imperial Executive,” but Barrett noted Jackson’s dissent seemed to embrace “an imperial Judiciary.
Stephanie Barclay, a professor from the Georgetown Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, said during a Federalist Society panel Friday that before the Supreme Court’s ruling, universal injunctions issued by lower courts offered “anti-democratic implications” in their usage.
“It leads to lots of anti-democratic implications when you can just have lone district court judges in any given district freezing policy in place for the entire nation, and today, the Supreme Court walked back the ability of courts to do that,” Barclay said.
The ruling effectively shreds the broad use of universal injunctions by district courts.
“Anyone who has been following this issue can see that this was just a nail in the coffin of universal injunctions,” Carrie Severino, president of the conservative advocacy group Judicial Crisis Network, said.
Severino believes Friday’s ruling makes it “foolish to ask for a universal injunction.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t some district court judges who might try funny things, but this is about as clear as you were going to hope for,” she added.
Several challenges to Trump’s orders impacted by the ruling
The ruling in the Supreme Court pertained to universal injunctions placed on Trump’s order attempting to change birthright citizenship; however, this is not the only policy by the president that has been subject to the sweeping relief the high court struck down Friday.
Attorney General Pam Bondi outlined at the White House Friday how a select few judges have thwarted the president’s agenda on matters including tariffs, immigration, downsizing the government, an order recognizing only two genders, and various other policies implemented during his term.
“To put this in perspective, there are 94 federal judicial districts; five of those districts throughout this country held 35 of the nationwide injunctions. Think about that, 94 districts and 35 out of the 40 opinions with nationwide injunctions came from five liberal districts in this country. No longer,” Bondi said.
Barrett also noted the importance of resolving the matter of universal injunctions in her majority opinion, mentioning the increased use of them by lower courts in recent presidential terms.
“During the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions,” Barrett wrote. “As the number of universal injunctions has increased, so too has the importance of the issue.”
With the high court instructing lower courts to refine their injunctions to parties suing over a law or policy, there is another form of legal action that those challenging the president will likely use to get similar sweeping pauses on actions.
How injunctions could still be expansive
Samuel Bray, a law professor at Notre Dame Law School, spelled out why he believes the birthright citizenship order will still be paused as it is litigated in lower courts. He pinned them on states, as parties, likely still being able to get sweeping relief, and class action lawsuits over orders.
“First, the states have arguments that they need broad injunctions, given the harms they will suffer from uncertainty caused by the President’s purported revocation of birthright citizenship,” Bray said. “The Court did not decide today what the scope of relief should be for the states, and it remanded for that question to be considered by the lower courts.”
“Second, there will likely be a surge of new class actions against the enforcement of the executive order. Because the Supreme Court expressly said the Executive Order would not take effect for 30 days, that allows class actions to be filed and class-protective preliminary injunctions to be granted throughout the country,” he added.
In a concurrence, Justice Samuel Alito discussed how nationwide class action certifications could be used in select instances, “but district courts should not view today’s decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors of Rule 23.”
“Lax enforcement of the requirements for third-party standing and class certification would create a potentially significant loophole to today’s decision. Federal courts should thus be vigilant against such potential abuses of these tools,” Alito wrote.
Severino said the concurrence from Alito shows concerns about an abuse of the class action process to circumvent Friday’s ruling, which is “on the court’s radar.”
“There have been concerns about people who try to game or abuse the class action process, and it was good to hear Justice Alito pointing that out. It shows this is on the court’s radar. They understand. They know the deal,” Severino said.
“They’re not going to just stand by and let people create some huge backdoor by abusing the class action process just the way they abused the injunction process, she added.
Shortly after the ruling tossing the universal injunction, one of the groups suing Trump’s birthright citizenship order refiled its complaint as a class action and asked for a new injunction for the protected class. The class the group defines in its court filing is “those U.S.-born babies wrongfully deemed by the Executive Order to be ineligible for U.S. citizenship, along with their parents.”
SUPREME COURT LIMITS NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS IN TRUMP BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP CASE
While groups suing the Trump administration over various policies will likely try to get sweeping injunctions via class action suits, Severino believes it is unlikely a lower court would grant relief as extensive as that struck down by the Supreme Court on Friday.
“They’re throwing spaghetti at the wall at this point, so sure, they’ll try it. But I don’t think any court in its right mind would read today’s decision and go along with that, and if they do, they’re going to get smacked down,” Severino said.