BREAKING: SCOTUS Quashes Federal District Courts' Nationwide Injunctions, 6-3https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2025/06/27/breaking-scotus-quashes-federal-district-courts-nationwide-injunctions-n3804235In a 6-3 decision released this morning, the Supreme Court put a stop to the practice of district courts issuing nationwide or "universal" injunctions against the executive branch in exercises of its constitutional authority. The case of Trump v CASA arises from Donald Trump's reinterpretation of birthright citizenship, but as Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority, that question is not yet before the top court. This pertains specifically to federal courts attempting to dictate policies that go beyond the parties before them in legal actions, and the court put a sharp end to that today.
This case produced a thick opinion and a thicket of concurrences and dissents, but the executive summary gives us the gist of the controlling opinion. Barrett and the majority scoff at the notion that district courts have any authority or jurisdiction beyond their district, and essentially beyond the parties at the bar before them:
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Federal courts can still rule against an exercise of executive policy if they find it to be unlawful. They can issue temporary injunctions ahead of such trials if the judge believes that the plaintiffs have a good chance of prevailing and will suffer irreparable harm in the interregnum, just as they did before. However, this ruling limits those stays and injunctions only to the parties before the court in each case. That could complicate matters and force these into class actions at some point, but courts have rules and procedures for that as well.
The usual three justices dissented, but Barrett took a moment out to blister Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in particular:
We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary. ... In other words, it is unecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound bylaw.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.
BREAKING: SCOTUS Rules on Nationwide Injunctions Against Birthright Citizenship EOshttps://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2025/06/27/breaking-scotus-rules-on-nationwide-injunctions-involving-birthright-citzenship-eos-n4941206The Supreme Court has ruled in a case involving whether district court judges have jurisdiction to issue nationwide injunctions regarding President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The court ruled 6-3 in favor of the Trump administration. The conservative justices ruled for the administration, while the liberals ruled against.
"The court says that universal injunctions 'likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts,'" explained SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe on a liveblog on Friday.
As my friend and RedState colleague Susie Moore explains, Trump v. CASA is comprised of “three consolidated cases involving President Trump's executive order regarding birthright citizenship, with the issue being not the substance of the order itself (we're not there yet), but rather, whether the district court judges who issued injunctive relief in the cases had the jurisdiction to issued nationwide/universal injunctions prohibiting the administration from implementing the order anywhere in the country.”
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"The question whether Congress has granted federal courts the authority to universally enjoin the enforcement of an executive or legislative policy plainly warrants our review, as Members of this Court have repeatedly emphasized," wrote Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her majority opinion.
"It is easy to see why," she continued. "By the end of the Biden administration, we had reached 'a state of affairs where almost every major presidential act [was] immediately frozen by a federal district court.'”
Barrett concluded 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."
This is a
Resist-Shattering Kaboom! The Dems' strategy for blocking and obstructing Trump has been to judge-shop for a Trump-Hating partisan district judge and get him/her to issue a nationwide injunction blocking implementation of the particular Trump action while the action is being litigated (which, obviously, would be very protracted). Now that strategy of ignoring jurisdiction limitations has been shut down.
