How the Supreme Court ruling on nationwide injunctions affects presidential powers

Amna Nawaz:

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major decision today, one that will limit federal judges' power to block the president's agenda nationwide. The decision, which resulted from a case related to an executive order on birthright citizenship, rules that individual judges cannot grant nationwide injunctions to block any policies coming from the White House.

The court ruled 6-3 along partisan lines.

Geoff Bennett:

In her opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote: "No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law, but the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation. In fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so."

The justices did not rule on the merits of the Trump administration's restrictions on birthright citizenship, but the president welcomed the ruling during a press briefing today.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Thanks to this decision, we can now properly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, including birthright citizenship, ending sanctuary city funding, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries and numerous other priorities of the American people.

Geoff Bennett:

The justices also ruled on four other cases today, one upholding a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, another upholding a Texas law requiring age verification for pornography sites, one related to Internet and phone service to rural and low income-communities, and a case involving LGBTQ-themed books in schools.

For more, we're joined now by our Supreme Court analyst and SCOTUSblog co-founder Amy Howe, and Amanda Frost, professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Virginia.

Thank you both for being here.

Amanda Frost, University of Virginia School of Law: Thanks.

Amy Howe:

Thank you.

Geoff Bennett:

So, Amy, the Supreme Court siding with the Trump administration on nationwide injunctions, walk us through what that means in practice.

Amy Howe:

Yes, so it's a huge win for the Trump administration on the issue of these nationwide injunctions, the idea that you can't go to one federal court and, often the plaintiffs — and this was something that was a thorn in the side for both the Trump administration, the Biden administration before that, and then the Trump administration before that.

You could go to one particular district and find a federal judge that you thought might be a friendly one and block a policy or a law throughout the entire country. And so the Supreme Court today said that federal judges don't have that kind of power.

As for the issue of birthright citizenship, which was the context in which this case came to the court, the Supreme Court didn't address whether or not the president's executive order, which he signed shortly after he was inaugurated, ending birthright citizenship was itself constitutional.

And that battle is going to go on.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Amanda, on the matter of these injunctions, some might assume that class action lawsuits would solve the issue here, but that risks overwhelming the lower courts with potentially thousands of identical lawsuits that, to Amy's point, could result in a patchwork of resolutions.

And this is also coming at a time when the Trump administration has cracked down on law firms that take on issues it sees as opposing the Trump agenda. So there might not be a coordinated legal challenge.

Amanda Frost:

Yes. So there's a couple of issues, a couple of consequences of this decision.

One is, of course, that for individuals to get relief, they now all have to sue as individuals, to the degree that they have the resources and the wherewithal to get lawyers and do that. And that, of course, will add to the already overburdened lower federal court dockets.

Another solution would be potentially class actions. And, of course, we're not just talking about the birthright citizenship executive order. We're talking about the fact that the court ended universal injunctions across the board in all of the cases under this administration, which has had a record number of universal injunctions stopping its policies from going into effect and any future president.

So, class actions are a potential mechanism by which groups of individuals can band together and get one judge to issue universal relief. But not every case is eligible for classified relief. And the Supreme Court knows that well because it issued the decisions that have cut back and restricted class actions.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Amy, as we said, this ruling fell along ideological lines. And, in her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: "With the stroke of a pen, the president has made a solemn mockery of our Constitution."

It continues:

"Rather than stand firm, the court gives way."

A number of lower federal courts, six, I believe, said that President Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship was not constitutional. So lower courts ruled on the merits. Why didn't the Supreme Court do the same?

Amy Howe:

It didn't do the same because the Trump administration didn't ask the justices to block the orders in their entirety. And Justice Sotomayor, in her dissent, said that the reason that the federal government didn't come to the Supreme Court asking the justices to block the order in their entirety is because, to do that, it would have to show that the president's executive order, she said, was likely constitutional.

And, as she said, six judges, six courts had found that the order was unconstitutional. And so this was gamesmanship, was what Justice Sotomayor said, by the federal government coming on this narrow ground, just on the issue of universal injunctions. And she sort of chastised the majority for playing along with it.

And she said essentially that the Supreme Court shouldn't endorse this idea that, somewhat along the lines of what Amanda just said, when you have these policies that she believes are plainly unlawful, you shouldn't have to wait until the issue sort of winds its way all the way through the courts before you can get relief from it.

Geoff Bennett:

Amanda, as Amy mentioned, this ruling comes after years of frustration from both presidents with these nationwide injunctions.

The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to take up the propriety of nationwide injunctions. The court said no. And now, five months into the Trump administration, the court weighs in. Does this ruling reflect the interests of the executive more broadly, no matter who was president, or is this another case of this conservative-leaning court again empowering the executive authority of Donald Trump?

Amanda Frost:

Yes, so this ruling applies, of course, to any — to Donald Trump's presidency and any future president.

And it empowers the executive branch. And so every president, whether it was Obama, Biden, or Trump, didn't like these universal injunctions because they stymied executive branch policies. So this decision by the Supreme Court expands the power of the executive.

I will say, though, that I think it is particularly interesting they issued this ruling during Trump's presidency, not during Biden or Obama's, when these issues came up too. And also, it has to be said, President Trump has issued more executive orders, engaged in more unilateral rewriting of law than his predecessors. So he would benefit from the absence of universal injunctions more than them.

Geoff Bennett:

Well, our team spoke to a number of immigration advocacy groups, including the plaintiffs in this case, a group called CASA. And they really hammered the decision today. Take a listen.

George Escobar, CASA:

Well, I would say, because there's — we have allowed a significant part of our society to normalize hate, to normalize an outright strategy to dehumanize our immigrant community, as evidenced by today's ruling, to normalize the stripping of constitutional rights.

These are scary times, but we are not powerless.

Geoff Bennett:

So there is this unresolved question here, Amanda. I mean, could we end up in a situation where a child is recognized as a citizen in New Jersey, let's say, but not in Alabama?

Amanda Frost:

Yes.

I mean, this creates a potential for patchwork citizenship. And, of course, Americans, all of us inhabiting the United States are free to move from one state to the other. There's no borders. There's no passports. And now you're a citizen if you're born in one state or not the other potentially.

It would inspire potentially pregnant women to leave one state to give birth in another. I think this would be very chaotic. I will note that, at oral argument, Justice Kavanaugh asked Solicitor General Sauer, how would this be implemented? What is the plan? And Solicitor General Sauer said, we will have to figure that out. They have 30 days to do so.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Amy, the justices, as you well know, they also ruled on four other cases today, including a major case out of suburban Maryland involving storybooks that feature LGBTQ characters.

The court ruled in favor of a group of parents who argued those books violated their religious beliefs. And our team spoke with Rosalind Hansen. She's a Maryland parent who opposed the books and she's also with the group Moms for Liberty.

Rosalind Hanson, Moms for Liberty: As a parent, first and foremost, I am a Catholic. And so our beliefs are fundamental and rooted in our Bible and our Catholic upbringing. And so I want to make sure that, when I'm sending my son to school, that our religious liberty is protected.

Geoff Bennett:

So what impact does this ruling in particular have on schools across the country?

Amy Howe:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted that this was going to lead to chaos, in the sense that you could have parents pulling their children out of instruction based on their religious beliefs. Obviously, there's a variety of religious beliefs. And then parents may want to pull their children out of instruction for other reasons.

Her other criticism of the majority's opinion was that it really sort of has the potential to undermine what she called the core premise of public education more broadly, the idea that children who go to public schools all receive sort of the same education, the same sort of societal values, and that if everyone who goes to public school is not in fact receiving the same education, it will undermine that public education experience.

The other side, there are states who already do these opt-outs that the Montgomery County parents in this case were seeking. And that was in fact one of the reasons that the majority in this case pointed to when it was evaluating whether or not this opt-out policy or the failure to allow the parents to opt their children out of instruction was likely constitutional.

Geoff Bennett:

Amy Howe, Amanda Frost, thank you both for being here. We appreciate it.

Amanda Frost:

Thank you.

Amy Howe:

Thank you.