The Supreme Court struck down a lower court injunction blocking the Trump administration’s executive order on birthright citizenship, laying out clear rules for courts utilizing universal injunctions going forward.
The case, Trump v. CASA, concerns universal injunctions that lower court judges have ordered pausing President Donald Trump’s order interpreting the 14th Amendment as not guaranteeing what is known as “birthright citizenship.”
The court ruled, 6-3, that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered the opinion of the court, which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joined. Thomas filed a concurring opinion, which Gorsuch joined. Alito filed another concurring opinion, which Thomas joined. Kavanaugh also wrote a concurring opinion.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor write a dissenting opinion, which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Jackson also filed a dissenting opinion.
Birthright citizenship is the idea that if someone is born in the U.S. to alien parents (who are not foreign diplomats or enemies in a hostile occupation), he or she is immediately a U.S. citizen. Immigration groups brought a lawsuit against Trump’s order, and the state of New Jersey also opposed it in court.
Lower courts have been repeatedly issuing “universal” injunctions to temporarily stop the execution of Trump’s executive orders nationwide rather than only limiting the injunctions to the specific cases they are hearing or to a court’s geographic area of jurisdiction.
Critics of birthright citizenship note that the 14th Amendment states, “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” (emphasis added). “Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” does not apply to aliens who enter the U.S. and then give birth in America, they say, because non-Americans are subject to the jurisdiction of their home countries, not the U.S.
Supporters of birthright citizenship note that the U.S. has extended citizenship to children of aliens born in the U.S. for more than 100 years.
The Supreme Court case did not focus on the birthright citizenship issue but rather the legality of lower courts issuing injunctions that apply to the entire country. Many of the groups filing the lawsuits that have led to the injunctions had a great deal of influence in the Biden administration, as noted in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
While judges have the authority to issue temporary injunctions to protect one of the parties in a case from harm while the court considers the case, the Trump administration claims the judges have abused this power, claiming to protect people across the country who aren’t parties to the suit.
During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted that courts had issued 40 universal injunctions against the federal government, including 35 from the same five judicial districts. He argued that these injunctions “prevent the percolation of novel and difficult legal questions” through the normal legal process and that they “encourage forum shopping,” that is, parties filing lawsuits in certain areas, seeking friendly judges who they believe will issue injunctions on their behalf. He also argued that such universal injunctions circumvent Rule 23, the process by which plaintiffs apply for class action.
Sauer also argued that universal injunctions are a relatively recent phenomenon, first appearing in the 1960s.
New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum, a Democrat, insisted that universal injunctions have a longer history in U.S. and English courts. He cited the English common law practice of a “bill of peace,” which judges used to settle multiple related claims against a defendant in a single lawsuit. The practice allowed the court to bind all members of a “multitude” with the outcome, even if they didn’t directly participate in the lawsuit. Sauer argued that a “bill of peace” most resembles class-action lawsuits, not universal injunctions.
Feigenbaum also cited cases from before the 1960s, which Sauer claimed did not represent universal injunctions.
Kelsi Corkran, Supreme Court director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University, represented immigration groups. She argued that if the court ruled in Trump’s favor, it would reject “the status quo all three branches of government have ratified and operated under for over a century,” warning that “catastrophic consequences would result for the plaintiffs and our country” if the government can “execute an unconstitutional citizenship-stripping scheme simply because the court challenges take time.”
