“GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!” President Donald Trump declared after the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to shrink lower judges’ ability to freeze his policies with nationwide injunctions.
He continued:
Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard. It had to do with the babies of slaves (same year!), not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process. Congratulations to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Solicitor General John Sauer, and the entire DOJ. News Conference at the White House, 11:30 A.M. EST.
The injunction decision is a “huge” win for the Trump team, a Politico reporter said.
The decision instructs the lower courts to formulate a narrower legal formula governing nationwide injunctions.
The court’s rule emerged from the legal fight over Trump’s opposition to the automatic award of citizenship to children born in the United States of illegal migrants. The court has yet to rule on the legality of Trump’s policy on birthright citizenship.
The decision comes after many lower-court activist judges have imposed nationwide injunctions to stop Trump reforms, even when only a few elite-funded activist plaintiffs in one state have filed against the policy.
“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the 6-3 majority. “The Government’s applications for partial stays of the preliminary injunctions are granted, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
The court said:
Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.
The issue raised by these applications—whether Congress has granted federal courts authority to universally enjoin the enforcement of an executive order—plainly warrants this Court’s review. On multiple occasions, and across administrations, the Solicitor General has asked the Court to consider the propriety of this expansive remedy. As the number of universal injunctions has increased over the years, so too has the importance of the issue
The Government is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the District Courts lacked authority to issue universal injunctions.
“The issuance of a universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power,” the decision said.
