The Supreme Court ruled Friday that judges of lower courts can not issue nationwide injunctions in a major win for the Donald Trump presidency. One of the crucial order that got nationwide injunctions was the president’s Day One order to end birthright citizenship. But the Friday order of the Supreme Court did not address the merit of the birthright citizenship specifically.Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s last Supreme Court nominee, wrote: “(F)ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,” Barrett wrote for the majority. “When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”“Today, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump. This would not have been possible without tireless work from our excellent lawyers @TheJusticeDept and our Solicitor General John Sauer,” Bondi wrote on X. “This Department of Justice will continue to zealously defend @POTUS’s policies and his authority to implement them.”
What does the ruling mean to birthright citizenship ban?
- The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 to restrict nationwide injunctions, meaning lower courts can no longer block Trump’s birthright citizenship order across the entire country. Instead, injunctions must now apply only to the specific plaintiffs who sued.
- The Court did not rule on the constitutional validity of Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship. So the
ban on birthright citizenship remains unclear. - The Supreme Court order implies that Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship remains blocked where plaintiffs appealed against it like in Washington, Maryland, and Massachusetts.
On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed an executive order seeking to deny American citizenship to children born in the US to foreigners who are in the country on short-term visas. Judges granted nationwide injunction on the order and said iot is patently unconstitutional as it conflicts with Supreme Court precedent and the text of the 14th Amendment, which says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
