Trump claims victory as Supreme Court curbs nationwide injunctions

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The Supreme Court has handed Donald Trump a victory in his effort to forcefully remake US policy, in a decision that blocked lower courts from halting his order to end birthright citizenship nationwide.

The 6-3 ruling by the country’s top court, which split along ideological lines, was issued in a case addressing the US president’s executive order on his first day in office to curtail citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. It strengthens Trump’s hand on a wide array of issues from trade to immigration.

The Supreme Court’s decision did not address the merits of so-called birthright citizenship itself, which automatically grants US nationality to all children born in the country, including those of unauthorised immigrants. But it granted the administration’s request to limit injunctions by lower courts, which have blocked Trump’s policy measures on issues ranging from union representation to gender transition care.

“GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!” the president posted on his Truth Social network on Friday. “Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard.”

The principal impact of the ruling is to limit lower courts’ ability to make rulings with an impact well beyond the parties in a case. While justices focused on cases linked to Trump’s birthright policy, the government may try to use the opinion to challenge nationwide injunctions blocking other executive orders.

“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” the majority opinion said. The dissenting wing was “embracing an imperial Judiciary”, it added.

Nationwide injunctions have ballooned in recent years as presidents — both Republican and Democratic — have opted for executive orders rather than legislating in Congress, where lawmaking is often bogged down by partisan procedural battles.

Trump’s executive order will not go into effect for 30 days, allowing lower courts to “determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate”, according to the opinion authored by conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett. Several legal groups immediately filed a new lawsuit on Friday challenging the policy in the aftermath of the ruling by the top court.

The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented from the majority opinion, reasoning it would clear the way for unlawful policies to take effect.

The government “asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone”, wrote liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. She highlighted that every court that had assessed Trump’s birthright order found it “patently unconstitutional”. 

She also warned against the precedent set by the opinion. “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” she wrote. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”

The ruling allows the government to apply the executive order to anyone who has not challenged it in court, splintering what is already a complex immigration enforcement framework.

The Supreme Court “is throwing the already flawed system even more deeply into chaos”, Meagan Hatcher-Mays, senior adviser at United for Democracy, an advocacy group, said in a statement. “The administration will not stop at birthright citizenship — they will use today’s ruling to abuse their power in other areas of policy as well, pushing their agenda through with as little judicial oversight as possible.”

Trump told reporters on Friday that “thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, including . . . suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding” and others.

Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, which is challenging Trump’s policies in court, said in a statement that while the ruling leads to “widespread confusion,” the court “left key protections in place for the plaintiffs and preserved legal paths for broader relief”.

Trump and other top officials have harshly criticised district court judges, who the administration claims have acted beyond their authority by freezing executive orders on everything from trade to deportations.

Trump has argued that the Fourteenth Amendment, which grants birthright citizenship, did not “extend citizenship universally to everyone born” in the US.

The executive order denies US citizenship to children born in the country to unauthorised immigrants. US states, advocacy groups and individuals filed numerous lawsuits challenging the measure as illegal. Lower courts ordered nationwide injunctions blocking it from taking effect, with one branding the order “blatantly unconstitutional”.