Supreme Court limits nationwide injunctions in birthright citizenship order

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines on Friday sided with the Trump administration's request to limit universal injunctions issued by federal courts. The opinion in the birthright citizenship case was highly anticipated.

At issue was how the lower courts should handle President Trump's executive order, which declared that the children of parents who enter the U.S. illegally or on a temporary visa are not entitled to automatic citizenship.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, didn't rule on whether President Trump's executive order violates the 14th Amendment or the Nationality Act. Instead, it focused on whether federal courts have the power to issue nationwide blocks.

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"Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts," the conservative majority said. "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."

Friday's opinion asked the lower courts to reconsider their broad rulings in light of the Supreme Court's opinion and otherwise "with principles of equity." However, the opinion also said Trump's birthright citizenship order can't take effect for 30 days from Friday's opinion, giving more time for legal challenges.

Dissenting from Friday's decision were the court's three liberal justices. Writing for the three of them, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the government's rush to limit nationwide injunctions "disregards basic principles of equity as well as the long history of injunctive relief granted to nonparties."

Immigrant rights groups and 22 states had sued over Trump's order birthright citizenship order, and three different federal district court judges invalidated Trump's order, issuing what are called universal injunctions barring the administration from enforcing the Trump policy anywhere in the country.

When the courts of appeal refused to intervene while the litigation proceeded, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block universal injunctions altogether.

While Friday's decision is procedural, the issue at the center of the case is Trump's long-held, but fringe view that there is no such thing as automatic citizenship for people born in the U.S. On his first day in office this year, he signed an executive order declaring that babies born in the U.S. may not be citizens if their parents were not here legally or if the parents were here legally but on a temporary basis like a work visa. Trump's view, however is directly contradicted by a Supreme Court ruling 127 years ago — a decision that has never been disturbed, and is based on the text of Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution.

The amendment says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." It was enacted in 1866 after the civil war and aimed at reversing the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision, which had declared that Black people, enslaved or free, could not be citizens. It has always been applied to anyone born in the U.S. And the Supreme Court on Friday did nothing to change that 150 year understanding.

President Trump responded to the decision on Truth Social, calling it a "giant win."
He implied that immigrants were trying to scam the process to get U.S. citizenship and that the 14th Amendment was only meant to give citizenship to "babies of slaves (same year!)"
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