US Supreme Court Limits Courts’ Ability To Issue Nationwide Injunctions Against Presidential Actions
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that lower courts likely overstepped their authority in issuing nationwide injunctions against presidential actions, limiting the ability of the judicial branch to check executive power.
Friday’s decision came in response to injunctions from federal courts in Washington, Maryland and Massachusetts which sought to block President Donald Trump’s ability to curtail the right to birthright citizenship.
“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” the court’s majority said in its decision.
“The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions.”
But the majority added that its decision applies “only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary”. The injunctions could still apply, the court suggested, to the plaintiffs in the cases at hand.
The ruling split the court once again along party lines, with its six conservative judges forming the majority and its three liberal judges issuing a dissent. Amy Coney Barrett, the court’s newest judge and a Trump appointee, penned the majority’s decision.
The Supreme Court’s decision was a major victory for the Trump administration, which has denounced “judicial overreach” as an unconstitutional obstacle to its policies. It will likely have wide-ranging ramifications for other cases where Trump’s agenda has been blocked by lower-court injunctions.
“Today, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on the social media platform X.
Trump himself celebrated the decision on his platform Truth Social: “GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!”
The Supreme Court’s ruling, however, did not allow Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship to come into immediate effect.
It provided a 30-day period before Trump’s order could be applied and ordered the lower courts to bring their injunctions in line with the new decision. Class action appeals are likely to be filed within that window.
Source: Aljazeera
