Saturday, July 5, 2025

Courts cannot issue "universal" injunctions: SCOTUS


Amendment XIV

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


BUT...

 Executive Order No. 14160. See Protectingthe Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, 90 Fed. Reg. 8449.

Sec. 2.  Policy.  (a)  It is the policy of the United States that no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities purporting to recognize United States citizenship, to persons:  (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.

(b)  Subsection (a) of this section shall apply only to persons who are born within the United States after 30 days from the date of this order.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL. v. CASA, INC., ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR PARTIAL STAY No. 24A884. Argued May 15, 2025—Decided June 27, 2025* 

 JUSTICEAmy Coney Barrett:

We must therefore ask whether universal injunctions are sufficiently “analogous” to the relief issued “‘by the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the enactment of the original Judiciary Act.’” Grupo Mexicano, 527 U. S., at 318–319 (quoting A. Dobie, Handbook of Federal Jurisdiction and Procedure 660 (1928)). The answer is no: Neither the universal injunction nor any analogous form of relief was available in the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the founding

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, concurring. The plaintiffs here sought preliminary injunctions against enforcement of the President’s Executive Order on birthright citizenship. The District Courts granted universal preliminary injunctions—that is, injunctions prohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order against anyone. Under the Court’s holding today, district courts issuing injunctions under the authority afforded by the Judiciary Act of 1789 may award only plaintiff-specific relief. I join the Court’s careful and persuasive opinion, which will bring needed clarity to the law of remedies.


 

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting. Children born in the United States and subject to its laws are United States citizens. That has been the legal rule since the founding, and it was the English rule well before then. This Court once attempted to repudiate it, holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), that the children of enslaved black Americans were not citizens. To remedy that grievous error, Congress passed in 1866 and the States ratified in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which enshrined birthright citizenship in  the Constitution. There it has remained, accepted and respected by Congress, by the Executive, and by this Court. Until today. It is now the President who attempts, in an Executive Order (Order or Citizenship Order), to repudiate birthright citizenship. Every court to evaluate the Order has deemed it patently unconstitutional and, for that reason, has enjoined the Federal Government from enforcing it. Undeterred, the Government now asks this Court to grant emergency relief, insisting it will suffer irreparable harm unless it can deprive at least some children born in the United States of citizenship. See Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, Exec. Order No. 14160, 90 Fed. Reg. 8849 (2025). The Government does not ask for complete stays of the injunctions, as it ordinarily does before this Court. Why? The answer is obvious: To get such relief, the Government would have to show that the Order is likely constitutional, an impossible task in light of the Constitution’s text, history, this Court’s precedents, federal law, and Executive Branch practice. So the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It 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. I  


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