Washington - The Supreme Court is considering Trump administration bid on Thursday Three narrow subordinate commands Preventing President Trump from ending birthright citizenship while testing the power of judges to block presidential policies nationwide.
The arguments in the court were held at the rare May meeting and were the first policy Mr. Trump had formulated in his second term. But the High Court did not examine the legitimacy of the president Administrative Order of Citizens of Right to Birthattempting to deny U.S. citizenship to a mother or father born on an illegal or temporary basis in the United States.
Instead, the Trump administration said the district court judges who oversee three legal challenges in Mr. Trump’s policy lacked a comprehensive injunction that went beyond the parties involved in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs filed three lawsuits are 22 states, two organizations and seven people, and the Justice Department is pushing for the injunction to apply only to them.
The Supreme Court's ruling on the government's favorable government could enable it to partially implement the Citizenship Measures with the Right to Birth, while the lawsuit was conducted without enforcing the plaintiffs, including California, New York and 20 other states.
"This is one of a series of efforts to close the court doors, making it more difficult, more expensive, more complex, and less challenging government actions," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the Immigration Rights Program at the ACLU. "Cases like birthright citizenship show that your executive order is very obvious, which is blatantly illegal, but the government requires the Supreme Court to make it harder for the court to protect people and judge constitutional rights."
The nationwide or widespread ban has been working on for years, and Several judges They themselves said the Supreme Court must clarify its legitimacy.
"The universal injunction is legally and historically suspicious," Judge Clarence Thomas wrote in his opinion agreed on the 2018 ruling against the Supreme Court. Adhere to the travel ban Mr. Trump arrived during his first term. “If the federal court continues to issue it, it is the responsibility of the court to rule their power to do so.”
But criticism of these broad orders has a fever this year as the Trump administration responds to more than 200 legal challenges on nearly every aspect of the president’s second term agenda, as well as injunctions issued by courts across the country to prevent its policies from taking effect.
Most of these decisions have been appealed, with the Trump administration seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court in more than a dozen cases, including an executive order for his right to birth citizens. The High Court left the lower-level injunction to prevent the implementation of the citizen policy on the right to reproductive.
His trans military ban in other plans by the president, at the time the Supreme Court Allow to take effect;His efforts Limit federal funding to provide gender care to young people; and Cut some federal funds.
"The pace of universal injunctions has gotten to the point where it really is an urgent issue for the court to resolve, not just because it has meant the thwarting of the president's ability to implement the policies for which he was elected, but also because it has led to an inundation of emergency petitions to the Supreme Court as a result of these universal injunctions," said Joel Alicea, a law professor at the Catholic University of America.
These grand orders not only dismay Mr. Trump and his agenda, but his predecessor. A study from the Harvard Law Review published in April 2024 found that from 1963 to 2023, at least 127 national bans were issued, although from 2001 to 2023, most were 96.
In March, the Congressional Research Bureau determined that 28 bans were issued during former President Joe Biden’s tenure, based on 86 national bans issued by Mr. Trump during his first four years of his tenure. But the report warns that “it is impossible to provide a final charge nationwide.”
As for Trump's second term, the Congressional Research Bureau has determined 17 national bans issued in his first two months of office. The Trump administration estimates that judges have at least 28 orders against the order.
“The universal ban practice effectively means that a single district court judge vetos the president’s national policy, and since the country has 94 district courts, that means you have 94 opportunities to theoretically close any given national policy,” Alicia said. “In terms of national policy making, this is the secret to true paralysis and in a way that subverts the separation of power, because a single district court judge should never have such power to prevent national policies from being stopped in the way of its track.”
Mr. Trump and his allies have initiated these decisions after naming judges, and his administration has Expanded this battle For relief. In a document in a birthright citizen case, the Justice Department said the general ban has reached the "epidemic" ratio since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January.
"These bans hinder key policies of the executive branch on matters ranging from border security to international relations, national security to military preparation," wrote Attorney General D. John Sauer. "They repeatedly undermine the operation of the executive branch until the cabinet level."
Republicans in Congress also raised reasons for the universal ban. In April, Republican-controlled homes passed a bill that would restrict district court judges from issuing widespread injunction relief. It is unclear whether the measure will pass through the Republican-led Senate, where 60 votes are needed to advance.
But Wofsy of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the number of lawsuits and injunctions stems from the number of executive actions the president took during the open month of his second term.
“The government is more generally bound by many national bans and bans because it does incredibly illegal things, which is not a reason to deprive the judiciary of the tools that must be inspected by the administration,” he said. “It is more important now than ever that the judiciary is a powerful and powerful inspection of illegal administrative acts.”
The Supreme Court may not stop universal injunctions altogether, but may cut them because in some cases the relief naturally goes beyond the parties in the case. Take the landowner as an example, he sued a factory that pollutes the river. In this case, the injunction to order the factory to cease would benefit all those who reside along it, not just a single plaintiff.
“The basic principle here is that the court may only issue the necessary injunctions to compensate for the harms claimed by the plaintiff,” Alicia said. “Sometimes, this will require an injunction that requires protection of the actual plaintiff even in the accidental consequence of providing protection to nonprofits.”
If the Supreme Court does weaken the judge’s ability to enter a universal injunction, the court can still enter tailored relief. Plaintiffs who attempt to represent a wider population can also file a class action lawsuit. The Trump administration believes that in cases of birthright citizenship, illegally affected pregnant women in the United States can file a class action lawsuit and have the potential to lose the rights of American citizens.
But Wofsy said class action is one of many tools available to federal courts, like a national ban, and does not apply in every case.
"The existence of the tool does not mean that the court should not have other tools available," he said. "The question here is not, 'Does it be injected nationwide in every case?' The question is: "Are we going to remove discretion, that is, where necessary, the district court must use it as an appropriate tool to develop a remedy?" ''
He said the right to birth citizenship is an example of a situation where constitutional issues are so clear that the government has no reason to apply policies to individual children, and legal challenges continue.
“Citizenship does cut many aspects of our society. This is important for many education, health, nutrition, other types of programs,” Wolfsey said. “We will have a pieced together idea that people’s citizenship is not just whether you were born in the United States, but who your parents are, what their identity is, whether you have documents, whether you are a member of the organization, whether you were born in the state or the invitation, chaos, chaos, discrimination, discrimination and no practical purpose.”