What the Supreme Court’s ruling in birthright citizenship case means
I’ve been listening to the action on the Senate floor overnight, and as I post this, Republicans appear to continue to struggle to find the votes to pass President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” (To let your senators know how you want them to vote, call them at 202-224-3121.)
Since I don’t have news to share with you on the bill, let’s take a look at the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday on the birthright citizenship case.
The 6-3 ruling along ideological lines sides with the Trump administration’s request to limit universal injunctions issued by federal courts, says Nina Totenberg, a longtime Supreme Court reporter at NPR.
At issue is the way the lower courts should handle Trump’s executive order declaring that the children of parents who enter the United States illegally or on a temporary visa aren’t entitled to automatic citizenship, she says.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, doesn’t rule on whether Trump’s executive order violates the 14th Amendment or the Nationality Act. It focuses on whether federal courts have the power to issue nationwide blocks.
“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” the conservative majority’s opinion says. “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.”
The opinion asks 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 says Trump’s birthright citizenship order can’t take effect for 30 days from Friday’s opinion, giving more time for legal challenges.
President Trump says the ruling will allow his administration to move forward with key elements of his immigration policy without the threat of broad injunctions against them.
Lawrence Hurley, who writes about the court at NBC News, says that, indeed, “the administration is likely to benefit on multiple fronts as it can now seek to also limit other nationwide injunctions that lower courts have imposed on a range of aggressive executive branch issues including efforts to downsize the federal government.”
In her dissenting opinion in the case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor urges potential plaintiffs to immediately file class action lawsuits, a legal avenue the court left open.
William Powell, senior counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, says his group and other plaintiffs immediately filed for class certification. He says, “the best and most effective way for us to get relief for everyone is going to be the class action,” adding that he believes that relief “will be just as effective, just as broad as the nationwide injunction that was previously in place.”
Politico says alternatives to class-action lawsuits include state-led lawsuits to get broad judicial rulings and challenging certain policies under a federal administrative law that authorizes courts to strike down the actions of executive branch agencies.
The viability of these potential alternatives isn’t clear, Politico says. But the court explicitly doesn’t rule them out. And Justice Samuel Alito, who joined the majority opinion, writes a concurrence to raise concerns that the court is leaving loopholes that could undercut its main holding.
If lower courts allow litigants to exploit those loopholes, Alito writes, “today’s decision will be of little more than minor academic interest.”