Trump scores major win in birthright citizenship case as Supreme Court curbs nationwide injunctions

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Friday that nationwide injunctions issued by lower court judges “likely exceed” the judicial branch’s constitutional authority — handing the Trump administration a big win in the high court’s most closely-watched case this term.“[F]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,” conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court’s conservative majority.“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”The case revolved around the Trump administration’s challenge against multiple nationwide injunctions against the president’s Day One order to end birthright citizenship.The Supreme Court did not address the merits of the birthright citizenship issue in its opinion.“The Government’s applications to partially stay the preliminary injunctions are granted,” Barrett wrote, “but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”Nationwide injunctions have been used by lower courts to stop executive actions from applying across the board rather than just granting relief to plaintiffs who sued.Justices from across the ideological spectrum have long raised concerns about lower courts overstepping their authority.But during oral arguments, the court struggled over how or whether to draw the line. Barrett wrote that universal injunctions lack “a historical pedigree” and were not authorized under the 1789 Judiciary Act. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a withering dissent, but it was the concurring dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that drew a rare rebuke from Barrett. “We observe only this,” she wrote.

“Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” ...