\n<\/p>\n
Since President Donald<\/span> Trump\u2019s first day back in office, Republicans in Congress have been desperate to gut federal judges\u2019 power to block his administration\u2019s unlawful executive orders, policies, and threats. On Friday, the Supreme Court\u2019s conservative supermajority gave them what they wanted, further weakening the judiciary as an effective check on a White House that was already ignoring court orders with impunity.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,\u201d wrote liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent she read from the bench, calling the ruling \u201can attack on our system of law.\u201d<\/p>\n The case stems from the Trump administration\u2019s attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship via an executive order issued hours <\/a>after Trump was sworn in. Three different district court judges quickly blocked the executive order as unconstitutional under both the text of the Constitution and more than a century of Supreme Court precedent.<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s decision<\/a> did not address the merits of the executive order, but instead how the judges went about ensuring the core constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. In a ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court\u2019s six-member conservative wing drastically limited courts\u2019 authority to issue injunctions even in the face of galling illegality affecting millions of people.\u00a0<\/p>\n The three judges had issued a \u201cuniversal\u201d injunction against the birthright citizenship executive order, which meant the Trump administration could not enforce it anywhere in the country. A more limited injunction would have protected just the rights of the specific plaintiffs who sued \u2014 leaving the Trump regime free to target anyone who hadn\u2019t gone to court themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n But from today forward, district courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions, which conservatives gleefully sought and obtained during the Biden administration to block student loan forgiveness and other policies.<\/p>\n \u201cCuriously, this same Supreme Court never thought to say all the injunctions it upheld and stays it granted against Biden administration actions were outside its power,\u201d observed Stanford Law professor Mark Lemley on social media<\/a>. \u201cBut now apparently they are.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Instead, federal courts may only use injunctions to block presidents and their administrations from violating the rights of the specific parties that filed suit. In effect, judges will have no ability to offer immediate relief to however many people outside the courtroom are suffering from illegal actions of the executive branch. The ruling is certain to spur more class-action lawsuits against the federal government, which are still allowed but carry significant procedural hurdles and additional costs.<\/p>\n \u201cToday\u2019s ruling allows the Executive to deny people rights that the Founders plainly wrote into our Constitution, so long as those individuals have not found a lawyer or asked a court in a particular manner to have their rights protected,\u201d wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in a fiery dissent. Eliminating universal injunctions \u201crequires judges to shrug and turn their backs to intermittent lawlessness,\u201d Jackson wrote.<\/p>\n