The Latest: Supreme Court limits nationwide injunctions, but fate of birthright citizenship unclear

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4 hours ago

The court on Friday issued decisions on the final six cases that were left on its docket for the summer, including emergency appeals relating to Trump's agenda.
A divided Supreme Court ruled that individual judges lack the authority to grant nationwide injunctions, but the decision left unclear the fate of President Donald Trump 's restrictions on birthright citizenship.
The court sided with Maryland parents with religious objections to school book material, preserved a key part of an Obamacare coverage requirement, upheld a law aimed at blocking kids from seeing pornography online and preserved a fee subsidizing phone and internet services in schools, libraries and rural areas.
Here's the latest:
Trump says he will 'promptly file' to push policies after court's decision
Speaking from the White House, Trump said he would try to advance restrictions on birthright citizenship and other policies that had been blocked by district courts.
Trump calls court ruling a 'monumental victory'
The president, making a rare appearance to hold a news conference in the White House briefing room, said Friday that the decision from the Supreme Court was 'amazing' and a 'monumental victory for the Constitution,' the separation of powers and the rule of law.
Vance praises court ruling on 'ridiculous process' of injunctions
'Under our system, everyone has to follow the law—including judges!' the vice president wrote on the social platform X.
Nationwide injunctions have become a key brake on Trump's efforts to dramatically reshape the government, frustrating him and his allies.
Options remain 'for individuals to obtain relief from the courts,' legal group says
Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, called the court's birthright citizenship decision 'another obstacle' to the protection of constitutional rights, but added that 'a number of pathways remain for individuals to obtain relief from the courts.'
Democracy Forward has led winning injunctions against the administration over pauses to federal funding.
'Lawyers in this nation will find a way or make one in the work to achieve what our Constitution mandates and our nation promises,' Perryman said in a statement.
Immigrant advocates say the court has 'invited chaos, inequality' with ruling
The Supreme Court ruling 'opens the door to a dangerous patchwork of rights in this country, where a child's citizenship may now depend on the judicial district in which they're born,' said Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a nonprofit group that supports refugees and migrants entering the U.S. 'This is a deeply troubling moment not only for immigrant families, but for the legal uniformity that underpins our Constitution.'
'Birthright citizenship has been settled constitutional law for more than a century,' he said in a statement. 'By denying lower courts the ability to enforce that right uniformly, the Court has invited chaos, inequality, and fear,' Vignarajah continued.
Law aimed at blo cking kids from seeing pornography online upheld
The ruling came in a case over a Texas law that was challenged by an adult-entertainment industry trade group called the Free Speech Coalition.
The group said the law puts an unfair free speech burden on adults by requiring them to submit personal information that could be vulnerable to hacking or tracking. It agreed, though, that children under 18 shouldn't be seeing porn.
Nearly half all states have passed similar age verification laws as smartphones and other devices make it easier to access online porn, including hardcore obscene material.
▶ Read more about the Supreme Court's decision
Vice President JD Vance hails 'huge' Supreme Court decision
Vance said the justices were 'smacking down the ridiculous process of nationwide injunctions.'
He also shared a post from conservative commentator Sean Davis, who said the court was 'nuking universal injunctions,' which liberals have sought from district judges to slow down Trump's agenda.
Birthright citizenship case ruling will cause 'chaos and confusion,' group says
Lupe Rodríguez, executive director of National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, said the decision 'opens the door to discrimination, statelessness, and a fundamental erosion of rights for those born on American soil.'
'By lifting the injunction on this cruel and unconstitutional executive order, there will be chaos and confusion for families across the country as citizenship may depend on the state you were born in,' Rodríguez said in a statement.
The cases now return to lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the high court ruling. The conservative majority left open the possibility that the birthright citizenship changes could remain blocked nationwide.
New York AG calls Supreme Court ruling a profound setback
The ruling, which said individual judges don't have the authority to grant nationwide injunctions, left unclear the fate of Trump's birthright citizenship order, which would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally.
'While I am confident that our case defending birthright citizenship will ultimately prevail, my heart breaks for the families whose lives may be upended by the uncertainty of this decision,' New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
'The lives of thousands of Americans will be upended'
Common Cause President and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said the Supreme Court decision limiting the scope of injunctions issued by federal judges leaves thousands of people vulnerable.
'The lives of thousands of Americans will be upended, and many will be wrongfully deported. The ruling undermines the ability of the federal courts to protect the Constitution from a president with no respect for the rule of law and a dislike for people who don't look like him,' Solomón said in a statement.
Solomón predicted the Trump administration would use the ruling to 'illegally deport citizens in violation of the 14th Amendment.'
'Ultimately, the courts will rule against this blatantly unconstitutional act by the president. But the ruling today prevents lower courts from stopping unconstitutional acts nationwide before they do serious harm,' she said.
Many justices have raised concerns about nationwide injunctions
In the past, at least five of the Supreme Court's conservative justices have raised concerns about the orders, but it hasn't just been conservatives.
Speaking at the Northwestern University School of Law in 2022, Kagan warned of 'forum shopping,' when litigants file suit in courts they hope will be receptive to them.
'In the Trump years, people used to go to the Northern District of California, and in the Biden years, they go to Texas,' she said. 'It just can't be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.'
Trump plans news conference to celebrate Supreme Court ruling
The president posted on his Truth Social media network that the ruling was a 'GIANT WIN.'
'Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard. It had to do with the babies of slaves (same year!), not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process,' Trump said in the post.
He announced he plans to have a news conference at 11:30 a.m. at the White House.
Court sides w ith Maryland parents over LGBTQ+ storybooks
The justice ruled that the Montgomery County school system in suburban Washington could not require elementary school children to sit through lessons involving the books if parents expressed religious objections to the material.
The decision was not a final ruling in the case, but the justices strongly suggested that the parents would win in the end.
The school district introduced the storybooks, including 'Prince & Knight' and 'Uncle Bobby's Wedding,' in 2022 to better reflect the district's diversity. In 'Uncle Bobby's Wedding,' a niece worries that her uncle won't have as much time for her after he gets married to another man.
▶ Read more about the Supreme Court's decision
Supreme Court OKs fee subsidizing phone and internet services
The justices, by a 6-3 vote, reversed an appeals court ruling that had struck down as unconstitutional the Universal Service Fund, the charge that has been added to phone bills for nearly 30 years.
At arguments in March, liberal and conservative justices alike expressed concerns about the potentially devastating consequences of eliminating the fund, which has benefited tens of millions of Americans.
The fee provides billions of dollars a year in subsidized phone and internet services in schools, libraries and rural areas. The Federal Communications Commission collects the money from telecommunications providers, which pass the cost on to their customers.
The ruling crossed ideological lines, with Kagan writing for the majority in an opinion that included several conservative justices.
▶ Read more about the Supreme Court's decision
Key part of Obamacare coverage requirements preserved
The Supreme Court rejected a challenge from Christian employers to a key part of the Affordable Care Act's preventive health care coverage requirements, which affects some 150 million Americans.
The 6-3 ruling comes in a lawsuit over how the government decides which health care medications and services must be fully covered by private insurance under former President Barack Obama's signature law, often referred to as Obamacare.
The Trump administration defended the mandate before the court, though the Republican president has been critical of his Democratic predecessor's law.
Nationwide injunctions have become a favored judicial tool during Trump presidency
A Supreme Court opinion limiting the use of nationwide injunctions takes aim at a judicial maneuver that has soared in popularity during the first several months of Trump's second term.
A Congressional Research Service report identified 25 cases between Jan. 20 and April 29 in which a district court judge issued a nationwide injunction. Those include cases on topics ranging from federal funding to diversity, equity and inclusion considerations to birthright citizenship, the subject at issue in Friday's Supreme Court opinion restricting their use.
That number is in contrast to 28 nationwide injunction cases that CRS identified from former President Joe Biden's administration and 86 from Trump's first term.
The report cautions that it's not possible to provide a full count since nationwide injunction is not a legal term with a precise meaning.
Sotomayor accuses the Trump administration of 'gamesmanship' in dissent
She wrote that Trump's birthright citizenship executive order has been deemed 'patently unconstitutional' by every court that examined it.
So, instead of trying to argue that the executive order is likely constitutional, the administration '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,' Sotomayor wrote.
'The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it,' she wrote. 'Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along.'
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined her in her dissenting opinion.
Attorney general applauds limits on nationwide injunctions
'Today, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump,' U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on the social platform X shortly after the ruling came down.
Bondi said the Justice Department 'will continue to zealously defend' Trump's 'policies and his authority to implement them.'
Universal injunctions have been a source of intense frustration for the Trump administration amid a barrage of legal challenges to his priorities around immigration and other matters.
Nationwide injunctions limited, but fate of birthright citizenship order unclear
The outcome was a victory for Trump, who has complained about individual judges throwing up obstacles to his agenda.
But a conservative majority left open the possibility that the birthright citizenship changes could remain blocked nationwide. Trump's order would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally.
Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the Constitution's 14th Amendment.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor is reading her dissenting opinion from the bench, a sign of her clear disagreement with the majority's opinion.
The other big cases left on the docket
The court seems likely to side with Maryland parents in a religious rights case over LGBTQ+ storybooks in public schools, but other decisions appear less obvious.
The judges will also weigh a Texas age-verification law for online pornography and a map of Louisiana congressional districts, now in its second trip to the nation's highest court.
The justices will take the bench at 10 a.m.
Once they're seated, they'll get right to the opinions.
The opinions are announced in reverse order of seniority so that the junior justices go first. The birthright citizenship case will likely be announced last by Chief Justice John Roberts.