Latest news with #JudiciaryActof1789
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Agenda Being Blocked by Judges Despite Supreme Court
(Bloomberg) -- Federal judges have continued to order sweeping halts to President Donald Trump's policies in the immediate aftermath of a US Supreme Court decision that limited their use of such powers. Singer Akon's Failed Futuristic City in Senegal Ends Up a $1 Billion Resort Why Did Cars Get So Hard to See Out Of? Are Tourists Ruining Europe? How Locals Are Pushing Back Can Americans Just Stop Building New Highways? How German Cities Are Rethinking Women's Safety — With Taxis On Thursday, a federal judge in New Hampshire entered a new order blocking Trump's restrictions to birthright citizenship — the issue that prompted the Supreme Court's June 27 ruling to curb use of so-called universal injunctions. The judge greenlit the case as a nationwide class action. The order was the latest example of judges relying on alternative options offered by the justices to stop government conduct in the wake of the high court's 6-3 decision. Over the past two weeks, judges in New York, Rhode Island and Washington halted mass firings of federal workers, restored public health data to government websites and revived migrant legal protections. Last month's Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. CASA was a win for Trump, but the latest activity shows it's not clear yet how much it will reverse his administration's trend of lower court losses since he took office in January. 'The reality is that CASA did not foreclose all avenues for what is effectively nationwide relief,' said Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School professor and administrative law expert. 'Courts can set aside action that's unlawful and that's been the bread and butter of administrative law for decades.' The US Justice Department and the administration's opponents are now fighting over whether judges can keep broadly blocking Trump policies, as well as whether existing orders can stand against the government in dozens of cases that pre-dated the June decision. The cases in flux include disputes over billions of dollars in frozen foreign aid and domestic federal funding cuts, proof-of-citizenship in elections, refugee resettlement and the legal status of international students. The Supreme Court ruling restricted the use of injunctions that expand protections to all those who may be harmed by government actions, not just those who sued. But the majority also identified alternative paths under US law that judges can take to serve as a broad check on the executive branch. Nationwide injunctions have long been used by judges under the authority of the Judiciary Act of 1789. However, the Supreme Court concluded that Congress hadn't given judges such sweeping power under the Judiciary Act. The justices' decision came up this week in a fight over Trump's decision to end a tariff exemption for small-value goods from China. A Justice Department lawyer argued Thursday that if a US trade court temporarily reinstates the exemption, it should do so as narrowly as possible for the Detroit-based auto parts distributor that sued and not extend to its customers. The company's lawyer and one member of the three-judge panel pushed back on whether that was reasonable. Binding Decision The June decision in the birthright citizenship fight is binding on all US judges going forward. The Trump administration will aggressively push back on any order that resembles the type of overbroad injunctions that the Supreme Court said are no longer allowed, according to a senior White House official who requested anonymity to discuss legal strategy. The official pointed to Justice Samuel Alito's separate concurrence in the birthright ruling warning that lower court judges shouldn't abuse their remaining authority to block of government actions. The justices did note other ways judges could take far-reaching measures to stop allegedly unlawful government conduct, like approving cases as class-action claims or invoking the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how agencies can carry out policies. Coglianese said that identifying possible abuses will be challenging because class actions and the APA are already common features of lawsuits over executive branch policies. Appellate judges and the Supreme Court will have to determine if judges are 'stretching the limits' of what's been typical in the past, he said. Judges who have halted Trump policies in the past two weeks addressed head-on why their orders weren't the type of nationwide injunctions that the Supreme Court pulled back. A federal judge in New York cited the APA when he 'set aside' the administration's decision to end legal protections for Haitian migrants. In his July 1 ruling, he said the Supreme Court 'explicitly distinguished' between APA cases and the injunctions it prohibited, adding that Justice Brett Kavanaugh 'emphasized this point' in a concurring opinion. A Washington judge quoted the same Kavanaugh passage the next day, when he blocked a Trump proclamation restricting asylum claims. He also approved the case as a class action. On July 3, another federal judge in Washington relied on the APA in ordering the administration to restore public health data deleted from government websites per Trump's executive action targeting so-called 'gender ideology.' The judge wrote in a footnote that the Supreme Court's anti-injunction decision 'does not apply.' A Rhode Island federal judge on July 1 temporarily blocked the Health and Human Services Department from carrying out mass firings and restructuring while the lawsuit brought by Democratic-led states moves forward. The judge found the states were likely to succeed in arguing that the administration violated the APA. She asked both sides to file briefs on whether the birthright ruling affects her order. Future Fights The US Justice Department is appealing its loss in the asylum fight. In other cases, government lawyers are urging judges to pare back injunctions imposed before the Supreme Court's ruling. They've argued, for instance, that a Washington judge was wrong to broadly reinstate foreign aid spending and that a Massachusetts federal judge should narrow an order that halted Trump from requiring proof-of-citizenship in federal elections in the 19 states that sued. To be sure, the Supreme Court's ruling last month is at least a short-term win for the Trump administration. It gives US officials another chance to argue for narrower restrictions on the government to enforce Trump's citizenship limits while the legal fight proceeds over whether the policy is constitutional — an issue the justices did not address. But some legal experts said that because challenges to executive branch actions often are brought under the APA, the ruling might not hamstring judges in many of the 400-plus lawsuits filed over Trump's agenda to date. The APA, enacted in 1946, 'has been the mainstay, the workhorse statute that you use to challenge the executive branch for decades,' said Mila Sohoni, a Stanford Law School professor and administrative law expert. The Justice Department chose to use the birthright policy litigation as a vehicle to challenge universal injunctions, but because it didn't involve a class action or claims under the APA, 'the fallout from that is that these other types of challenges proceeding on these other types of tracks weren't affected,' Sohoni said. Judges who haven't ruled yet on challengers' requests to block Trump's policies have asked lawyers for input on the significance of the Supreme Court decision, including in fights over Defense Department research spending, rapid deportations and humanities grant funding. Some challengers have refiled lawsuits as class actions, including in a New Jersey case contesting the administration's mass cancellation of foreign students' legal status. In Texas, a libertarian group that sued on behalf of border businesses affected by a new rule requiring enhanced financial transaction reporting asked a judge to certify the case as a class action. The lawyers wrote that they didn't think the court actually needed to address their request since they'd already sued under the APA, but, in light of the Supreme Court's decision, they were raising it 'out of an abundance of caution.' (Updated with comment, tariffs case starting in the fifth paragraph.) 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The Hill
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
In the Supreme Court's battle over nationwide injunctions, no one wins
The Supreme Court's decision in last month's birthright citizenship case was jaw-dropping, but not for the reason you might think. First, the court didn't actually rule on birthright citizenship — and when it eventually does, the Trump administration is almost certain to lose for all sorts of reasons. Instead, the court limited its opinion to a procedural question: whether district courts are allowed to issue 'universal injunctions.' Can judges bar the government from enforcing a particular policy with respect to everyone anywhere, or can they only issue injunctions that protect the people who have actually filed suit? This kind of question is usually the subject of arcane legal reasoning involving things like the Judiciary Act of 1789. And there was a certain amount of that in this opinion. But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the majority opinion outlawing universal injunctions, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote in dissent, transformed themselves into living avatars for the yin and yang of judicial philosophy — formalism and legal realism. You might think this would be nerdy and boring, but not this time. Formalism, in a nutshell, is the idea that judges should decide cases based on carefully following legal rules, ignoring the real-world impact of their decisions. Legal realism, in contrast, suggests that judges should tailor decisions with any eye to how they will affect society. This is a long-running debate in American law, but seldom do you see it break out in such stark terms — almost never in a Supreme Court case, as it has here. Jackson writes, 'In a constitutional Republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the executive to follow the law—and it must.' She is concerned that, 'Allowing the executive to violate the law at its prerogative with respect to anyone who has not yet sued carves out a huge exception — a gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound. … [I]t is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional republic will be no more.' Barrett, by contrast, views Jackson's concerns as irrelevant. '[A]s with most questions of law, the policy pros and cons are beside the point,' she writes. 'No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law. But the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation — in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so. … Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring 'legalese,' [Jackson] seeks to answer 'a far more basic question of enormous practical significance.'' For lawyers, this raw disagreement is astounding — a sort of legal version of 'King Kong versus Godzilla.' I find myself uncomfortable with Jackson's raw emotion and prefer Barrett's approach. But the real world doesn't care about my preferences. The sad truth is that Barrett's reasoning displays an ivory-tower complacency that utterly fails to meet the current moment. The sad truth is that Jackson is right. The problem isn't this one opinion, however — Barrett is probably correct about universal injunctions. The problem arises when you consider the court's recent rulings in context rather than in isolation. Over the last few years, the Supreme Court's conservative majority has systematically exempted large swaths of the federal government from the rule of law. Sure, as Barrett says, the executive branch has a duty to follow the law, but in their opinion, that's a matter for the president and his conscience rather than the courts. Per the Supreme Court, the president is immune to legal accountability for any actions he takes as president, up to and including ordering Seal Team Six to assassinate his political rivals. Federal officers cannot be sued for violating your constitutional rights while enforcing immigration laws, no matter how outrageously they behave. And now, with this decision, a district court cannot even issue an injunction that requires these officers to obey the law. This is all backward. Constitutional rights have to be enforceable. They cannot rely on the good will of the government. This utter lack of accountability is a charter for abuse, and that abuse is happening right now. Just over a week ago, in an effort to arrest someone who had allegedly rammed a federal vehicle, ICE agents used an explosive to blow open the door of a house that contained a sleeping mother and her children, all U.S. citizens. This was a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment. Even a no-knock warrant would have required exigent circumstances that weren't present in this case; using explosives is a whole other level of excessive force. The whole exercise was as unnecessary as it was excessive. The suspect — also a U.S. citizen — wasn't at home; he later turned himself in and was released on bail. Had ordinary police officers behaved this way, civil rights suits would be filed, investigations conducted and, probably, people fired. But thanks to the Supreme Court, this bit of performative thuggery will never see the inside of a courtroom. And because no one can ever be held accountable, this kind of outrageous behavior will likely only get worse. And there's going to be a lot more of it, too — the bill that Trump just signed increases ICE's annual budget from $8 billion to $37 billion. That's more than Israel spends on its military. Law is applied philosophy. It has to work in a disordered and inconsistent world. Most of the time you need Barrett's line of thinking. But sometimes, when the rule of law itself is in question, when the system is being threatened from within, you need moral clarity. You need Jackson's reasoning. Last week, we celebrated the 249th anniversary of our independence. There is no better time to contemplate the state of our country and what it will look like on the 250th anniversary. Jackson brings us a warning of tyranny. We ignore it at our peril.
Boston Globe
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The Supreme Court stripped judges of a powerful tool to fight Trump's autocracy. Congress must give it back.
But now they can't. Based on the Supreme Court's reading of a 1789 law, lower courts can now only take such action on specific cases before them, meaning that even clear-cut violations of the law could continue against those without the wherewithal to go to court. Advertisement Congress can and must correct this mistake. Lawmakers should pass legislation that protects judges' ability to provide robust equitable remedies when people's rights are threatened by legally or constitutionally dubious administration actions. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Now, it's true that there have been problems with universal injunctions, and judges have sometimes misused them. But the court's ruling took a sledgehammer to a system that should have been fixed by Congress with a scalpel. And in the case of Trump, the ruling opens the door for him to strip birthright citizenship from American-born babies, continue whisking migrants to countries foreign to them with little notice and without due process, and engage in other actions that threaten people's rights and freedoms. Advertisement The court's 6-3 ideologically split opinion, authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was based on the majority's interpretation of the Judiciary Act of 1789. The justices considered if the statute authorizes broad preliminary injunctions like that issued by Boston-based US District Court Justice Brian Murphy, which paused Trump's executive order to deny birthright citizenship to children born to some migrants. 'The answer is no,' Barrett wrote for the majority. Instead, the court held, challengers of the policy who have standing to bring suit can only obtain such preliminary relief for themselves. '[P]rohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order against the child of an individual pregnant plaintiff will give that plaintiff complete relief: Her child will not be denied citizenship,' Barrett wrote. 'And extending the injunction to cover everyone similarly situated would not render her relief any more complete.' This is untenable, and will only lead to a cruel game of judicial whack-a-mole that fails to provide adequate protection to those most imperiled by these policies. The onus should not fall on those who are targeted by these policies to fend for themselves. It should fall on the administration to show that it is acting in a lawful way. The court did just the opposite, holding that it is the administration that will likely suffer irreparable harm if courts dare to exercise their authority as a check on the executive. The overuse of universal injunctions has been an issue of increasing bipartisan concern, particularly since the Obama administration. In the last two decades, both the number of executive orders issued and the number of temporary injections blocking them have steadily ballooned. But the number of executive orders Trump has issued in his second term is without historical precedent, even exceeding Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who issued a flurry of edicts in an effort to implement his New Deal agenda. Advertisement And many of Trump's orders are based on strained legal or constitutional arguments, such as the administration's claim that the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship protection only extended to children of enslaved people, that the Alien Enemies Act allows migrants to be deported without due process, or that the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the government to send migrants to countries where they've never been and to which they have no connection. Judges must have the ability to decide when relief extending beyond named plaintiffs is warranted. Should there be limits on that power? Yes, and Congress can include them in its bill. It can also underscore that states can still seek statewide relief from policies they can demonstrate harm all of their residents, and ease the process for class actions to be formed at the earliest stages of litigation to give relief to groups of people who demonstrate a need for protection. Judges handling the flurry of Trump-related litigation need more tools, not fewer. It's lawmakers' duty to give those tools to them. The Supreme Court must also swiftly take up and decide the constitutional and legal questions presented by Trump's orders. The justices could have rejected the Trump administration's erroneously limited reading of the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship protections, but opted instead to leave that question for another day. But given the risks of the order, there is no time like the present. And in the meantime, federal judges must do all they can to help challengers who will be harmed by Trump's policies. The Supreme Court did not tie judges' hands completely when it comes to equitable relief. Quick certification of class actions and swiftly granting relief to states that demonstrate the peril to their residents are among the arrows still in judges' quivers. They must use them. Advertisement We are not as bound or doomed by history as the Supreme Court's justices believe. The public needs to demand that members of the legislative and judiciary branches stand up and reclaim their powers to check a president who believes he is above the law and the Constitution. Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us
New York Post
28-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Birthright citizenship remains law of the land — for now — despite SCOTUS ruling
Birthright citizenship remains a fact of life in the US — for now — following the Supreme Court's ruling Friday limiting judges' ability to issue universal injunctions halting executive action. Moments after the 6-3 ruling, the Trump administration announced plans to move forward with the president's Day One executive order redefining the 14th Amendment's promise that '[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.' 'Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, and some of the cases we're talking about would be ending birthright citizenship, which now comes to the fore,' President Trump said during a rare appearance in the White House briefing room. Advertisement The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling did not judge the birthright citizenship question on its merits. Eric Kayne/ZUMA / 'That was meant for the babies of slaves. It wasn't meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation.' 'Yes, birthright citizenship will be decided in October in the next session by the Supreme Court,' Attorney General Pam Bondi affirmed moments later, even though the high court has yet to finalize its argument schedule and no cases related to the executive order have been picked for review by the justices. Advertisement In an opinion authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court ruled that the practice of a single district judge issuing a nationwide ruling 'likely exceed' the authority laid out by the Judiciary Act of 1789. Notably, the court did not decide whether Trump's actual order was constitutional. 'If there's a birthright citizenship case in Oregon, it will only affect the plaintiff in Oregon, not the entire country,' was how Bondi explained the ruling. Trump's order would limit US citizenship to children who have at least one parent who is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident. Advertisement The action was enjoined three days after Trump signed it by a Seattle federal judge, who called the move 'blatantly unconstitutional.' President Trump said the administration now can go forward with 'numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis.' On Friday afternoon, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a fresh class-action lawsuit challenging the birthright citizenship order, a legal maneuver which must meet certain requirements before getting a hearing. 'This new case seeks protection for all families in the country, filling the gaps that may be left by the existing litigation,' the organization said in a press release. Advertisement The 22 Democrat-led states that challenged Trump's order also expressed confidence that it would never be enforced. 'We have every expectation we absolutely will be successful in keeping the 14th Amendment as the law of the land,' said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, 'and of course birthright citizenship as well.' Locally, a City Hall spokesperson confirmed to The Post that Friday's Supreme Court ruling has no effect on New York City at this time. With Post wires
American Military News
27-06-2025
- Politics
- American Military News
Supreme Court hands Trump ‘Giant Win' in birthright citizenship case
The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a 'GIANT WIN' on Friday by ruling against 'universal injunctions' and limiting court injunctions after a lower court issued a preliminary injunction against the president's executive order blocking birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants. In a 6-3 ruling on Friday, the Supreme Court wrote, 'Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. 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.' In Friday's ruling, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett claimed that the 'universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent' for the majority of U.S. history. 'Its absence from 18th- and 19th-century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority,' Barrett wrote. 'That the absence continued into the 20th century renders any claim of historical pedigree still more implausible.' Barrett explained that the Supreme Court's ruling does not address whether the president's executive order on birthright citizenship violates the Nationality Act of the Citizenship Clause. Instead, Barrett said the issue presented to the Supreme Court 'is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.' READ MORE: Supreme Court issues major deportation ruling Barrett added, 'A universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power.' In a concurring opinion, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that the court's decision will now require district courts throughout the country to 'follow proper legal procedures' with regard to injunctions. 'Most significantly, district courts can no longer award preliminary nationwide or classwide relief except when such relief is legally authorized,' Kavanaugh stated. Following Friday's Supreme Court ruling, Trump issued a statement on Truth Social, saying, 'GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court! 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.' Vice President J.D. Vance also released a statement regarding the Supreme Court's decision, describing it as a 'huge ruling.' Vance claimed that the ruling will stop the 'ridiculous process of nationwide injunctions' that Democrat judges have used to continually block the president's executive orders. 'Under our system, everyone has to follow the law–including judges!' Vance tweeted.
