Latest news with #TrumpvCASA
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
US supreme court limits judges' power on nationwide injunctions in apparent win for Trump
The US supreme court has supported Donald Trump's attempt to limit district judges' power to block his orders on a nationwide basis, in an emergency appeal related to the birthright citizenship case but with wide implications for the executive branch's power. The court's opinion on the constitutionality of whether some American-born children can be deprived of citizenship remains undecided and the fate of the US president's order to overturn birthright citizenship rights was left unclear. But the court's fractured 6-3 ruling has left the fate of the president's order to strip citizenship from some American-born children dangling in constitutional uncertainty without deciding whether newborns can be deprived of their rights if their parents lack legal status. The court's ruling in Trump v CASA, Inc will boost Trump's potential to enforce citizenship restrictions, in this and other cases in future, in states where courts had not specifically blocked them, creating a chaotic patchwork. Trump's January executive order sought to deny birthright citizenship to babies born on US soil if their parents lack legal immigration status – defying the 14th amendment's guarantee that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States' are citizens – and made justices wary during the hearing. The real fight in Trump v CASA Inc, wasn't about immigration but judicial power. Trump's lawyers demanded that nationwide injunctions blocking presidential orders be scrapped, arguing judges should only protect specific plaintiffs who sue – not the entire country. Three judges blocked Trump's order nationwide after he signed it on inauguration day, which would enforce citizenship restrictions in states where courts hadn't specifically blocked them. The policy targeted children of both undocumented immigrants and legal visa holders, demanding that at least one parent be a lawful permanent resident or US citizen. The 14th amendment to the US constitution's citizenship clause overturned the 1857 Dred Scott ruling that denied citizenship to Black Americans. The principle has stood since 1898, when the supreme court granted citizenship to Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents who could not naturalize. More details soon…
Forbes
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Birthright Citizenship: Supreme Court To Decide Trump Executive Order Today—What To Know
The Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of President Donald Trump's executive order restricting birthright citizenship on Friday, a decision that marks the first major Supreme Court ruling of the president's second term—and one that could impact litigation against him going forward, as justices could restrict lower courts from banning his policies nationwide. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn at the White House on June 15. Getty Images The Supreme Court is set to issue its ruling Friday in Trump v. CASA Inc., a case consolidating several lawsuits against Trump's executive order, which reverses longstanding Constitutional precedent to bar children born in the U.S. from automatically getting citizenship at birth if their parents aren't U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Trump asked the Supreme Court to take up the legality of his executive order after lower courts unanimously blocked it, and the policy has not yet taken effect. The president also asked justices to rule on whether federal judges representing a single state or region can impose injunctions that block a policy nationwide, meaning courts would not be able to unilaterally block his agenda going forward unless the Supreme Court rules. Trump's request to the court on nationwide injunctions comes as administration officials and allies have repeatedly complained about federal judges blocking the president's policies, claiming judges are abusing their power and are biased against him politically. The court's decision will come out when it releases opinions in the case at 10 a.m. EDT. The decision will the first major ruling by the Supreme Court on Trump's second-term policies. While justices have now issued a number of rulings regarding Trump policies on its 'shadow docket'—meaning it issues quicker rulings on issues without taking them up for oral argument first—the birthright citizenship dispute will mark the first time since Inauguration Day that justices held arguments regarding a Trump policy and then issued an opinion. But it's unlikely to be the last: hundreds of lawsuits have been brought against the Trump administration in the months since Trump took office, and the court is expected to make the final call in a number of major disputes on everything from immigration to the economy. A group of small businesses asked the court in mid-June to take up Trump's sweeping 'Liberation Day' tariffs and whether they're lawful, after lower courts blocked the tariffs but appeals courts then put them back into effect while the litigation moves forward. Plaintiffs have asked the Supreme Court to hold oral arguments over Trump tariffs right after its next term starts in the fall, and while the court rejected that request to expedite the case, it still could take up the dispute. Big Number More than 90. That's the approximate number of preliminary injunctions that have been issued against the Trump administration since Inauguration Day, including the ones on Trump's birthright citizenship order that prompted the dispute at the Supreme Court. That number only includes injunctions, which keep a policy on hold while a case moves forward, and does not include quicker temporary restraining orders, which judges use to immediately block a policy while they deliberate on whether to issue a more lasting order. Judges have also issued numerous temporary restraining orders against the Trump administration, which have similarly applied nationwide. While the Supreme Court has only issued one ruling on the Trump administration's policies after hearing oral arguments, the court's quicker 'shadow docket' rulings have largely come out in favor of the president. The court has so far ruled 14 times on Trump administration policies, not including the birthright citizenship case. Of those, the 6-3 conservative court has ruled in the Trump administration's favor nine times, while only three cases have come out against him. Another two rulings have been mixed, with aspects of it both for and against Trump. That being said, Trump has still stewed over the Supreme Court justices he appointed in his first term not being as favorable to him as he hoped, CNN reported in early June, with anonymous sources saying the president has expressed 'particular ire' at Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Trump's birthright citizenship order was one of the first the president issued after his inauguration, after Trump long suggested he could take aim at the policy as part of his wider immigration crackdown. The executive order sparked a number of lawsuits and the first district and appeals court rulings of Trump's second terms, with judges broadly decrying Trump's effort to change the longstanding Constitutional protection. 'The president cannot change, limit, or qualify this Constitutional right via an executive order,' Judge John Coughenour wrote in his ruling blocking the policy. As more court rulings against the president followed, with judges blocking other policies nationwide, the Trump administration and its allies increasingly started taking aim at judges, claiming they were abusing their authority to usurp the president's agenda and claiming judges have been harsher on Trump than courts were on other previous presidents. They also started specifically complaining about judges imposing orders that went beyond their districts: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt decried Judge James Boasberg for blocking the Trump administration from halting deportation flights to El Salvador, for instance, claiming, 'A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.' In addition to the Trump administration taking the issue to the Supreme Court, Trump's allies in Congress have also sought to solve the issue of lower courts issuing nationwide injunctions, introducing legislation that would prohibit judges' ability to issue orders beyond the region their court covers. That bill is unlikely to become law, however, given it would need 60 votes in the narrowly divided Senate. Further Reading: Forbes Supreme Court Suggests It Won't Allow Trump's Birthright Citizenship Ban—But Could Limit How Other Policies Can Be Blocked By Alison Durkee Forbes Can Trump End Birthright Citizenship? What To Know After Judge Blocks Executive Order By Alison Durkee
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court just got an important police violence case right
The most closely watched news out of the Supreme Court on Thursday was the argument in Trump v. CASA, a case asking whether President Donald Trump has power to cancel many Americans' citizenship. The justices appeared skeptical that Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship is constitutional, but may hand him a temporary victory on a procedural question about whether a single trial judge may block his order nationwide. Just minutes before that hearing began, however, the Court also handed down an important — and unanimous — decision rebuking a federal appeals court's bizarre approach to police violence cases. That case is known as Barnes v. Felix. Barnes arose out of what began as a routine traffic stop over 'toll violations.' Shortly after Officer Roberto Felix Jr. stopped driver Ashtian Barnes in Houston, Barnes started to drive away while the officer was still standing next to his vehicle. Felix decided to jump onto the moving car, with his feet resting on its doorsill and his head over the car's roof. After twice shouting, 'don't fucking move' while clinging to Barnes's car, Felix fired two shots, killing Barnes. The ultimate question in this case is whether Felix used excessive force by blindly firing into the car while he was precariously clinging to the side of a moving vehicle. But the Supreme Court did not answer this question. Instead, it sent the case back down to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to reconsider the case under the proper legal rule, in a victory for Barnes's family — albeit one that may not amount to much in the long run. The Fifth Circuit is the most right-wing appeals court in the federal system, and it is known for handing down slapdash opinions that are later reversed by the Supreme Court. Barnes fits this pattern. The admittedly quite vague rule courts are supposed to apply in excessive force cases against police officers requires courts to determine whether the use of force was justified from 'the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene.' This inquiry, as Justice Elena Kagan explains in the Court's Barnes opinion, requires judges to consider the 'totality of the circumstances' that led to a shooting or other use of force. But the Fifth Circuit applies a different rule, holding that its ''inquiry is confined to whether the officer' was 'in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in [his] use of deadly force.'' This rule requires judges to disregard the events 'leading up to the shooting,' and focus exclusively on the moment of the shooting itself. In a case like Barnes, in other words, the Fifth Circuit told judges to act as if Felix magically found himself transported to the side of a moving vehicle, forced to make a split-second decision about how to extract himself from this situation without being injured or killed. The question of whether it was reasonable for Felix to jump onto the side of a moving car in the first place is irrelevant to the Fifth Circuit's inquiry. Kagan's opinion holds that this was wrong. 'The 'totality of the circumstances' inquiry into a use of force has no time limit,' she writes, noting that 'earlier facts and circumstances may bear on how a reasonable officer would have understood and responded to later ones.' As Kagan notes, a wider lens will not necessarily favor either police or people who are injured by police. 'Prior events may show, for example, why a reasonable officer would have perceived otherwise ambiguous conduct of a suspect as threatening,' she writes, 'or instead they may show why such an officer would have perceived the same conduct as innocuous.' Indeed, Kagan compares this case to Plumhoff v. Rickard (2014), a harrowing case where a suspect led six police cruisers on a high-speed chase that exceeded 100 miles per hour. After the car collided with one of the cruisers and briefly came to a near stop, the driver put the car into reverse and attempted to resume his flight, but the chase ended after police shot him and he crashed into a building. The Supreme Court held in Plumhoff that the shooting was reasonable, because the driver showed that he was ''intent on resuming' his getaway and, if allowed to do so, would 'again pose a deadly threat for others.'' But, under the Fifth Circuit's 'moment of the threat' test, it's unclear that Plumhoff would have come down the same way. Judges would only ask whether it was reasonable to shoot someone who was reversing away from a crash after colliding with a police car, without considering the high-speed chase that led up to that crash. It's also far from clear that the courts will ultimately determine that Felix acted unreasonably in Barnes. Notably, a total of four justices joined a concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which reads like a paean to the peril faced by police during traffic stops. When a suspect flees such a stop, Kavanaugh writes, 'every feasible option poses some potential danger to the officer, the driver, or the public at large—and often to all three.' Still, Barnes wipes away a Fifth Circuit rule that all but ensured absurd results. It makes no sense to evaluate a police officer's use of force — or, for that matter, nearly any allegedly illegal action committed by any person — by divorcing that use of force from its context.
