Scotus joins Trump to limit injunctions to the national scale

Friday, the Supreme Court won a major victory in the quest for President Donald Trump to prevent the lower courts from delivering universal injunctions which had turned many of the decrees and actions of his administration.

The judges ruled 6-3 to allow the lower courts to issue injunctions only in limited cases, although the decision leaves open the question of how the decision will apply to the order of citizenship of the right of birth at the heart of the case.

The Supreme Court has agreed this year to take a trio of consolidated cases involving so -called universal injunctions transmitted by federal judges of the district of Maryland, Massachusetts and the state of Washington. The judges of these districts had prevented the ban on Trump from the citizenship of the birth law to take strength at the national level – which the Trump administration supported in their call to the Supreme Court was too wide.

The arguments of the Supreme Court in May have little focused on the merits of these universal injunctions – and Friday, the court clearly indicated that it did not judge whether the ordinances of citizenship of birth law were constitutional.

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President Donald Trump speaks to journalists from the Oval Blank Office, after having signed a series of decrees and proclamations. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Instead, he asked the lower courts to “move quickly to ensure that, with regard to each applicant, the injunctions behave with this rule and otherwise comply with the principles of equity”.

They also remained the application of orders to take effect for 30 days.

“The requests do not increase – and therefore we do not address – the question of whether the decree violated the citizenship clause or the law on nationality,” said judge Amy Condey Barrett, writing for the majority. “The question that is seized is that of appeal: if, under the judicial law of 1789, the federal courts have a fair power to issue universal injunctions.”

“A universal injunction can only be justified as an exercise in fair authority, but the Congress has not granted any federal power,” she added.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissident in the case.

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Sotomayor, in a scathing dissent, described the decision “nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the Constitution”.

“Executive power can now apply policies that flout the law and violate the constitutional rights of innumerable individuals, and the federal courts will be paralyzed to fully stop their actions. Until the day when each affected person will be part of a trial and does not ensure an injunctive recovery for himself,” she said the government.

In a separate dissent, Jackson wrote that the majority of the majority “will have a disproportionate impact on the poor, without instruction and unpopular-that is to say those who may not have the means of lawyers and who are too often liable to the whims of the executive.”

The Supreme Court agreed in April to hear consolidated affairs, which focused on three judges from the lower courts of Maryland, Massachusetts and the State of Washington which issued “universal” injunctions against the Trump Birthwing Citizenship Executive decree.

But it was not the main objective of the call, nor the oral arguments of May 15 before the High Court.

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President Trump signals to the media before climbing the navy One at the White House on April 3, 2025. (Images Andrew Harnik / Getty)

The judges have rather evaluated whether the lower courts should have the power to issue injunctions nationwide, or if that goes beyond their authority, as the officials of Trump points out.

The decision should have radical implications for the American district courts and arrives at a time when the presidents, including the Democrats and Republican administrations, sought to use decrees as a means of bypassing a clumsy and slow congress.

Trump praised the declaration on social networks on Friday, which he described as a “giant victory” at the Supreme Court. He also declared that he was planning to hold a press conference on the decision at 11:30 am

“Even the hoax of the citizenship of the right of birth was indirectly struck.” Congratulations to the Attorney General Pam Bondi, to the Solicitor General John Sauer and the entire DOJ. ”

Federal judges across the country have Blocked Trump’s ban On transgender people who serve in the US military, have ordered the reintegration of the basic functions of the American Agency for International Development (USAID) and interrupted Elon Musk’s government efficiency, Doge, surveillance and access to government agencies, among others.

The judges through the ideological spectrum seemed to agree during the oral arguments this month that the use of universal injunctions has jumped in recent years – but after more than two hours, it has remained divided on how to proceed.

No easy solution has emerged to the thorny legal problem, while the judges fought with a tangle of procedural issues on the advisability of releasing the use of universal injunctions and the legal standard that should govern them.

Sauer argued that the judges of the lower courts used universal injunctions to act beyond their authority and block the legal powers of an in-office.

But Sotomayor noted that the blocking or limitation of the lower courts may invite hundreds or thousands of new individual prosecution.

“Your theory here arises that article III and the principles of equity (clause) both prohibit the federal courts from issuing universal injunctions to have your argument,” she said later, adding: “If it is true, it even means the Supreme Court Does not have this power. “”

Kagan, on the other hand, said the practical challenge to expect the Supreme Court to weigh on each question now dealt with by the lower courts, which have already faced hundreds of federal proceedings during Trump’s second term.

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The judges of the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson (Getty Images)

She also noted to save that the Trump administration had lost all the federal proceedings contesting the decree of the citizenship of the right of birth, including under the judges that Trump appointed during his first mandate.

As expected, several conservative judges in the court, including judge Clarence Thomas, have expressed their criticism of the universal injunctions.

New Jersey’s general request, Jeremy Feigenbaum, representing the States, recognized that there could be alternative remedies for federal courts other than national injunctions – although he suggested that in some cases, the alternative of collective appeal presented by the Trump administration cannot move quickly enough to grant a repair in some cases.

“We are sympathetic to some of the United States concerns about percolation, on table management in specific cases,” he said. “We just don’t think it supports a luminous line rule that says they are never available.”

Roberts and Sotomayor interviewed Feigenbaum more in depth on how to determine in which cases universal injunctions should not be the favorite remedy and how to ensure that the district courts follow this.

Lawyers for the Trump administration asked the High Court to re-examine the case earlier this year, arguing that the three lower courts, which each blocked the citizenship order of the birth of Trump to take the force at the national level, acted beyond the scope of their authority.

The solicitor General Sauer underlined this point during the oral arguments earlier this month, telling the judges that universal injunctions “require that judges make precipitated decisions, high issues and low information”.

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“They operate asymmetrically, forcing the government to win everywhere,” he said, and “Invert”, according to the Trump administration, the ordinary hierarchy for examining the appeal.

The decision of the Supreme Court will have radical implications, both near and longer term, with reversal effects on more than 300 federal proceedings that have challenged the actions of the White House since the second president of Trump on January 20, 2025.

Friday, Bondi welcomed the decision of the High Court on social networks.

“Today, the Supreme Court asked the district courts to end the endless dam of the national injunctions against President Trump,” she said, adding that the decision “would not have been possible without tireless work of our excellent lawyers” at the Ministry of Justice and Sauer.

“This Ministry of Justice will continue to zealously defend the policies of @ Potus and its power to implement them,” she added.