On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that severely hobbled the Judicial branch’s checks and balances over the Executive branch. The ruling bars district court judges from blocking government actions across the nation even when they are patently illegal or unconstitutional. Judges below the Supreme Court level no longer have the authority to grant a universal injunction against Executive branch actions regardless of how unconstitutional they are.
Going forward, the justices said, lower courts may only grant injunctive relief to the specific plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits. So the Trump administration may start enforcing its birthright citizenship order in the 28 states that have not challenged it, unless individual parents have the wherewithal and gumption to bring their own lawsuits.
This ruling effectively limits any judicial restraints on Trump’s actions. As expected, he will continue to enforce his efforts to undo birthright citizenship in violation of the 14th Amendment. He undoubtedly will also continue with the extralegal capture and deportation of undocumented aliens, knowing that his administration won’t be held accountable in any reasonable length of time.
News analyst Charlie Savage, writing in the New York Times said, “Mr. Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall.”
He added, “The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors general and sidelining the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders.
“And Congress, under the control of Mr. Trump’s fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorized and appropriated.”
On the other side of the issue however, Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued in his concurrence that the fundamental role of the courts has not really changed. He wrote that he wished “simply to underscore that this case focuses on only one discrete aspect of the preliminary litigation relating to major new federal statutes and executive actions—namely, what district courts may do with respect to those new statutes and executive actions in what might be called ‘the interim before the interim.’ Although district courts have received much of the attention (and criticism) in debates over the universal-injunction issue, those courts generally do not have the last word when they grant or deny preliminary injunctions. The courts of appeals and this Court can (and regularly do) expeditiously review district court decisions awarding or denying preliminary injunctive relief. The losing party in the district court—the defendant against whom an injunction is granted, or the plaintiff who is denied an injunction—will often go to the court of appeals to seek a temporary stay or injunction. And then the losing party in the court of appeals may promptly come to this Court with an application for a stay or injunction. This Court has therefore often acted as the ultimate decider of the interim legal status of major new federal statutes and executive actions.
“After today’s decision, that order of operations will not change. In justiciable cases, this Court, not the district courts or courts of appeals, will often still be the ultimate decision maker as to the interim legal status of major new federal statutes and executive actions—that is, the interim legal status for the several-year period before a final decision on the merits.”
Note that even Justice Kavanaugh recognizes that the period before a final decision on the merits is made can be several years long. In the interim though, if SCOTUS does not issue an immediate universal injunction, the Trump administration is free to enforce its will in districts where it has not been sued. And even if the Supreme Courts ultimately rules against executive actions, it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to unwind the effects.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent strongly disagreed with the opinion, which she called a “travesty of law” and warned it would “cause chaos for the families of all affected children.” The high court’s conservative majority, she said, had ignored the unlawfulness of Trump’s citizenship ban and instead declared the president “generally free to enforce unquestionably unconstitutional policies against everyone except those who file suit.”
The justices kept Trump’s ban on hold for at least 30 days and sent a set of cases back to the lower courts to determine the practical implications of their ruling. So it remains to be seen what the overall effect of this ruling will be. But given the conservative justices’ deference in the past to Trump’s goal of an imperial executive, I don’t hold out much hope.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/us/supreme-court-trump-executive-branch-power.html
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884diff_8nka.pdf