Enhancing in a major way the federal government’s power to enforce controversial new policies even though a lower court has declared them illegal, the Supreme Court on Friday erased almost all of the power of lower courts to issue nationwide orders.
The 6-to-3 decision was a huge legal victory for the Trump Administration – and, indeed, for all future federal administrations. It still leaves unclear, however, whether the Trump team can enforce its attempt to take away the Constitution’s promise of “birthright citizenship” to children born to non-citizens. That was not decided, the Court said explicitly.
This was not a decision based on the Constitution but only on the meaning of a 1798 federal law that spelled out federal courts’ authority. So, if Congress wished to do so, it could restore lower courts’ authority to enforce nationwide their rulings that strike down federal actions.
The ruling — with several core questions left undecided – interpreted the Judiciary Act of 1789 as significantly denying federal trial and appeals courts the authority to issue nationwide restrictions on presidential and other federal agencies’ actions. It continues a trend in the current conservative-dominated Court of sweeping new powers for presidents.
The ruling, among the most important in the history of defining federal judicial power, will mean that until the Supreme Court has the last word on the legality of federal policy, a patchwork of narrower orders by lower courts will leave that policy in effect in some parts of the nation but not in others.
Courts at the first two levels, according to the ruling, have authority only to provide remedies for the specific individuals who had filed the case, not others who might be affected but had not themselves sued.
Individuals who now seek to challenge the government will still be able to join together in a legal “class action” that would allow a ruling in favor of all of those joined in the class. Within hours after the Court issued its decision, immigrants’ rights groups filed just such a “class action” claim in federal District Court in Maryland; a ruling by a judge in Greenbelt was among those at issue before the Court on Friday..
The ruling also may permit judges to issue orders that would block a government action all across a state that had challenged it. Federal government actions, the Court said, might have a different impact on state governments than on private individuals and might require a broader remedy.
While some legal observers noted phrases in the main opinion that lower courts will retain power to provide “complete relief” if a policy causes harms to individuals, that was more than offset by the fact that the reasoning used throughout the opinion was against nationwide orders as a remedy that was not authorized by law.
It will take years to sort out the remaining legal opportunities to restrain the government. In the meantime, President Trump seems to have gained a historic new grant of power to put his controversial agenda into partial effect, even if some courts ruled against him.
This was a strange ruling in a number of ways:
- It involved cases testing the legality of President Trump’s attempt to deny citizenship to the children born to parents not legally in this country or here only to work, study or visit, but the Court said it was not ruling on whether Trump’s move was legal or not. That seems to have been put off to some point in the future.
- While the trio of cases involved were sent back to lower courts to reconsider nationwide orders, the decision did not appear to require them to reconsider the parts of their rulings that Trump probably had broken the law and the Constitution. The next step in the controversy will come in federal trial courts in three states – Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington State.
- The decision came in a controversy on which the Court was supposed to be deciding only a temporary procedural issue, but produced a decision that appeared to have given a nearly final answer on the breadth of lower courts’ power under the old law to enforce their decisions.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. Alito, Kavanaugh and Thomas also wrote separate opinions expressing additional views.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the main dissenting opinion, supported by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan. Jackson filed a separate dissenting opinion.
The Court issued the final opinions on Friday to complete its current term. In another major decision, the Court allowed parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, to withdraw their children from public school classes dealing with gay and transgender books and themes. Forced participation, the ruling said, may violate parents’ religious freedom to raise their children according to their faiths..
The Court also upheld a Texas state law that requires online websites that provide sexually explicit material to ensure that any visitors to those states are at least 18 years old.
The Court put off until its next term a complex case on the constitutionality of new congressional voting districts in Louisiana, which were re-drawn to avoid discriminating against black voters in the state. A new hearing will be held, the Court said in a brief order, and new questions might be raised. Justice Thomas, indicating that he thought the new districts appeared to have been based on improper use of race, said the Court should have ruled now.
The Court is scheduled to open its next term on October 6. Over the summer recess, however, it will continue to be dealing with emergency questions, including maybe quite a few over new government actions by the Trump Administration.
