1. File a suit in every circuit
2. Request an injunction type that's more appropriate
Given the number of babies being born every day it shouldn't be hard to do.
The thing is, the US doesn't issue citizenship papers. So I suppose they need to apply for an SSN and get denied (since the baby is a non-citizen), which will show immediate harm.
It also begs the question: if that baby is illegal can it be deported?
Moreover, there is literally no mechanism to prove that your parents are citizens.
Millions of citizens will be at the whim of whatever racist thug decides to hurt them that day.
Welcome to Fascist America.
Greenland, Finland, Norway and Sweden all have no concept of Jus Soli and as far as I know, kids born to non-residents aren't being deported from the hospital.
>Moreover, there is literally no mechanism to prove that your parents are citizens.
I would think a birth certificate would work....
Remember when the whole entirety of the US right-wing lost their goddamned minds for a year or so re: a sitting president's birth certificate?
You'd probably be wrong.
> Still, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Watson imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years… Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/01/540903038...
Bonus: They held him long enough the statute of limitations to sue expired.
> On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is "disturbing," the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.
Even a passport isn't enough:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/us-born-ma...
> A US-born Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan had his US passport, a REAL ID driver’s license, a military ID card, and his US Marine Corps dog tags with him when he was arrested by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which held him for three days before his lawyer demanded his release, according to the ACLU of Michigan.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-ice-detained-c...
> In her study, she found that, on average, U.S. citizens detained by ICE spent 180 days behind bars.
Many Americans have no birth certificate. My mother, for example.
Without birthright citizenship, a birth certificate no longer implies citizenship.
Let's not pretend all assertions are equally worth entertaining. Maybe it's "misleading" if you're Stephen Miller, but every court case where it's ever been heard and the legislative record at the time of adopting the 14th amendment show that citizenship is guaranteed. The Trump administration hasn't even raised it in appeals!
> Howard said that the clause "is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States."[30] He added that citizenship "will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons"[30]—a comment which would later raise questions as to whether Congress had originally intended that U.S.-born children of foreign parents were to be included as citizens.[32]
That'd be a deeply ironic thing to cite as evidence for this court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textualism
"Textualism is a formalist theory in which the interpretation of the law is based exclusively on the ordinary meaning of the legal text, where no consideration is given to non-textual sources, such as intention of the law when passed, the problem it was intended to remedy, or significant questions regarding the justice or rectitude of the law."
Legislative intent didn't save the Voting Rights Act, or the EPA.
yes, exactly, if you're born to an ambassador in the US, you aren't subject to the jurisdiction.
Meanwhile:
> The proposition before us, I will say, Mr. President, relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. We have declared that by law; now it is proposed to incorporate the same provision in the fundamental instrument of the nation. I am in favor of doing so. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States. . . . Here is a simple declaration that a score or a few score of human beings born in the United States shall be regarded as citizens of the United States, entitled to civil rights, to the right of equal defense, to the right of equal punishment for crime with other citizens; and that such a provision should be deprecated by any person having or claiming to have a high humanity passes all my understanding and comprehension.
(the "declared that by law" is referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that Howard used as the basis of the 14th amendment: "all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States")
> The author of the clause didn't think it applied to the children of aliens, so it doesn't seem crazy to me. >> Howard said that the clause "is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States."[30] He added that citizenship "will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons"[30]—a comment which would later raise questions as to whether Congress had originally intended that U.S.-born children of foreign parents were to be included as citizens.[32]
From where would those parents be, that the child wouldn't automatically inherit their status?
If the Trump administration limited this policy to those people who wouldn't be made stateless, would that soothe your gripes?
>Moreover, there is literally no mechanism to prove that your parents are citizens.
This isn't all that big of a deal. Supposing one can get to the point that they are allowed the opportunity to present such evidence (in front of a judge, or even in front of an administrative arbiter of some sort who is playing fair), then it should be rather trivial to prove this in 99.99% of cases to the standard of proof used in judicial settings.
The thing here is that instead of officially denying it, the administration will just "coincidentally" slow-walk everything indefinitely, then illegally exile the baby to Sudan when ICE notices they don't have proof of citizenship.
The administration isn't going to slow down processing for everyone, because actual citizens will have issues as well. That will be even more problematic.
Every federal judicial district (that's one per state in smaller states, but more in larger states—California has four.)
North and South?
https://www.caed.uscourts.gov/caednew/index.cfm/cmecf-e-fili...
https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/about-federal-...
They can absolutely still strike down a law or executive branch policy.
This forces judges to actually do their job., instead of a nationwide injunction while they decide if they want to do their job later.
It doesn’t actually alter some fabric of our democracy or checks and balances, because the judges had already gone beyond what the constitution and congress prescribed.
Every issue that any partisan has with this country is because one branch isn’t doing their job.
The disruptive aspect of this - with concern to the birthright case that hasnt been ruled on yet - is just another example of this. Judges not doing their job.
It's impractical to rule on a subject before allowing parties to formulate coherent prepared arguments. Ruling on circumstantial evidence is a temporary stop, leaving the ruling up to an appellate which will invalidate it due to it being founded on circumstantial evidence. The injunctions were the practical way to allows all parties to formulate their case and make a legal reasoning for a ruling. Written law has to be incremental and narrow for interpretation. Otherwise it's an interpretive dance free for all in every case.
You have repeatedly implied that the jobs of Judges are something other than what you they are. Ofc you don't think they are doing what you think they should be. That's inconsequential.
What? That makes no sense. You can lookup which court and judge (or panel of judges) issued the injunctions. I do not understand why this non-existent anonymity would motivate a judge to issue an injunction.
> They can still strike down a law or executive branch policy.
Federal courts will only look at cases if there is a party with standing who engages in a lawsuit. If someone is being deported without due process, it will be hard for them to bring suit.
> This forces judges to actually do their job., instead of a nationwide injunction while they decide if they want to do their job later.
In general there are two reasons why these temporary restraining orders which have been issued. The first being that not doing so would cause irrevocable (or ridiculously difficult to revoke) harm (e.g., deporting people to a foreign jail). The second is that the TRO is used to stop something which seems illegal on its face (e.g. deporting people to countries from which they have never been).
> It doesn’t actually alter some fabric of our democracy or checks and balances, because the judges had already gone beyond what the constitution and congress prescribed.
It does alter the power dynamic of our democracy. Now, the executive branch can repeatedly perform illegal acts and only needs to stop its behavior in cases which have been decided. This checks and balances isn’t about stopping each other branch in a vacuum, the intent is to stop the government from overreaching on its citizenry. By crippling all of the lower courts, the Supreme Court has created a bureaucratic bottleneck for itself, allowing the executive branch to effectively DDoS the judicial system with case after case.
> The disruptive aspect of this - with concern to the birthright case that hasnt been ruled on yet - is just another example of this. Judges not doing their job.
No, it was the judge telling the executive branch that the executive branch must recognize the citizenship of children born on US soil. Instead of actually appealing the TRO on grounds of the legality of their actions, the executive branch has decided to complain about the legality of a court telling the executive branch to stop.
Who is supposed to tell the executive branch to stop doing something illegal, congress? Part of the point of the executive branch was to allow for some expedience, congress is slow. A judge is in a perfect position to tell the executive branch to stop, they don’t need to wait on committee and are not beholden to the president. Without the ability, the executive branch can quite literally do whatever the president wants.
A judge's job is to *judge*. They have basically zero ability to gather evidence, that is the responsibility for the parties to the case.
Would you have them issue a ruling before being presented with evidence? That makes no sense. But at the same time harm can come from not issuing a ruling. Thus we have injunctions--if a judge feels a case is likely to prevail they can issue an injunction prohibiting actions which inflict harm that can't be remedied by the resolution of the case.
Justice Sotomayor dissents:
> Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.
If that’s the case, I’m curious if it could be fixed with a class action, so everyone (or everyone born in the US) is a plaintiff? If that’s legally a thing.
Indeed, this is one of the concerns of the dissenting opinions.
> There is a serious question, moreover, whether this Court will ever get the chance to rule on the constitutionality of a policy like the Citizenship Order. Contra, ante, at 6 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.) (“[T]he losing parties in the courts of appeals will regularly come to this Court in matters involving major new federal statutes and executive actions”). In the ordinary course, parties who prevail in the lower courts generally cannot seek review from this Court, likely leaving it up to the Government’s discretion whether a petition will be filed here. These cases prove the point: Every court to consider the Citizenship Order’s merits has found that it is unconstitutional in preliminary rulings. Because respondents prevailed on the merits and received universal injunctions, they have no reason to file an appeal. The Government has no incentive to file a petition here either, because the outcome of such an appeal would be preordained. The Government recognizes as much, which is why its emergency applications challenged only the scope of the preliminary injunctions
This is a whole-sale shredding of the constitution.
Forgive a possibly silly question but in what sense does being "in" Florida mean you are bound by Florida state law when you leave? How long did you need to be in Florida before you became bound by its law? What if you fall pregnant after you left? Can you be in breach without ever having been in Florida, and a LEO can therefore take you there and charge you?
What you describe is voting
We’re in this mess because people are not interested enough, educated enough, or engaged enough politically to make their position explicit to drive the direction of legislation and executive action.
Citizens of The United States have every tool available to to work together to shape their communities. The reality is the overwhelming majority do not do that, and you can come up with a lot of reasons why, which are structural in many cases, but the fact remains that the majority of people are not involved in the political process at all, have no desire to be an actively reject any opportunity to be.
Assuming that citizens would all of a sudden become involved because it requires a lawsuit, means that there’s the capacity to do so, which does not exist, and all we need is a catalyst.
If the number of possible catalysts that have already happened in the last decade we’re not sufficient then nothing short of a literal terminator Skynet scenario is going to cause people to take action and I’m increasingly doubtful that even that would do it.
Based on my observation from my work position, people are ready to just roll over onto their backs and have robots slice them from the belly up, because it’s easier than actually doing something that would prevent it.
I would not have thought that this is what the Constitution says, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution says. That's not in the Constitution, either, but they've appropriated that job for two centuries, so we let them get away with it. The "it's not illegal if the President does it" part is new, though they've been leading up to it for decades, so it's not really surprising.
Edit: actually, even that is overstating it. This is an extremely narrow ruling that is mainly about the powers of federal judges. It's the sort of ruling that the "other side" will trumpet as settled law when they're the ones in power again.
Forgive student loans? No authority!
End birthright citizenship? Well, he's the boss!
You're right, though, it is different; birthright citizenship is spelled out, very clearly, in the Constitution. It's an even plainer wrong.
It's Calvinball.
There's no written rule that the boss's son is gonna get the cushy VP slot, but everyone knows it.
Where was SCOTUS when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_O%27Connor issued all his nationwide injunctions?
> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining: Red states, which sought universal injunctions to stymie Biden administration policies, would encounter obstacles pursuing that strategy under a future Democratic president, he said.
Call me a crazy, glass-half-full centrist, but I prefer to look at this as a clawing back of extremely broad powers from rather partisan judges. It's been maddening that circuit court judges in a few hyper-partisan districts basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/scotus-birthright-citizenshi...
Sure, and Susan Collins thinks Trump "learned his lesson" with his first impeachment. Looking for the silver lining is what we sometimes call "cope". He lost. As a politician, he's obliged to put some spin on it.
> It's been rather maddening that circuit court judges basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.
It is. This sort of thing should've died before ever becoming an EO, and at every level of the judiciary as clearly unconstitutional. That it didn't is a big problem.
No, stare decisis is not binding. Nor does it still exist.
If it was not binding, did it ever exist?
Anyway, there's nothing that binds any Supreme Court to do anything at all. This argument terminates in noise. It's just partisan fretting.
We agree. So your remark about “nothing in the ruling says. . .” was actually irrelevant to the broader point. From a lacuna in a decision we can conclude nothing.
Beyond that, no. We also don't agree that that world is the one that we live in.
Likewise, in 1868 the writers of the fourteenth amendment probably couldn’t conceive of rapid international travel and the possibility that pregnant women could just show up weeks before their due date and their newborn child should “obviously” be an American citizen.
The amendment was quite obviously targeted at Native Americans and slaves, not any and all pregnant women the world over who manage to reach the US before giving birth. But as you’re noticing, there’s multiple ways people can interpret laws. It’s rarely as cut and dry as “this is obviously against the law!!!”
This is a better point than you realize, and in the opposite direction you intend.
Immigration in the 1800s was a… cursory process. Not only would those kids be citizens, but their parents would have had little trouble staying around.
We had very few rules beyond “don’t be Chinese” until 1891. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1891?wprov=...
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
And immigration was not a free for all, despite what you may think. We had racial quotas, for one. Limits on how many immigrants we would accept, an expectation that immigrants were processed at designated intakes, and (perish the thought), actual periods of time where we said “we’ve taken in a lot of immigrants, we need to slow down for a while to let things settle.”
We didn’t even bar felons or people with contagious diseases before that act. Pregnancy certainly wasn’t disqualifying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1882
> It imposed a head tax on non-citizens of the United States who came to American ports and restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America, including criminals, the insane, or "any person unable to take care of him or herself." The act created what is recognized as the first federal immigration bureaucracy and laid the foundation for more regulations on immigration, such as the Immigration Act of 1891.
The quotas you describe didn’t come until the 1920s. Well after the amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924?wprov=...
Why am I supposed to be mad about people doing this, exactly? Because of hazy "rules are rules" talk?
And notably, exactly the same Republican-nominated Supreme Court judges did not do anything to interfere with exactly the same legal process (nationwide injunctions) when they were aimed at a Democratic president. See, e.g. Biden's student loan forgiveness executive order.
Yep, agreed. I already added an edit saying exactly the same thing.
For example, a president is granted authority to command the military and issue pardons. They have absolute immunity for any act performed using these authorities, including illegal acts such as assassinating or deporting a political opponent or accepting bribes in return for pardons. This is not a matter of opinion or a controversial interpretation, these consequences were discussed during the case and in the opinion, and the court accepted them.
> Mr. MADISON, objected to a trial of the President by the Senate, especially as he was to be impeached by the other branch of the Legislature, and for any act which might be called a misdemeanor. The President under these circumstances was made improperly dependent. He would prefer the Supreme Court for the trial of impeachments, or rather a tribunal of which that should form a part.
> Mr. PINKNEY disapproved of making the Senate the Court of impeachments, as rendering the President too dependent on the Legislature. If he opposes a favorite law, the two Houses will combine agst. him, and under the influence of heat and faction throw him out of office.
Ultimately it was decided that "in four years he can be turned out", so it was not worth addressing further. Indeed some argued that the President should not be impeachable at all because of this.
> Mr. KING expressed his apprehensions that an extreme caution in favor of liberty might enervate the Government we were forming. He wished the House to recur to the primitive axiom that the three great departments of Govts. should be separate & independent: that the Executive & Judiciary should be so as well as the Legislative: that the Executive should be so equally with the Judiciary. Would this be the case, if the Executive should be impeachable? It had been said that the Judiciary would be impeachable. But it should have been remembered at the same time that the Judiciary hold their places not for a limited time, but during good behaviour. It is necessary therefore that a forum should be established for trying misbehaviour. Was the Executive to hold his place during good behaviour? The Executive was to hold his place for a limited term like the members of the Legislature: Like them particularly the Senate whose members would continue in appointmt the same term of 6 years he would periodically be tried for his behaviour by his electors, who would continue or discontinue him in trust according to the manner in which he had discharged it. Like them therefore, he ought to be subject to no intermediate trial, by impeachment. He ought not to be impeachable unless he held his office during good behaviour, a tenure which would be most agreeable to him; provided an independent and effectual forum could be devised. But under no circumstances ought he to be impeachable by the Legislature. This would be destructive of his independence and of the principles of the Constitution. He relied on the vigor of the Executive as a great security for the public liberties.
The president absolutely is accountable. The problem is the Congress for their own reasons refuse to hold it to account. The Congress could remove any president in less than 24 hours with simple majority for no reason whatsoever.
The Court has long considered that the president has a duty to follow the law, but also that the Court can’t compel the president to follow the law. That is a political question. Congress alone can stop a president by impeaching and removing them from office. Not only can’t the Court initiate impeachments, impeachment is unreviewable by the Court.
If there’s a servile Congress, it means voters can elect a law breaker as president. They are going to get a president who breaks the law.
And this is what’s happening. People voted for an abuser, a rapist, a felon, a conspiracy theorist who lies about the outcome of elections, lies that VPOTUS can and should overturn them, and even sent a mob to have that VPOTUS assassinated for refusing to comply with that illegal order. Then boasted he’d pardon all those criminals who were in his service. And despite all of this, people voted for him again.
The people got exactly what they voted for.
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
And they actively vote against the will of their constituents 35% of the time. http://promarket.org/2017/06/16/study-politicians-vote-will-...
A prime example of this is the immigration system. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi... (“On the Ballot: An Immigration System Most Americans Never Wanted”). Americans never asked to import tens of millions of people from the third world. When Congress reformed the immigration system in 1965, they promised that wouldn’t happen. But for decades, there’s been a coalition of pro-foreigner liberals and pro-cheap-labor conservatives that have facilitated massive immigration that average americans never asked for.
Trump, ironically, is a reaction to the very thing the Princeton study identified.
The case when everyone agrees doesn’t tell you anything. It’s only when people disagree that you can find who has actual power and in this case the general public has effectively zero actual meaningful power day to day.
Systematic voter suppression plus gerrymandering etc may win you rigged elections, but ultimately voting isn’t about the system in place it’s avoidance unrest. We’re entering uncharted territory with how strongly people disagree with what the government is doing, which is where the general public actually has a say, namely by destroying the existing power structures rather than voting. It’s not even a question of insurrection, not having kids plus 60’s style dropping out at scale is ruinous.
It does tell you something. For example, if people mostly disagreed with the elites, but the elites got their way anyway, that would be a different situation.
> We’re entering uncharted territory with how strongly people disagree with what the government is doing
You’re overestimating how much people care about any of this stuff. I’m in a blue state and I hear almost nothing about it other than from some overly empathetic people on facebook. The “protests” recently were tepid and nearly all elderly liberals with nothing better to do.
A big chunk of the country really wants mass deportations, and for the most part, folks in the broader left don’t care much to oppose it.
You can’t shape your community to overcome the power of the federal government.
Donald Trump received only 49.8% of votes in the 2024 United States presidential election.
Remember, force is out of the question because it will provide justification for the oppression and make people more willing to accept it.
The illusion some want you to believe, is that it is.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...
The problem is that Dems are just culturally irrelevant. Most people don't care about issues, policy or the economy, they just want to cheer for a team and will justify everything their team does regardless of efficacy or outcome. Trump is the fun underdog team that everyone is talking about, the Dems are the boring party-pooper team we all love to hate. During covid, that boring became a source of needed stability, but after boring stewarded us through the crisis, nobody wanted to be associated with them again.
They don't, they appeal straight up to the 9 judges that they actually have to appease
I'd love to see higher requirements for issuing them, and an expedited appeals process to review them. I'd like to see protections against judge shopping (as endorsed by both Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/11/judge-shopping-texas...) We know SCOTUS can move very fast when they feel like it.
You are incorrect.
You are clearly partisan. The GP says nothing about the number, but is instead the impact.
You should also consider normalizing the number of injunctions to the number of executive orders per term.
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/execu...
- Marbury vs Madison, 1803
It causes the least harm to block the birthright executive order until it’s legality can be determined. Therefore it should be blocked nationwide.
Do you feel that temporary checks (that can be easily reversed) to ensure the government is behaving in a constitutional way are ridiculous?
With the US Supreme Court strongly tilted toward all four, its an extremely difficult hole to climb out of.
I don't see a dictatorship (anytime soon). Not out of any abundance of optimism, but simply that all four of those constituencies and the Supreme Court's dominant wing itself, are highly aligned with each other, and would all lose out if it goes that far.
And yes, anything close to a majority nominated by the sitting president is a constitutional crisis, in a regime where one is supposed to check the other.
Yes, congress also abdicated its power. At the moment you have an executive branch ignoring law, precedent, and court orders, the legislative branch that is subservient to the executive and a judiciary in a state of civil war. None of that is right. None of the top-level institutions are working as they should.
And in this case they're refusing to do their actual job, which is defending the constitutional foundation of our country.
This is what things going to shit looks like. You may be completely justified in acting the way you are, it just so happens that that's of very little help. Spiraling is pretty tough to prevent at that point.
And yes, very obviously people have an easier time understanding things when they're better aligned with their thinking.
yes because the admin can appeal to a higher court; it at least pauses it so it can be more thoroughly evaluated as to its constitutionality
Banning a nationwide injunction against birthright citizenship is inherently different. It’s a fundamental constitutional right we are talking about. Banning birthright citizenship should not be allowed to be enforced until SCOTIS decides the matter.
This ruling is idiotic even if you are generally opposed to nationwide injunctions. Birthright citizenship is a fundamental and clear cut right. Any attempts to overturn that must meet a high burden of justification. Temporarily suspending such attempts until the matter can firmly be decided causes the least amount of harm and should be allowed.
That's literally how the court system works. Each circuit has different rules until things are unified by the Supremes.
Just because you haven't paid attention doesn't mean it's idiotic. It allows the judicial system to see what real effects are before having to make a decision.
If someone is going to be deported they can file a case and stop the deportation. It mostly works that way now, and there's no real reason to change it.
A President can now issue blatantly unconstitutional executive orders and the burden for obtaining relief will rest on each individual person (or small class of people). Prior to today rules/laws that caused harm could be temporarily prevented from being enforced while the matter is litigated. Now parties that will be harmed are much more likely to be harmed before the matter is resolved. This is a sad state of affairs.
If the next President issues an order confiscating guns from people the champions of today’s ruling will want nationwide relief while the matter is litigated.
If someone is going to be deported they can file a case and stop the deportation.
And you accuse OP of not paying attention!
That's pre-2025 thinking. Now, in 2025, there are no clear cut rights, other than, maybe, gun ownership.
"No right is safe in the new legal regime the court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit. Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent."
If you're born here
And I'm born here
.... ??????????
It's right there in the fucking Constitution!
Is america only for the white descendants, the former slave owning class? Perhaps former Nazies who fled Germany? Who is america _really_ for? Why should Trump and the GOP get to decide who the undesirables are? This narrative of “giving away citizenship” quite literally makes zero sense.
Even as a child growing up it was clear to me (from teachers, textbooks, books, movies) that what makes america special is its ability to integrate immigrants from various backgrounds into 1 working nation. It’s a land of immigrants from the start.
The founding fathers didn’t “belong” here either. The land was stolen from native americans. It’s in the DNA of the country. Some Americans need a big mirror and a heaping spoon of empathy IMO.
Was it taken away illegally or by the book?
Without citing sources or arguments to that, then it literally it IS FUD.
1. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which covers everyone born here who is not the child of foreign diplomats or members of foreign armed forces stationed in the US.
2. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 which extended it to Native Americans who were living under tribal sovereignty.
3. The Immigration and Nationality Technical Corrections Act of 1994 extended it to children of US citizens who are born outside the US.
Yes. It's in the constitution. Says it right there. Please explain how all our eyes deceive us.
I'm not particularly happy about nationwide injunctions, but this is much worse if you have a president who is not shy to "break the law now and fight it in court later". And now that Trump has shown the way, you can be sure future presidents will follow.
Another terrible outcome is that you then have federal orders applied differently from state to state (or more accurately, federal district to district). If you're in Nevada you won't get citizenship, but in Oregon you will.
This is right up there with the Presidential Immunity in terms of terrible decisions by this SCOTUS.
They're 100% coming for Obergfell and it's clear now how. They'll arrest a legal US citizen who has naturalized citizenship from illegal parents, born in a state that received an injunction but residing in a state that has not.
The representative of that person will say that they by being a citizen in the other state, they must be respected as a citizen in the other. They will cite Obergfell.
The SCOTUS will revoke their ruling on Obergfell and say, no, you are not a citizen just because there's an injunction in that other state.
The astute reader may notice that this is literally a replay of Dread Scott.
So, deporting people to a third-country (another decision SCOTUS allowed this term) has a simple balancing test: stay here and be fine or possibly deport a Chinese citizen to El Salvador, which could cause incredible harm. So even ignoring th elikelihood of how the issue is decided, the balancing test favors enjoining third-party deportation.
So in this case, we had a universal injunction against an executive order removing birthright citizenship. This fails on two fronts:
1. As justices noted, it's highly unlikely that the order will be held up as constitutional. There is case law on this. The language of the 14th amendment is clear. The exact issue was discussed at the time. This has no hope in a non-corrupt court of succeeding.
2. Given other decisions, bona fide US citizens could be deported to CECOT and detained indefinitely with no due process. So it should be stayed because of the potential harm.
What SCOTUS did today was say the order revoking birthright citizenship was unlikely to succeed but it allows the administration to proceed anyway while hte issue is litigated in the courts, which could take years.
That's how corrupt this court is.
People have been fed this propaganda that Supreme Court justices are apolitical legal scholars who come down from their tower to issue judgements and keep things in check. It couldn't be further from the truth. Supreme Court justices are political appointees that dress up their political positions in legalese.
Example 1: this court invented the "major questions doctrine" whereby the court decides a matter is large enough that the court gets to override both the administrative and legislative branches.
Example 2: they also invented the "historical traditions doctrine", which is used selectively. For example, abortion was completely legal 200+ years ago. Ben Franklin even published at-home instructions on how to perform an abortion [1].
Example 3: in the wake of the Civil War there was huge violence not from the freed slaves but from white people towards former slaves, most notably with the Colfax massacre. The Supreme Court went on a white supremacist tear during Reconstruction, notably gutting the federal government's ability to prosecute hate crimes like Colfax [2].
Example 4: The Tiney court in the 1850s made what is perhaps one of the worst decisions ever made (ie Dred Scott), arguing from a legal and constitutional perspective that black people weren't "people".
Example 5: the Roberts court decided that moeny equals speech, gutting any legislation around campaign spending, which is a big part of how we got here.
Example 6: the presidential immunity decision will go down in history as one of the 10 or even 5 worst decisions ever made. It completely invented far-reaching immunity that essentially made the president a king, in a country that was founded on the very idea of rejecting monarchs.
Example 7: in 1984, the Supreme Court decided that in any areas of ambiguity in legislation, trial courts should defer to the agency empowered by Congress to enforce that legislation. This is the so-called "Chevron deference".
More than 40 years passed through 7 presidents (4 Republican and 3 Democrat) where both parties at different times controlled Congress. Congress declined to legislate away Chevron deference despite having ample opportunity to do so. Moreso, they intentionally wrote legislation with Chevron deference in mind yet this court decided to reverse Chevron. Yet on other cases, the court has deferred to Congress's inaction as intent.
Fun fact: Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council was previously known as Natural Resources Defense Council v. Gorsuch [3]. That's not a coincidence. The suit involved Reagan's head of dthe EPA, Anna Gorsuch, mother of current Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, who was humiliated and ultimately fired from the EPA while trying to destroy it from within.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099542962/abortion-ben-frank...
[2]: https://www.theroot.com/what-was-the-colfax-massacre-1790897...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Resources_Defense_Coun...
The US has a three-tiered judiciary that moves slowly, Congress has a very high threshold for impeachment and removal (and a slow process), and the order of succession is basically locked in for four years. The people are not easily moved to action, and it's doubtful how much they could realistically accomplish.
Universal injunctions were a Band-Aid fix, one of the very few avenues our system permitted for there to be any rapid institutional response to illegal and immediately harmful policy. But that is no more.
As an exercise, what happens if a president issues a "throw enemies in the woodchipper" executive order? How many hours or days would it take the other branches of government to legally nullify the order? (What they can do in practice is another question.)
It's an extreme example, but a future admin could use the current admin's reasoning to unilaterally confiscate guns and force you to be a plaintiff in federal court to get relief.
The descent to authoritarianism usually begins with a party gaining enough power that it can override the checks and balances. Which often involves rewriting the constitution.
In the USA, some judges are elected, hearings can be televised, fragmented laws nationwide, court filings often public.
In UK the opening of the judicial year happens in a church service (i.e. biblical punishment is common), many judges are freemasons,court filings not public, courts control what gets to media, the court below supreme court can, and routinely do, block cases from getting to supreme court. And More. In short UK judiciary is institutionally corrupt with the elected and unelected the one and the same but press won't say it.
1) There is no written constitution, the supreme court in the UK is only there to interpret existing laws as written not to interpret differences between "tiers" of law
2) The UK has a system that can pass new laws, generally by simple majority so any decision rendered about existing law can be made obsolete generally fairly quickly (In contrast to the current intransigence of the current US system where it is hard to pass primary legislation and virtually impossible to modify the constitution)
3) the court was only established in 2009, and evidently we haven't done much to empower it
A better comparison country might be places like Canada or Australia who do have a written (and harder to modify) constitution.
With ref to your point 1 and 2 , they are not needed. HRA 1998 covers that.
Point 3 - the supreme court was previously within the House of Lords and the one day they got their own building.
The primary and secondary legislation, and leading case law is fine in the UK. Its just that the Judges know what are really there for and routinely falsify the outcomes.
No one sees the case files, no one sees the transcript, only the judges judgement is published and that we all have to pretend is never anything other than perfect...
I run a non profit trying to change this, can talk about it for hours. Volunteers welcome!
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy...
As an example, the whole COVID shutdown of the USA was a completely unprecedented and probably illegal action. The civil rights fanatics and liberals were like "meh." So it's already happened, really.
Why are people who prioritized public health during a temporary pandemic "sheep", but the President's supporters who demonstrate exceptionally cult-like behavior, "free thinking individuals"?
You can't have it both ways.
Remember: federal power is delegated from the states, not the other way around.
At the top of the Articles, it's pretty clear that the delegates of the states have come together to establish a league of states. At the top of the Constitution, it's explicitly stated that "We the People […] do ordain and establish."
Neither can states, either practically or legally.
They tried to steal an election four years ago by sabotaging the vote certification.
So yeah. Do a "water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants," already. The gun people were more than willing when they thought a Democrat was stealing their votes or Bill Gates was putting microchips in vaccines.
In the meantime, when I sue John Doe and get an injunction, they are enjoined from their conduct everywhere; but when I sue the government, it should only apply to me? Makes no sense.
1. The executive is doing something illegal to hundreds of thousands of people.
2. Dozens and hundreds of people sue them.
3. The executive loses in court.
4. The executive does not appeal to the supreme court the cases it lost.
5. Thus, no binding precedent that stops the illegal action in #1 is set.
This is actual lawless lunacy, and this enshrines it as SOP going forward. Is this the country you want to live in? Do you think this is how it should run?
Here's a wild idea. If the executive disagrees with the federal courts on the merits of whether or not its decisions are illegal, it can appeal up to SCOTUS, and win a case on its merits. It can't do that because even under this SCOTUS, their case has no merits.
> exercising his authority under the constitution pending a review
That is the entire bloody point of checks and balances. You are cheer-leading the complete destruction of them. The government, when challenged on the legality of what its doing, needs to win their case in court, because the courts are the final arbiters of written law.
The POTUS doesn't need to ask for permission to politicized local judges
The purpose of courts litigating the legality of executive actions is not establishing innocence or guilt, so what you're saying is completely irrelevant.
The president doesn't go to prison because some court found that he signed an illegal executive order. (But it sounds like you maybe think that should be the case. It's hard to tell, because you aren't saying anything coherent.)
> The POTUS doesn't need to ask for permission to politicized local judges
Let's play a simple game. If he signs a blatantly unconstitutional and illegal EO ordering the US Marshals to have you and your family arrested, tortured, and shot tomorrow, whose permission do you think he should need? Which parts of the government would be able to stop him?
You seem to think that no 'politicized'[1] judge should be allowed to say "Whoa, hold on there, that may be illegal."
---
[1] What the hell does 'politicized' mean? Is there a single person in government who is not 'politicized'? Is SCOTUS somehow not 'politicized'? Is the executive?
It can't just be, I don't know, a plain reading of the fucking law.
It's time to Balkanize.
Yes, this has been going on for decades at various levels of government.
It's very common when it comes to gun rights. The government (local/state and federal) will frequently avoid appealing if they think they might then lose the case, setting a wide precedent for millions of people.
Nationwide injunctions were never clearly authorized by statute, and letting any one of 700 district judges block a federal policy everywhere created chaos and forum shopping.
If a policy is truly unconstitutional, the proper path is a class action or taking it up to the Supreme Court
Not giving individual judges a veto over national law.
It's not a veto, it's a delay until appeal. If the lower court is wrong, SCOTUS has never had any issue with settling the question.
The fact that the government isn't appealing means that they know they can't win on appeal, and what they are doing is illegal.
If the executive avoids appeals to dodge precedent, that’s a separate (and valid) concern. But the solution isn’t to stretch injunction power beyond its legal limits
It is about who gets to block national policy for everyone, based on one local case. That kind of sweeping relief was never authorized by Congress
So every person wronged by the government should sue individually?
The point is that relief should be tied to proper procedure, not handed out universally by default. One judge shouldn’t decide national policy based on one plaintiff unless the case is structured to justify it
What chaos that would be worse than the chaos of jurisdictional fracturing they're asking for here and the possibility to not let cases escalate to courts with supposed national jurisdiction? Rulings were stayed all the time.
The existence of a national injunction seems built in to the job of a federal judge since federal law is definitionally national. Voiding it only locally, or only in regard to specific plaintiffs, seems like a huge wishful reach.
> The existence of a national injunction seems built in to the job of a federal judge since federal law is definitionally national
That’s a clever line.
See, there is a difference between saying “this law is unconstitutional” and saying “this law is blocked for everyone, everywhere.”
And... who was suffering for it, exactly? How was it hurting me?
> That’s a clever line. > > See, there is a difference between saying “this law is unconstitutional” and saying “this law is blocked for everyone, everywhere.”
"This law is only blocked for these people" is the less "clever", more "obvious" situation in your mind? No, that's a clever hack that same sneaky bastard came up with to justify removing further obstacles for the executive to increase its own power.
But it seems to fly against the face of history. Federal law has been in the business of preempting local authority for centuries. Now we want to unwind that and let jurisdictions opt-out case-by-case?
Courts can still block unlawful policies, but broad relief should come through class actions
This ruling doesn’t undo federal supremacy. It just puts guardrails around how relief is issued
Without you telling me any specific harms of the "chaos and inconsistency", and how you think they will be reduced now, then I can only consider the harms of the new potentials for inconsistency which is "the excecutive intentionally does not appeal when they lose to small groups because they want to be able to continue to overreach nationally."
What are the concrete examples of chaotic things that caused issues that you don't think could happen now?
Enjoy the chaos though, because some later administration as a revenge will very likely strip the rights of folks who can't show a naturalization certificate in the same way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-...
People across the political spectrum have an obscene amount of faith in "can't happen here" beliefs being an actual impediment to authoritarianism.
[0]: https://davidson.house.gov/2025/5/rep-warren-davidson-introd...
District courts do not create precedent. Precedent comes from appellate courts.
This ruling does not "restore" a functioning balance, it damages it. This has never been a problem in the past because previous administrations (regardless of politics) didn't take illegal actions daily. Framing it as "politics" is disingenuous as many of the judges ruling against Trump were appointed by him.
The system was working as intended to check an executive acting outside of the law, but once again, the supreme court continues to empower the executive.
You mean like under their own judgement?
I could extend some merit to the idea that injunctions should be limited in complex cases where case law is thin and the law is less than clear. When executive orders are clearly unconstitutional, however, I do not then see any reason for limits.
The law that states that growing wheat on your own land is interstate commerce.
IANAL but I read SCOTUS opinions regularly and this one is hard to argue with. If things should be different then we need legislative/constitutional changes.
lol, yes, like birthright citizenship written plainly into the constitution.
What good are your further legislative/constitutional changes worth if the executive can just ignore them except for the single individuals who file suit?
Guess what: You're living in the world of bigger problems.
So it reads to me like we've ended up in a similar spot, but with the requirement that an insane amount of paperwork happens.
What this means is that it’s now ok for the orange man to break the law. Rule of law will only be upheld in very limited circumstances in very limited areas.
(I think there's a MUCH stronger argument to be made that the proper function of the US government has been broken by Presidents changing thing by executive order because nobody has enough votes to do much in the Senate. It seems like "nobody has the votes to make big changes" should be an indicator that not making big changes is the proper result.)
The status quo would be "issue a ruling, it may or may not get put on hold while the government appeals, eventually it gets to the Supreme Court if necessary." Seemed to be working. Republicans obviously have used this to challenge stuff themselves.
It is unclear why there is a need for giving the government an escape hatch to let them say "sure, we lost this one case, we'll stop enforcing things against these few people, we just won't appeal and will continue to do whatever we want nationally instead."
"Nobody has the votes" seems like a weird way to put it, because is implies that everyone wants to make changes, they just can't agree which changes to make. On the contrary, I think the issue is that most congresspeople do not want to make changes. Changes are scary. If your name is associated with a change, and that change becomes unpopular, it might threaten your reelection!
The split in Congress is driven by the split in the people and the people DO want actions taken. Just - different actions for each faction.
If there was only one fairly unified party of voters in the country and a Congressman was refusing to vote to do what the voters wanted them to do, they'd get voted out.
"Not doing anything to be careful" is a bug enabled by the population being split.
In theory it's just an injunction, but the reality is this kind of stuff takes forever to get hashed out in the courts, and Trump will be well out of office before it gets settled.
I have no problem with SCOTUS injunctions, but there are too many district courts for this to work.
The way things were heading the president was going to be forced to start ignoring injunctions, and he would have been right to do so. The Roberts court had to make this ruling for the government to function.
My reading is that under the previous system, a single district could prevent an order federally, even if every other district judge agreed with the new order.
I don't see why a single district should be able to influence the entire country. I would understand that they could limit powers in their district, and potentially challenge laws at a state level, and then federally.
Let's look at how this could have impacted a topic that gets my attention in the US, gun laws.
I'm definitely left, so let's say a president came in and made some order about changing gun laws and made it harder to get a gun.
It seems to me, that if that were to occur, a single judge in a gun-loving district could block the order universally for all the other states?
That doesn't seem right. It does make sense that they could say that law doesn't apply to our district, and we will challenge that law being applied to our state and if the state agrees, they could then challenge the law federally.
I'm obviously making up a ton of stuff about a system that I don't understand.
It would be more accurate to say that prior to this ruling, any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exceeding his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective view of the law. It may differ in other countries, but under the US Constitution, the judicial branch ultimately decides the limits of executive authority, not the President.
If it's truly a matter of national security, the President could always file emergency appeal and it would almost certainly be granted. If it's such a dire and immediate emergency that even those few hours were critical, it's doubtful that any President would feel obligated to obey the injunction anyway.
Far from preventing the proper functioning of government, this was one of the few remaining guardrails maintaining the proper functioning of government under unprecedented circumstances.
Strategically, the government could enact a policy affecting a million people, be sued, lose, provide relief to the named plaintiffs, and then not appeal the decision. The upper courts never get the opportunity to make binding precedent, the lower courts do not get to extend relief to non-plaintiffs, and the government gets to enforce its illegal policies on the vast majority of people who did not (likely could not) sue.
Now we get to see Americans have their legitimacy removed so they can be sent to "Alligator Alcatraz", the new prison being built just for them in the Everglades.
His concurrence reads more like the dissent which should have been written. In all of these 6-3 cases where Sotomayor writes the dissent, she writes entirely for the press and reserves only the last few pages to engage in anything like the legal arguments. Her effect in these cases is profoundly pathological on the public discourse.
After reading her dissent one could not imagine anything Kavanaugh said would even be possible, yet he writes a concurrence with the majority.
iirc, his contributions during oral arguments also showed he had quite some sympathy with why UIs have proliferated, I believe it was he who tried to lend credibility to increasing rate of executive over-reach
Doesn't that require an appeal? Or are you saying they'd go put a policy or law on hold even if there wasn't an open case after a lower judge ruled against them and the government chose not to appeal so as to not risk losing more broadly.
Seems like the takeaway here for any would-be executive-overreachers is "lose a couple cases affecting a handful of plaintiffs and ignore those loses."
IIRC the general trend for getting a class certified for a class action is also in the "make it harder to do" direction.
It's important to remember here that states are relevant parties to these suits against the federal government, and there are enough of them to enjoin any practical excerise of executive action.
The SC has basically asserted that only it will, temporarily or permanently, review those cases where there is a federal-level split on these issues requiring a universal solution.
I have a feeling he's also hinting that the SC will, in light of this, look at how it handles temporary orders -- he has, at least said, it is now obligated to be very proactive in these areas and take on all such temporary requests to enjoin the executive
There's also the APA question, I don't fully understand judicial review in these cases -- but iirc, the APA grants courts to order the executive to stop (or to take) action on such policies. So when the EO has a "policy implementation" people can bring suits under the APA to enjoin, which is equivalent to a universal injunction.
It's hard to believe it's so innocuous given that (a) it is such a new approach to the issue for a not-new feature of US law and (b) the broader literature being pushed by the people pushing for this change.
Instead it feels like the song and dance around how some Senators would try to get SC justice nominees to say they wouldn't overturn Roe v Wade - distractive performance that's utterly non-binding and an obvious smokescreen.
Ironically, imv, I think in this case, they didnt. This was, imv, a case where a universal injunctions was actually within the power of the disctict court -- because (and here Sotomayor is correct) the states were being obligated to take on burdens that "crossed state lines" and a complete remedy to relieve them of these burdens actually requires a universal injunction. So, imv, under the history of what equitable remedies are supposed to do, this would be one rare case where the action of the courts could be legally defensible.
However, the SC was extremely fed up with district courts sending inumerable number of cases their way -- trigger happy judges at the distict level deciding they're going to rule for the whole US in a federal system. So, by this point, they've tried many times to stop it, and it hadnt worked.
Here all they said is that you can have UIs only where congress makes explicit that courts have this power. They have done something kinda similar in the APA (creating judicial review of exec action), and can do again here (eg., a democratic congress could give the power in immigration cases; I think its plausible something like this happens). They also themselves retain the right to make such orders.
So they have only really moved where in the system such action is taken, retaining district court's rights to still -- very broadly -- give quite wide injunctions. And congress still has the power to empower the courts (though, as per usual, Thomas indicates he's on crazy pills and implies he would prevent congress from doing that -- that's not a serious outcome though).
Given the problems they faced with district courts, something had to give. They were persuaded, plausibly correctly, that there are enough avenues to prevent this executive overreach without empowering the lowest rung of judges to rule for the whole of the US.
> However, the SC was extremely fed up with district courts sending inumerable number of cases their way
Well hold on then.
So you think the Court was wrong in this case? That they were just on tilt? Because if this case is a case for a universal injunction then does the executive have standing to ask about that issue here?
But if Sotomayor is correct on the relevance of a universal injunction here, then why is your "non-hysterical reaction" defending the decision instead?
---
I also find it hard to agree with "judges are creating problems" vs "an increasingly aggresive executive is creating problems." The legislature hasn't been able to do much for a long time because the splits are so close, so presidents try to do more directly. Is enabling that despite how closely split the legislature is ANYTHING like in line with how the US government system is supposed to work?
Cause really, awww, they have more cases than they used to? Welcome to the computer driven future, it sucks for all of us, don't make us suffer because you're tired of it.
You can either try to do this and roll the dice again on letting district courts interpret this judgement, or just say, basically no -- if you want to do this you have to come to us (or go via one of the other mechanisms). Given there are ~25 recent cases of this in total, its not a very significant number -- but the effects are extremely significant.
They chose the lesser of two evils, and in this lesser world, basically everything is still fine. You can still get the right outcomes.
This is the actual job of the court. There is no right answer. There is only what judgement they can write and what effects it will have, and whether those are the most consistent with the spirit of the constutional order (or statutory order) that has been setup.
its very common for them to rule, "in cases of doubt, just get congress to pass a law allowing this to happen"
They very often actually do amend laws due to SC rulings. Many laws are passed every year, and its very common to see amendements explicitly reply to tell the SC to undo its actions in cases where they've asked congress to be clear.
Just because I think there's a read of "complete equitable remedy" in this case which plausibly allows a district court to issue a UI, does not mean that the SC wasn't right to set a standard which precludes it. Or that asking congress to make this possible isn't the right position for the court to take.
You have to remember that congress is the democratic legislative body, not the courts. Having district courts intrude on US-wide implementation of congress' laws (via the executive) should really require congress to authorise that.
And in any case, they have in the APA -- and the SC can still do it.
You can see the relevant law here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_23
What? Seems like you're working backwards from wanting to spout about Sotomayor. This is exactly the gamesmanship she pointed out the majority allowed the Trump administration to play with.
Look at all these fun, lengthy, expensive legal remedies you can attempt over the next few years to protect your basic rights while the executive branch enacts plainly unconstitutional policies. Someone count the number of nationwide injunctions during the last four years where the majority could have stepped in to swat down the trend but didn't, but instead chose this one.
What a lovely way to frame a statement and put down people who hold a multitude of opinions that you do not share.
Kavanaugh is good to read on any topic - his writing is clear and often easily understandable by the layman. Gorsuch is an excellent writer as well. Those two are imo the best writers currently among the justices.
cmurf•5h ago
Nationwide injunctions were saught and used by (self-proclaimed) conservatives to slow down and stop Biden immigration policies.
15155•4h ago
Through what legal avenue?
bamboozled•45m ago
mannyv•4h ago
One thing they didn't talk about was structural: the court system is split up into X circuits, and each circuit is independent. Normally each circuit uses rulings from other circuits as a basis for its judgements, but circuits are pretty independent from each other. The Supremes weigh in when the circuits conflicted with each other.
The national injunctions issued by the lower court allowed the lowest level court to have more authority than an appeals court. An appellate court's decision was only binding on its circuit. Why would a lower court have more authority than an appeals court? That makes no sense.
That's outside of all the reasoning the court used to stop this practice.
That said, if an affected individual brought a suit the may be able to get an injunction, since the court ruled that universal injunctions were inappropriate.
vharuck•3h ago
An appellate court considers the decisions of the courts below it, so it makes sense its actions would be restricted to those courts. What makes no sense is the newly possible situation in which an action violates the U.S. Constitution in one district but not another.
delecti•2h ago
That's not new. It's called a circuit split, and generally results in the cases being combined when SCOTUS hears them to sort out the difference.
chasd00•1h ago
aren't those cases the point of the Supreme Court? when districts conflict it goes to the Supreme Court.
Tadpole9181•9m ago
Now the government can choose to "lose" in some places and let the injunction stand. Then, in all other locations in the country, the constitution of the United States is quite literally different in perpetuity.
And it's not even by-locality, sans cases brought by a state government. SCOTUS has defined injunctions as by-litigant. So now two babies born next to each other in the same hospital to visa parents can have different naturalization statuses based on if those parents had sued in the right district court or not.