by Emmitt Barry, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a landmark case Thursday that could significantly limit the power of lower court judges to block presidential policies nationwide — a tool increasingly used in recent years against both Republican and Democratic administrations.
At the heart of the case is former President Donald Trump’s executive order ending automatic birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants and temporary visitors. Although multiple lower courts swiftly blocked the order, the central legal issue before the Supreme Court is not the policy itself, but whether individual federal judges can impose rulings that apply across the entire country — so-called “universal” or “nationwide” injunctions.
In the case consolidated as Trump v. CASA, the Trump administration asks the court to restrict such injunctions to apply only to the parties involved in the lawsuit. The outcome could redefine the boundaries of judicial power in America.
A Long-Standing Judicial Frustration
Justices across the ideological spectrum have criticized the growing use of universal injunctions. Justice Neil Gorsuch called them “patently unworkable” in a 2020 concurring opinion, saying they sow “chaos for litigants, the government, courts, and all those affected by these conflicting decisions.” He added that such sweeping orders encourage “forum shopping,” allowing plaintiffs to seek out judges likely to be sympathetic to their cause.
Justice Elena Kagan echoed those concerns in a 2022 speech at Northwestern University: “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh has written that the issue deserves high court guidance, while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson acknowledged in a 2024 dissent that questions surrounding universal injunctions are “contested and difficult.”
The Trump administration received more than a dozen such injunctions during his second term, more than any other president. With Trump back in office, his legal team — led by Solicitor General D. John Sauer — is urging the court to curtail what he calls an “epidemic” of judicial overreach.
The Legal Stakes
Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, issued in January, interprets the 14th Amendment’s clause guaranteeing citizenship to all born in the U.S. as excluding children of illegal immigrants and temporary visitors, arguing they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
Four lower courts disagreed, ruling that the executive order violates constitutional protections. Each issued varying degrees of nationwide injunctions, prompting the administration to appeal.
Sauer is now asking the justices to limit the injunctions to only the states that sued — Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon — instead of halting the policy nationwide.
Some analysts believe the court may sidestep the broader injunction issue. “I think the court will actually decide the merit issue and skip the nationwide injunctions issue,” said South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman. “They won’t touch it.”
But others insist it’s time for justices to address the growing legal trend.
Trump himself has pushed the issue into the spotlight. “Stop nationwide injunctions now, before it is too late,” he posted on Truth Social in March. “If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation immediately, our country is in very serious trouble!”
The Supreme Court’s decision, expected by the end of June, could fundamentally reshape the relationship between federal courts and the presidency — and determine whether sweeping injunctions remain a mainstay of legal opposition to executive power.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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