SCOTUS Birthright Citizenship Decision Limits Lower Courts’ Power to Issue Nationwide Injunctions

In Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. ____ (2025), the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Government’s applications to partially stay three injunctions entered by lower courts blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. Even more importantly, the Court curtailed the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions going forward. 

Facts of the Case

Several individuals, organizations, and States filed three separate suits to enjoin the implementation and enforcement of President Trump’s Executive Order No. 14160. The Executive Order identifies circumstances in which a person born in the United States is not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and is thus not recognized as an American citizen.

The plaintiffs allege that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, §1, and §201 of the Nationality Act of 1940. In each case, the District Court entered a “universal injunction”—an injunction barring executive officials from applying the Executive Order to anyone, not just the plaintiffs. In each case, the Court of Appeals also denied the Government’s request to stay the injunction.

The Government subsequently filed three nearly identical emergency applications asking the Supreme Court for a partial stay to limit the preliminary injunctions to the plaintiffs in each case. In support, it argued that the District Courts lacked equitable authority to impose universal relief. The applications did not address the question of whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act. Instead, the issue before the Court was whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.

Supreme Court’s Decision

By a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court sided with the Government, holding that the universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. Accordingly, theCourt granted the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.The Court did not address the constitutionality of the executive order.

In reaching its decision, the majority emphasized that as the number of universal injunctions has increased over the years, so too has the importance of the issue. It went on to find that the Government is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the District Courts lacked authority to issue universal injunctions. “Because the universal injunction lacks a historical pedigree, it falls outside the bounds of a federal court’s equitable authority under the Judiciary Act,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote on behalf of the majority.

The Supreme Court further found that universal injunctionsare an inappropriate form of relief when they go beyond what is necessary to give the specific parties before the court complete relief, noting that “complete relief” is not synonymous with “universal relief.” As Justice Barrett explained, “[P]rohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order against the child of an individual pregnant plaintiff will give that plaintiff complete relief: Her child will not be denied citizenship. Extending the injunction to cover all other similarly situated individuals would not renderherrelief any more complete.”

The Supreme Court also rejected arguments that the universal injunction gives the Judiciary a powerful tool to check the Executive Branch.“[F]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,” Justice Barrett wrote. “When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

Dissent

Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored a strongly worded dissent, which she read from the bench. “With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution. Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent,” she wrote.

“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,” Sotomayor added. “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.”