By Ruling Against Nationwide Injunctions, SCOTUS Affirms the Imperial Presidency
By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout
Published June 30, 2025
SCOTUS stripped federal judges of their authority to protect people throughout the US when the president breaks the law.
Continuing in their shameful deference to the president, Donald Trump’s lackeys on the Supreme Court once again affirmed the superiority of the executive over the other two branches of government. Last year, the high court ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution when they carry out official functions. Now, that same court has stripped federal judges of their authority to protect people throughout the nation when the president breaks the law.
More than two dozen nationwide (“universal”) injunctions blocking several of Trump’s policies were in effect as of mid-May. Those policies include a more stringent voter ID requirement; a rule requiring that mail-in ballots be received by Election Day; an effort to freeze $3 trillion in federal spending to review whether the disbursement of those funds aligned with administration policies; a demand that public schools eliminate DEI programs or risk losing some of the $75 billion in federal funds; and allowing over 25,000 children to enter deportation proceedings without lawyers.
Trump v. CASA, Inc. came to the Supreme Court as a challenge to Trump’s January 20 executive order purporting to unilaterally outlaw the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. But in its June 27 ruling, the high court didn’t actually decide the citizenship issue, which they kicked back to the lower federal courts. Instead, in a shocking decision, the Supreme Court held that federal judges cannot issue universal injunctions for actions that are almost certainly illegal. “Never before has the Supreme Court imposed such restrictions on the ability of courts to provide relief against unconstitutional acts,” Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
The Supreme Court granted the request by the Trump administration to partially pause three federal court rulings that had blocked Trump’s executive order. Those courts had determined that only nationwide injunctions would provide the plaintiffs with complete relief because people constantly move in and out of states, and children born to noncitizen parents in a non-plaintiff state may later reside in a plaintiff state, and vice versa.
https://truthout.org/articles/by-ruling-against-nationwide-injunctions-scotus-affirms-the-imperial-presidency/
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