In a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that individual federal judges cannot issue nationwide injunctions orders that block federal policies across the entire country marking a significant legal victory for former President Donald Trump. However, the ruling left unresolved the future of Trump’s effort to limit birthright citizenship for children born in the US to undocumented immigrants.
While the court’s conservative majority struck down the power of lower courts to issue sweeping injunctions, it left open the possibility that Trump’s controversial birthright citizenship restrictions could still be blocked on narrower grounds. The former president celebrated the decision as a “GIANT WIN” on his social media platform, Truth Social, and held a rare news conference from the White House briefing room on Friday.
Trump vowed to press forward with policies aimed at ending automatic citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, an issue that could prove politically volatile. A January AP-NORC poll found that only about 30% of US adults supported changing the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, while nearly half opposed the move and about 20% were neutral.
Joined by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump framed the ruling as a restoration of constitutional order. “The Constitution has been brought back,” he said. Bondi added that previous nationwide injunctions had granted relief “to everyone in the world” rather than the parties involved in specific cases.
Blanche criticised district court judges for allegedly issuing rulings driven by personal opposition to Trump’s policies, claiming that the Justice Department had been forced to defend against politically motivated legal blocks. “They should be doing the work that the president and this administration demands,” Blanche said, “not fighting local judges who don’t make decisions based on the law.”
The ruling was one of six handed down on Friday as the court closed out its summer term. Other decisions included protections for religious parents objecting to school book content, partial preservation of Obamacare’s insurance mandates, and support for efforts to shield children from online pornography. The court also upheld a funding mechanism for digital access in rural schools and libraries.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee wrote a key opinion in the ruling. Though recently criticized by some conservatives for not being sufficiently hardline, Trump praised her work as “brilliantly written.”
Despite the legal win, Trump’s renewed push to alter birthright citizenship could face strong resistance in public opinion, legal circles, and Congress. The constitutional guarantee of citizenship to all born on US soil, enshrined in the 14th Amendment, has long been considered a cornerstone of American civil rights.
Erizia Rubyjeana
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