The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to rein in lower court rulings that have prevented a ban on birthright citizenship from taking effect nationwide.
Judges should not be able to govern “the whole Nation” from their courtrooms by issuing universal injunctions that block policies across the entire country while litigation is pending, the administration told the justices in its application.
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“District courts have issued more universal injunctions and TROs [temporary restraining orders] during February 2025 alone than through the first three years of the Biden Administration,” the application states. “That sharp rise in universal injunctions stops the Executive Branch from performing its constitutional functions before any courts fully examine the merits of those actions, and threatens to swamp this Court’s emergency docket.”
The Trump administration is not yet asking the justices to weigh in directly on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship. Instead, they ask the justices to limit the common practice of universal injunctions that “compromise the Executive Branch’s ability to carry out its functions, as administrations of both parties have explained.”
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“These cases—which involve challenges to the President’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order concerning birthright citizenship—raise important constitutional questions with major ramifications for securing the border,” wrote. “But at this stage, the government comes to this Court with a ‘modest’ request: while the parties litigate weighty merits questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purpor[t] to cover every person * * * in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power.”
The Trump administration’s requests arise out of orders blocking the ban in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts. Trump’s executive order prevents children born to parents either illegally in the U.S. or on temporary visas from gaining automatic citizenship.
Several Supreme Court justices have previously expressed disapproval of lower court’s use of nationwide injunctions. Justice Neil Gorsuch criticized what he called “a rash of universal injunctions” during oral arguments in a case on the abortion pill in 2024.
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