In a landmark decision with far-reaching implications for the federal judiciary, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 27 that district courts do not have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions, marking a significant shift in how legal challenges to executive policies can proceed. 

While the case stemmed from legal battles over President Trump’s controversial executive order limiting birthright citizenship, the Court notably avoided ruling on the policy itself and instead focused solely on curbing the judicial power to halt federal actions across the country.

On the first day of his second term, President Trump issued an executive order declaring that “birthright citizenship” does not apply to people whose parents had no legal standing in the United States at the time of their birth.

Specifically, the Executive Order applies to two categories of children born in the United States: those whose mother was in the country illegally, and whose father was neither a citizen or permanent legal resident; and those whose mother had temporary (but not permanent) legal status in the United States, and whose father was neither a citizen nor a permanent legal resident. In such cases, the children in question would not be considered citizens simply because they were born in the United States.

Not long after the Executive Order, three different United States District Courts issued nationwide injunctions against the enforcement of the Executive Order, finding that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

Those three District Courts – in Maryland, Washington, and Massachusetts – determined that the Executive Order likely violated the Fourteenth Amendment, and that its enforcement should be stayed. Those injunctions did not just apply to the litigants in those cases; they applied across the country.

Earlier this Spring, the Trump Administration filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, asking the Court to overturn the nationwide injunctions. While the emergency appeal arose in the context of the birthright citizenship case, the issuance of nationwide injunctions has become much more prevalent in recent years. The ultimate question is whether a district court – which has jurisdiction only in a small part of the United States – has the power to issue an injunction which applies across the country.

On June 27, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the emergency appeals [Trump v. CASA, Inc., 600 U.S.(2025)]. While many of the headlines will focus on the “birthright citizenship order,” the fact is that the Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of that order. In fact, the Court specifically did not consider that issue. Instead, the ruling was limited to the question of whether a federal district court has the power to issue a nationwide injunction. 

The answer to this question revolves around the heart of Constitutional separation of powers. Under the Constitution, the three branches of government – executive, legislative, and judicial – are separate and co-equal. In other words, no one branch is superior to the others. (This challenges the administration’s complaint about “unelected judges” overturning “the will of the people.”  If “the will of the people” is contrary to the Constitution, judges ought to overturn it unless and until Congress and the States amend the Constitution.)

 In the case of nationwide injunctions, the argument goes, the district courts have stepped beyond “separate and co-equal” and established themselves as superior to the Executive branch.

This is the issue that the Supreme Court addressed in its opinion in Trump v. CASA, Inc. However, even the Court’s answer to that question is not clear-cut. The Court’s ruling states that nationwide injunctions per se are not authorized under federal law. So far, so good. But the Court leaves open the question of how broad an injunction can be without violating this principle. 

The discussion revolves around what is necessary to provide “complete relief” to the parties to the case.  Specifically, the Supreme Court sent the three cases back to the district courts in question, stating: “The Government’s applications to partially stay the preliminary injunctions are granted, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.

The injunctions are also stayed to the extent that they prohibit executive agencies from developing and issuing public guidance about the Executive’s plans to implement the Executive Order.” 

So what does all this mean? First – and most importantly to some people – the Supreme Court did not decide whether the Executive Order is constitutional: “The applications do not raise – and thus we do not address – the question of whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act.” 

Given the importance of this question, it seems likely that the Supreme Court will have to address it at some point. However, that point is not now.

Second, the injunctions issued by the lower courts cannot be “nationwide,” but the Supreme Court has ordered the lower courts to determine how broad the injunctions need to be in order to “provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.” Since two of the cases involve states as plaintiffs, it is unclear how broad the injunctions will need to be (or, more specifically, how broad the district courts believe the injunctions need to be). It is not difficult to anticipate that these cases may be back at the Supreme Court in the next term if the administration believes the injunctions are still too broad.

Finally, perhaps the most important impact of the Supreme Court’s decision is its application to other cases in which district courts have issued nationwide injunctions. The Court’s opinion notes that “district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions” in the first 100 days of this administration. 

While the idea of a district court issuing a nationwide injunction was almost unheard of until the mid-1960s, they have become more common since that time. The Court noted that there were “approximately 127 universal injunctions issued between 1963 and 2023…Ninety-six of them – over three quarters – were issued during the administrations of President George W. Bush, President Obama, President Trump, and President Biden.” The Court’s ruling in Trump v. CASA, Inc. clearly anticipates that such injunctions will become increasingly rare moving forward.

In short, the ruling in Trump v. CASA, Inc. may be the “giant win” that President Trump declared, but that win is not on the issue of birthright citizenship. The Court’s ruling does allow the administration to go ahead with its plans, but not for thirty days – which gives those opposing the policy time to take further action (and file more cases). 

However, the decision is a “giant win” because it seriously restricts the ability of district courts to issue universal injunctions against administration policies. How that “win” plays out in regard to individual challenges to administration policies remains to be seen.