Supreme Court Poised to Grapple With Nationwide Injunctions on Trump’s Orders

Three judges have blocked the president’s order restricting birthright citizenship.

The Supreme Court is shown in Washington on March 17, 2025. Win McNamee/Getty Images

One of the many lawsuits contesting President Donald Trump’s agenda will hit the Supreme Court for oral argument for the first time on May 15.

The case arises from a challenge to Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The hearing is unusual in that it stems from a preliminary appeal in which the Trump administration challenged a federal judge’s use of nationwide injunctions to block the president’s agenda.

The Trump administration argues that district court judges are exceeding their authority by imposing broad blocks on government policy rather than applying them to the parties in the lawsuits. Three lower court judges have issued nationwide injunctions blocking Trump’s policy of ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants.

With more than 100 lawsuits against Trump’s policies, lower court judges have issued a raft of nationwide injunctions halting parts of the administration’s agenda, from federal spending freezes to immigration enforcement to the cancellation of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

The injunctions are highly controversial because they impose policy changes for the entire country rather than offering relief only for plaintiffs in the lawsuits, drawing scrutiny from some Supreme Court justices and members of Congress.

Trump has said they are detrimental to the nation’s future.

“These Judges want to assume the Powers of the Presidency, without having to attain 80 Million Votes,” the president wrote in a March post on Truth Social. “They want all of the advantages with none of the risks.

“STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!”

Meanwhile, the hearing may also touch on questions about the constitutionality of Trump’s order on birthright citizenship. The order challenged the idea that birthright citizenship allows an illegal immigrant’s child to receive citizenship if born in the United States.

In January, Trump signed an order to stop granting citizenship to individuals if a person’s mother was unlawfully present in the country and the individual’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the person’s birth.

The order also states that the privilege of U.S. citizenship does not apply to an individual whose mother’s presence was lawful but temporary and whose father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of that individual’s birth.

Nationwide Injunctions

The issue of whether judges have been exceeding their authority in nationwide blocks on policies has previously been raised before the Supreme Court.

Then-acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the Supreme Court in March that it should say “enough is enough” on the practice and that the blocks on Trump’s birthright citizenship order were needlessly broad.

“While the parties litigate weighty questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purport to cover every person ... in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power,” she wrote in a filing.

Competitive Enterprise Institute attorney Devin Watkins told The Epoch Times that the dispute before the high court on May 15 “really doesn’t have anything to do with the merits of the government’s position on birthright citizenship.”

Rather, the key question of this appeal, he said, is whether lower courts have the power to issue blocks that affect those who are not parties to the lawsuit.

The administration’s position might receive sympathy from Justices Neil Gorsuch, Elena Kagan, and Clarence Thomas, who have each criticized nationwide injunctions in previous years. In discussing nationwide injunctions, the justices could ask about the source of judges’ authority in Article 3 of the Constitution and federal law.

In a 2020 concurring opinion, Gorsuch said there was a problem with “the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them.”

Weighing Harms

According to Harris, the blocks on Trump’s policy created “irreparable harm,” which is one of the factors courts consider when deciding whether to issue injunctions. She said courts “irreparably injure [the] democratic system when they forbid the government from effectuating ... policies against anyone anywhere in the Nation.”

A long list of House Democrats submitted an amicus brief arguing, among other things, that the government could not show that blocking Trump’s policy would cause irreparable harm. Instead, they said, Trump’s policy would create “chaos.”

“Children will lose access to health care and may indeed be deported, notwithstanding that at the conclusion of the litigation they will be found to have been U.S. citizens all along,” their brief reads.

Republicans have argued that Article 3 of the Constitution limits relief to parties involved in a case and have introduced legislation attempting to limit judges’ authority in this area. They have pointed to the constitutional phrase “cases and controversies.”

“The Constitution limits judges to exercising power over ‘cases’ or ‘controversies,’” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a March press release. “Judges are not policymakers, and allowing them to assume this role is very dangerous.”

However, Jacob Eisler, law professor at Florida State University, told The Epoch Times that Trump’s policies have nationwide implications. Relief, therefore, cannot be confined to discrete parties before the court.

While some of the plaintiffs suing Trump are pregnant immigrants, others have included state governments.

In issuing one of the injunctions before the high court, Judge John Coughenour of the District Court for the Western District of Washington said in February that a geographically limited injunction would be “ineffective” because plaintiff states would have to pay for the children of illegal immigrants who travel from other states.

“For example, babies born in other states would travel to the Plaintiff States,“ he said. ”Once they do, those persons would be eligible for service and support that, without nationwide relief, need be funded by the Plaintiff States.”

Constitutional Questions

Even though the argument will focus on judges’ ability to issue sweeping injunctions, David Super, law professor at Georgetown University, told The Epoch Times that the justices will also likely consider the constitutionality of Trump’s birthright policy.

He said that in this case, “the merits are pretty closely entwined with the relief” for those affected by the policy.

The hearing could result in the justices remanding or sending the group of birthright citizenship cases back to lower courts with further instructions. In contrast to typical Supreme Court cases, they are expected to offer tentative legal conclusions rather than an outright ruling that Trump’s order is unconstitutional.

They could also comment on whether New Jersey and others challenging the administration are likely to succeed in arguing that Trump’s order violates the Constitution. At oral argument, the justices could ask about the text of the 14th Amendment and how it has been applied to birthright citizenship in previous cases.

Those disagreeing with Trump’s order on birthright citizenship point to something known as the citizenship clause, which states, “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.” The two sides disagree over who exactly is protected by that language.

More than 100 years ago, the Supreme Court touched on the issue in a case known as United States v. Wong Kim Ark. A majority opinion from 1898 held that the 14th Amendment granted birthright citizenship to a Chinese man whose parents were legally present in the United States.

The states and other entities suing the administration say this case shows that the children of illegal immigrants should receive citizenship. In their amicus brief, congressional Democrats said that “the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on all persons born in the United States and subject to its laws.”

But the administration and others, such as the state of Tennessee and some members of Congress, have argued that it is more limited.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) joined other members in an amicus brief that argues that the 14th Amendment’s reference to jurisdiction assumes that the subject holds some kind of allegiance to the United States.

“There is widespread agreement ... [that the amendment] means that children born in the United States to ambassadors or invading soldiers would not receive citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment,” the members wrote.

They said that the best reason is that “they do not owe total allegiance to the United States.”