It would be more accurate to say that prior to this ruling, any of 700 district judges could unilaterally block the president from exceeding his authority under the constitution pending a review, including matters of national security, based on their own subjective view of the law. It may differ in other countries, but under the US Constitution, the judicial branch ultimately decides the limits of executive authority, not the President.
If it's truly a matter of national security, the President could always file emergency appeal and it would almost certainly be granted. If it's such a dire and immediate emergency that even those few hours were critical, it's doubtful that any President would feel obligated to obey the injunction anyway.
Far from preventing the proper functioning of government, this was one of the few remaining guardrails maintaining the proper functioning of government under unprecedented circumstances.
If I become biased or incompetent at my job I’m eventually get fired but do judges ever?
Each Executive administration since W has reached further and further. Congress has ceded more and more, because while it is their responsibility to choose, doing so comes at a political cost they don't want to pay. So they hand it over to the Executive.
Time for some garbage collection in the law code. If you want a limited Executive, vote for a Congress that will take its power back. The Constitution gave tariff power to Congress, for example, and a few decades ago, they gave it over to the President. IIRC, the same goes for border policy and deportation rules. We keep assuming when we install all of this machinery in the Oval Office that no... no he wouldn't push that button, it would be indecent. Every President pushes more of the buttons at their disposal (with the possible exception of Joe, as it was his staff running things and not him), and this one is no exception.
So either a judge can block orders that exceed the president's authority and orders that are within it, or the judge can block neither.
Since when did we start arguing that executive power must be unchecked for fear of it being slightly inconvenienced?
Bear in mind that this was a case where the multiple courts who considered the issue were unanimous in their opinion that the President was very likely to lose on the merits. Exactly the kind of case where there should be an injunction.
Not at all. Whether or not the president is exceeding their authority, a judge could block it nationally. It's not like lower court rulings haven't been overturned before.
And the bigger issue is "judge shopping". Want to block something nationally? Just find 1 of 700 judges who will rule the way you want, and file in that district.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-...
People across the political spectrum have an obscene amount of faith in "can't happen here" beliefs being an actual impediment to authoritarianism.
[0]: https://davidson.house.gov/2025/5/rep-warren-davidson-introd...
Will you see eventual retreat, or will you see eventual overwhelming force? The US didn't want to bulldoze these other countries and jail or kill everyone and set up a new state; very different than how the US would handle more Wacos.
It’s because they were raising children to rape them.
So tired of this equivocating on what those people were about.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-are-in-the-us-...
https://www.militaryonesource.mil/data-research-and-statisti...
(position derived from first principles and threat modeling, with input from several US military service members and a physical defense subject matter expert)
No matter how much I hypothetically might train on firearms, I'm pretty sure if a SWAT team (or the federal equivalent) shows up at my house, they're going to arrest me no matter what I do. Well, no, that's not true: if I pull out a firearm, they'll kill me. No need for an arrest then.
And sure, maybe just one or two officers show up at my home. Either I still lose in a firefight, or they leave and come back with more firepower, and then I lose. I suppose before their second visit I can run? Not sure to where, though, and not sure how I'll get out of the country, living nowhere near a land border.
> 5 million people participated in the No Kings protest, more than double total active military members on US soil, for example.
I'm not sure which position you're taking here, but I don't buy the idea that one armed civilian is equal to one member of the US military when it comes to predicting who is going to win. I don't even buy the idea that two armed civilians are equal to one military member. Also consider all the right-wing nut-job militia groups in the US; they would certainly join in, on the side of the military.
Training, coordination, and access to the best weaponry (and ammunition) will win. US military will beat down 5 million civilians, no problem. Probably even 10 or 20 million. I could even see the military bombing cities; Trump already seems to think LA is "in rebellion" based on his National Guard and Marine deployments. Only hope there is that enough people in the military realize what they're doing and refuse to fight. Not sure I'd want to bet on that, though.
For people who believe the US will slide (or already has slid) into authoritarianism, and believe they have a strong chance of being targeted by the government in the future, the only sane thing to do is to leave the country now. It really hurts me to say that, but that's where we are. 77M people voted for this disgusting garbage, so this is what we have.
Lawyer. Passport. Locksmith. Gun. (A Talk About Risk and Preparedness) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509164 - November 2022
> This is a presentation about risk, preparedness, and how to do make your best attempt to build defenses against some of the worst threats and potential problems that might ever arise in your life. Keeping your loved ones as well as your community safe is something to always keep in mind and this presentation walks through some of the most critical steps that it is possible to take... before your world explodes in a disaster.
(I work in risk management)
The tip of the spear is consistently a bunch of incels and incel-adjacent losers. Think Meal Team 6, not Seal Team 6.
The vast majority of Americans won’t “see” anything, but there could also be all sorts of opportunists taking advantage of social dysfunction.
A million good reasons to go buy a gun, and the only reasons not to are either fatalism that you’re completely fucked or blind faith that nothing could possibly happen.
It is illogical to think either of those but find the in-between state so implausible that it’s not worth hedging with $<1000.
We have seen what you get when you have an armed populace. Highly armed cops. Highly armed federal agents. Military equipment for civilian forces. All necessary in order to compete in the arms race against the "bad guys." All cheered for by conservatives, of course!
All that make it that much more easy to start cracking down. Maybe as a first step, issuing pardons for the rebels on your side while increasing the use of force against those protesting you.
Guns are not defensive tools. If you have a gun, but the government shoots first, you still lose.
As it is, with gun ownership leaning firmly right, Trump has a massive number of armed paramilitaries that he could lean on. In any large-scale suppression of political dissent, those would be the people breaking your door at night, not uniformed feds (there simply isn't enough of the latter). Thus even if you're anti-gun in principle, it still makes sense for left-leaning people in this country to arm given the overall political climate.
There are far more people willing to defend their homes than there are people willing to get shot in the face breaking into someone's home.
You never know who's going to deputize themselves as "law enforcement", with the quiet encouragement and plausible deniability of the ruling political party. Guns are unquestionably useful defensive tools against these people.
This is the actual use case. It’s a pretty established pattern of non-governmental actors like those mentioned being the tip of the authoritarian spear.
Those people should be shot in the face upon entering their first few homes or businesses, while courts and juries will still have the wherewithal to acquit anyone defending themselves.
(This is also something I was alluding to with "issuing pardons for the rebels on your side" which is already happening, of course.)
And so then it just falls back to "the good guys just need to shoot the fascist armed militia members before they shoot the good guys" which is... difficult to guarantee...
Enjoy the chaos though, because some later administration as a revenge will very likely strip the rights of folks who can't show a naturalization certificate in the same way.
"Section 1. 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."
Note the "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". Trump's argument is that people born in America to tourist parents here for a few weeks (for example) aren't subject to the jurisdiction of America. It's a valid argument to make, even if you come down on a different side. Even the author of the 14th amendment said that was the point of that clause. Even in logical terms it makes sense: You can't just let anyone in to give birth and then collect benefits; it's unsustainable.
However, this case wasn't about citizenship. It was about the broader issue of lower courts issuing restraining orders outside their jurisdictions. It's a recipe for chaos. There's a reason why there are multiple jurisdictions, and courts are limited to their jurisdictions. What happens when two lower courts issue conflicting nationwide orders? The only court in the US that has jurisdiction over the entire country is the Supreme Court. This was a losing battle.
There's a right way and a wrong way to go about addressing problems. Court cases are sometimes more about the core issues involved than the concrete circumstances. Sure, birthright citizenship was the reason for the suit, but the core issue was judicial overreach. Don't get mad because the way your side was "winning" was by cheating, and they were stopped. Try having an actual good argument, and doing things the right way by arguing the actual case in a court.
I suspect, if they commit a crime or overstay their visa, we'll suddenly decide we have a little jurisdiction after all.
There's a right way and a wrong way to go about addressing problems. If the president wants to exclude natural-born children of illegal immigrants from citizenship, he can lead an effort to amend the constitution.
In ordinary times, the notion of establishing precedent that immigrants are not under the jurisdiction of the US would be met with sputtering indignance for all but the most idealistic anarchists. Because that goes way beyond open borders, it promotes foreigners to super-citizens untouchable by the law.
First of all, if an undocumented person commits a crime, they're not going to just let them go because they didn't have a birth certificate or passport or a documented name. They'll charge you, try you, and convict you same as anyone else. That's what it means to be subject to the jurisdiction.
The "subject to the jurisdiction" clause has two reasons. First and foremost is American Indians. American Indians, at the time, were explicitly not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Various tribes had treaties with the US government explicitly exempting their tribe members from federal, state, and local jurisdiction. At the same time, they were not considered US citizens. An American Indian could literally commit murder and the only legal recourse was to petition their tribe to bring justice to them. (there was also extra-legal recourse, which was a lot more common, but that's neither here nor there)
The other reason is diplomats. Diplomats have diplomatic immunity. They commit a murder? Not a lot you can do. (Hollywood overstates this, but not by as much as you might think) They didn't want to grant citizenship to the child if every diplomat.
This doesn't apply to illegal immigrants. There is no treaty or existing legal framework which grants them immunity to the law.
This ‘jurisdiction’ claim essentially only applied to people who had a diplomatic status while in the US. A traveler from Canada has no special right against being prosecuted (just like you would not were you to go to, say Britain).
A governmental figure from Canada would have protections - we would need to interact with another sovereign to hold them accountable.
This really has nothing to do with tourism, outside deceitful assertions on television.
Regarding Britain, here’s an example of someone not being subject to the jurisdiction of a country after committing a serious crime: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/harry-dunn-uk-anne-sacoolas...
I hope this clarifies your misunderstanding about the meaning of jurisdiction.
If a UK person is on US soil and breaks a US law, they will be prosecuted by the US. The US can choose to extradite to the UK, but that's not really relevant.
This further weakens the dishonest posture that tourists are not subject to US law
Where exactly is the unsustainable part of this?
According to the SF Chronicle, about 72 million US households (40% of the population) paid no federal income tax in 2022. I don't have exact numbers but I doubt anyone would dispute that public benefits flow disproportionately to those 72 million households for obvious reasons. So the cause and effect of being a citizen and paying taxes is very tenuous.
> Where exactly is the unsustainable part of this?
If it's unsustainable, then someone should propose a constitutional amendment to fix it.
I would dispute it. One of the main public benefits, if not the main benefit, is protection of property rights. Those with the most property disproportionately take advantage of this protection.
Are you deliberately confusing taxes with federal income tax?
Are you trying to imply that the people who don't pay federal income tax have heavy state tax burdens? Or you think they're making a dent with their sales tax contributions? The only thing that everyone pays indirectly or directly is property taxes, which averages to about 1-2% of income. Again, nothing close to federal income taxes (for those that pay them).
Also this completely handwaves the regressive nature of sales tax, which hits much harder when you spend a large percentage of your income
The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. Government benefits were basically nonexistent at the time, and besides, with the US population at under 40 million people, we needed more citizens, not fewer. Your "logical" argument is completely anachronistic and irrelevant.
The conservative side of the Supreme Court claims to rule based on what the writers of the Constitution had in mind. This is another example of how they completely ignore what the writers/framers/etc. of the Constitution intended as soon as it interferes with the larger conservative agenda that they serve.
The core premise of your racist rant is built around a the massive edge case. Reality is this policy will probably disenfranchise more children of American soldiers born abroad than prevent the alien invasion you’re scared of.
The notion that the sins of the father impact the child is repugnant. The interests of the nation as a whole not allowing a clear violation of the birthright of our fellow citizens have to be addressed in a lower court, as the Supreme Court isn’t even required to hear their case.
You’re allowing yourself to be manipulated into expanding the power of an executive who will never leave and a court whose power and individual avoidance of culpability for bribery and corruption. I suppose you’ll shrug when we decide that the electoral college can choose to follow the “silent majority” as opposed to the voters.
As someone who has reading comprehension above the high-school level, it's blindingly obvious that there was no racism in GP's post. Your accusation is factually incorrect, logically fallacious, emotionally manipulative, and actively degrades the quality of HN (and, obviously, badly breaks the guidelines). Either your logical reasoning skills are deeply lacking, or you're aware that your claim false and maliciously making it anyway to deceive others, which is deeply immoral and disgusting. Regardless of which of those this is, never do this.
Sen. Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania said "I am really desirous to have a legal definition of ‘citizenship of the United States. Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen?" He didn't think that child should be.
Sen. Conness of California said he thought it should cover "the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States." And let's remember, as Conness was certainly aware, that many of those Chinese laborers had been imported illegally.
They knew what they were passing, and they knew it included birthright citizenship. Senators who wanted to alter the Amendment to exclude some people failed.
You don’t seem to think the USA is very exceptional…
And that argument is bullshit.
> Trump's argument is that people born in America to tourist parents here for a few weeks (for example) aren't subject to the jurisdiction of America
Yes they are. If they commit a crime on US soil, they will face charges in a US court, because they are subject to the jurisdiction of those courts. (They will also be deported, but that's another matter.)
The only people on US soil who are not subject to the US's jurisdiction are foreign nationals traveling on a diplomatic passport ("diplomatic immunity").
> Sure, birthright citizenship was the reason for the suit, but the core issue was judicial overreach. Don't get mad because the way your side was "winning" was by cheating, and they were stopped.
Er, what? Nationwide injunctions have been a thing since the 1970s. No judge is "cheating" by putting one in place. I'm mad because Trump thinks the constitution is toilet paper.
If you want to talk about chaos, this SCOTUS ruling will create chaos, and more lawlessness, and make it even more difficult for people to obtain justice in this country -- a place where it was already pretty damn difficult (regardless of the party in power).
If you want the US to be a loose confederation of 50 sovereign nations, fine. Just hope you live in California, New York or Texas, because every other state is going to devolve into the American equivalent of Eastern Europe.
1. The executive is doing something illegal to hundreds of thousands of people.
2. Dozens and hundreds of people sue them.
3. The executive loses in court.
4. The executive does not appeal to the supreme court the cases it lost.
5. Thus, no binding precedent that stops the illegal action in #1 is set.
This is actual lawless lunacy, and this enshrines it as SOP going forward. Is this the country you want to live in? Do you think this is how it should run?
Here's a wild idea. If the executive disagrees with the federal courts on the merits of whether or not its decisions are illegal, it can appeal up to SCOTUS, and win a case on its merits. It can't do that because even under this SCOTUS, their case has no merits.
> exercising his authority under the constitution pending a review
That is the entire bloody point of checks and balances. You are cheer-leading the complete destruction of them. The government, when challenged on the legality of what its doing, needs to win their case in court, because the courts are the final arbiters of written law.
Yes, this has been going on for decades at various levels of government.
It's very common when it comes to gun rights. The government (local/state and federal) will frequently avoid appealing if they think they might then lose the case, setting a wide precedent for millions of people.
Nationwide injunctions were never clearly authorized by statute, and letting any one of 700 district judges block a federal policy everywhere created chaos and forum shopping.
If a policy is truly unconstitutional, the proper path is a class action or taking it up to the Supreme Court
Not giving individual judges a veto over national law.
It's not a veto, it's a delay until appeal. If the lower court is wrong, SCOTUS has never had any issue with settling the question.
The fact that the government isn't appealing means that they know they can't win on appeal, and what they are doing is illegal.
If the executive avoids appeals to dodge precedent, that’s a separate (and valid) concern. But the solution isn’t to stretch injunction power beyond its legal limits
It is about who gets to block national policy for everyone, based on one local case. That kind of sweeping relief was never authorized by Congress
It doesn't take months or years for SCOTUS to determine whether or not they will take a case. If they don't want to take it, they are fine with the arguments made in the lower courts, and tough shit, but that means that the loser is in the wrong.
> If the executive avoids appeals to dodge precedent, that’s a separate (and valid) concern.
You're damn right it's a valid concern. It's a valid concern because this removed the only mechanism that there was to force them to address it.
That’s the months and years part
We can’t be circumventing the process at the lower levels by forum shopping
So fix forum shopping by making the president a king?
(In addition to other fun things like immunity from criminal prosecution forever, cannot even be investigated in most cases, and cannot be disqualified from office after inciting a riot to stop the transfer of power.)
DC v Heller filed in 2003 supreme court decision in 2008
NYSRPA v Bruen filed 2018 decision 2022.
Miller v Bonta filed in 2018 still pending after being GVRd after bruen. Currently waiting for 521 days for another opinion from the 9th.
Young v Hawaii filed 2012 GVRd then dismissed in 2022 as Bruen answered the same issue.
Harrel v Raoul filed 2023 in 2024 the Supreme Court declined to reinstated the preliminary injunction that the Appeals court stayed. Still pending.
Ocean State Tactical v Rhode Island filed in 2022. The Supreme Court declined to instate a preliminary injunction in May of 2025. Still pending.
Renna v Bonta currently at 675 days waiting for an opinion from the 9th.
Boland v Bonta currently at 675 days waiting for an opinion from the 9th.
Palmer v Lombardo currently at 781 days waiting for an opinion from the 9th.
Koons v Platkin currently at 612 days waiting for an opinion from the 3rd.
There are many more cases with the same pattern.
Petition to change laws, vote, protest, write news articles, start a podcast, donate to causes or org’s you believe in, etc
Use the process and framework that is provided
change what law, lol, it's in the constitution.
>change what law, lol, it's in the constitution.
To be fair, the Constitution is the law of the land.
And it can be changed. You just need 2/3 of each house of Congress and the legislatures of 3/4 of the states to agree that such a change is a good idea.[0]
It's hard to do (and rightly so), but absolutely doable -- in fact, we've done it 28 times already.
[0] Meaning any such change would require broad-based support. Which is a good thing, imho.
Again, change what? Birthright citizenship has been in the constitution plain as day for 157 years.
"Petition to change laws" is a ludicrous suggestion of a remedy when it's already in the US constitution
>"Petition to change laws" is a ludicrous suggestion of a remedy when it's already in the US constitution
And where did I say otherwise? The amendment process is what it is. Removing birthright citizenship via the amendment process is unlikely in the extreme.
As for me (An American), I think birthright citizenship is a good thing for the US.
How long it's been in the Constitution is irrelevant. It's the supreme law of the land which can only be changed via an arduous (and rightly so) process.
Petitioning "to change laws" isn't ludicrous at all. In fact, that's also enshrined in the Constitution, and for much longer than birthright citizenship.
As to whether or not one might be successful with such petitioning to modify the constitution to remove/redefine birthright citizenship is another thing altogether.
If folks want to spend their time and energy on such a likely fool's errand, they should have at it IMNSHO.
While I don't think the 14th amendment should be changed, I don't have anything to say about whether others should be allowed to advocate for such a change -- as that's the right (via the First Amendment) of all folks in the US to advocate for all kinds of stuff.
And I have just as much right to be vocal in my opposition to such changes.
As such, despite how much you might disagree (I certainly do), please don't advocate for silencing others -- because if they can be silenced, so can you, or me.
The point is the Democratic run states refuse to follow the constitution when it comes to the 2a. The courts especially the 9th twist the Supreme Court precedent and outright lie to uphold every garbage gun control law California passes. SCOTUS just doesn't care enough about the 2a to correct the blatant middle finger lower courts keep giving them.
> until SCOTUS steps in, which can take months or years
If SCOTUS decides that something is urgent, they'll step in immediately. If they wait months or years, then they are signalling that the harm of waiting is not high enough to take up their immediate attention.
So every person wronged by the government should sue individually?
The point is that relief should be tied to proper procedure, not handed out universally by default. One judge shouldn’t decide national policy based on one plaintiff unless the case is structured to justify it
If a state now sues the federal government on behalf of its citizens that a federal action is illegal, and wins, you now has a situation where a federal action is constitutionally illegal in one state, but is legal in another. How the hell is this consistent?
This doesn't consolidate anything. It removes the thing that forced consolidation - the ability of a court to issue an injunction and stop illegal actions from continuing - which forced the government to either give up, or appeal up. Now, everything is a legal patchwork.
Nationwide injunctions didn’t “force” consolidation. Often, they often blocked it.
We need to follow the process as designed.
This ruling restores pressure to actually appeal and get clarity at the appellate or Supreme Court level.
I’ll admit it’s slower but it’s slower by design. Less patchwork this way.
But certainly don’t use one course of action
Finally injunctions were not envisioned by the Founders. Foreign concept along with circuit court. Only fairly recent
The other avenues are also being obstructed.
And Republicans certainly didn't mind nation wide injunctions when they were used to block much of Biden's agenda. Or violent attempts to stop the transfer of power. Or pardons for everyone involved in attempts to stop the transfer of power ...
What chaos that would be worse than the chaos of jurisdictional fracturing they're asking for here and the possibility to not let cases escalate to courts with supposed national jurisdiction? Rulings were stayed all the time.
The existence of a national injunction seems built in to the job of a federal judge since federal law is definitionally national. Voiding it only locally, or only in regard to specific plaintiffs, seems like a huge wishful reach.
> The existence of a national injunction seems built in to the job of a federal judge since federal law is definitionally national
That’s a clever line.
See, there is a difference between saying “this law is unconstitutional” and saying “this law is blocked for everyone, everywhere.”
And... who was suffering for it, exactly? How was it hurting me?
> That’s a clever line. > > See, there is a difference between saying “this law is unconstitutional” and saying “this law is blocked for everyone, everywhere.”
"This law is only blocked for these people" is the less "clever", more "obvious" situation in your mind? No, that's a clever hack that same sneaky bastard came up with to justify removing further obstacles for the executive to increase its own power.
But it seems to fly against the face of history. Federal law has been in the business of preempting local authority for centuries. Now we want to unwind that and let jurisdictions opt-out case-by-case?
Courts can still block unlawful policies, but broad relief should come through class actions
This ruling doesn’t undo federal supremacy. It just puts guardrails around how relief is issued
Without you telling me any specific harms of the "chaos and inconsistency", and how you think they will be reduced now, then I can only consider the harms of the new potentials for inconsistency which is "the excecutive intentionally does not appeal when they lose to small groups because they want to be able to continue to overreach nationally."
What are the concrete examples of chaotic things that caused issues that you don't think could happen now?
1. In 2017, one district court blocked Trump’s travel ban nationwide, while others upheld it. That led to confusion at airports and legal whiplash
2. In 2019, one judge blocked the public charge immigration rule nationwide, while others allowed it. The rule ended up applying in some States and not others
3. Multiple district courts issued conflicting nationwide injunctions on Title IX guidance for transgender students during the Obama and Trump years
Those are just some
Inconsistency is still possible. But the alternative was worse
What we had was a race to the most favorable courtroom
The fix isn’t unlimited injunctions. It’s reform and not stretching judicial power beyond what the law allows
Was the inconsistency resolved?
How is there less room for inconsistency now? If a judge has said five plaintiffs can play on a certain sports team in one jurisdiction, now the sports administrators need to know every ruling in every jurisdiction that their league functions in?
What makes you think "reform" is going to happen here? Have you read much of the material pushing for increased executive power on the right? It's very clear that the goal is solely to remove impediments to stretch executive power to the point that executive power decides what the law allows.
Title IX issue is not resolved. Public charge rule resolved itself because the Biden admin rescinded the rule. But not before creating mass confusion. Trump travel ban was resolved by SCOTUS as valid once Trump modified the ban
The point is that nationwide injunctions from different district courts created that chaos in the first place, often forcing rushed Supreme Court intervention just to untangle conflicting orders
then that’s exactly the kind of chaos the Court is trying to fix
This will obviously increase the number conflicting orders by several orders of magnitude, but either way: the conflicting orders are what we want to happen, because it errs on the side of caution.
The fact that some courts disagreed didn't negatively affect me at all. Where was all the "chaos" caused by courts disagreeing? "Policy whiplash"? lol. Might as well go full ridiculous and call it "policy murderdeathkill" or something, that sounds much scarier.
It is about whether our legal system should allow a single district judge to set nationwide policy even when their ruling conflicts with other courts, before the issue has been fully litigated through appeals
What you are advocating for is legal uncertainty at scale.
The new limits push legal questions upward through appeals rather than outward through conflicting orders and ensure national issues are resolved by courts with the authority to decide them.
A president getting to do literally everything he wants, whenever he wants, as fast as he wants, regardless of legality, is plainly less important than preventing the above from happening. What you are advocating for is a king.
The new limits allow a king-president to illegally harm people potentially indefinitely, until every single person, or at least each individual district, successfully individually files suit to stop him, or until a supreme court gets around to stopping him (years? decades?)
That's obviously way worse than some scary sounding bureaucratic metaphor like "legislative whiplash" which doesn't actually harm me at all. The concern about "legal uncertainty" is a joke compared to actually abusing people and sending them to a gulag without due process
> national issues are resolved by courts with the authority to decide them.
Every court has the authority to decide if an action is unconstitutional. The only thing that changed is that the executive is now free to continue that unconstitutional action until ~300 million people successfully challenge it in ~100 districts. Obviously that is worse, and more "chaotic" than pausing unconstitutional harm to people while the issue is resolved. Especially because it means ~100x more conflicting nationwide orders from different judges.
So now you can be a US citizen when in New York but not while in Kentucky. Sure to cause no chaos.
The rulings just means an injunction only affects the parties in that case or a certified class and not everyone everywhere automatically
You keep saying that the issue will be resolved higher up. How? There's no mechanism for it. The winner of a case can't kick it up to higher courts.
like requiring coordinated multi-district litigation or pushing for appellate consolidation
This just puts the burden on challengers to build stronger cases, not shortcut national impact through procedural overreach.
Constitution? Never heard of it! If and when you feel like your rights are being abrogated, just file suit and the court system will get to you in the order you filed, plus three to seven years.
If in the meantime you suffered hardship due to actions of the federal government, I have bad news for you forwards you link to wikipedia pages on sovereign and qualified immunity
What is the next step in the process? It no longer matters how many times and how hard you win, no precedent will ever be set.
You talk about making better cases and better arguments? Don't you think that the onus is on the government to do that, when they are both doing something entirely unprecedented, and losing every time it goes to court?
The point of checks and balances isn't to make it quick and easy for the executive to illegally overreach. It's to make it hard.
If they want to move quickly, they should stay within the bounds of the law - which is something that Trump in particular, and his regime in general is utterly incapable of.
> So now you can be a US citizen when in New York but not while in Kentucky. Sure to cause no chaos.
Enforcement and effect can vary temporarily due to conflicting judicial rulings thus creating short-term legal fragmentation until it's resolved at a higher level
The state of people either having or not having citizenship defined by either statewide injunction was or wasn’t issued is pure chaos and pretty much indefensible.
Legal fragmentation on injunctions isn’t about denying people’s humanity; it’s about how courts balance power between branches and avoid overstepping.
In this very example people in the US split into two parts: living in states choosing to go against this very illegal executive order or not. Unless you have money to sue government yourself and didn’t end up in a state going against EO your child is gonna be denied the exact humanity you’re talking about. In fact they can be deported soon after being born as assumingly non citizens.
And yes, in this particular case probably it will turn ok, because class certification seem possible. However class certification is very limited at the moment, and, again, in hands of bad faith executive we’ll end up with executive orders built around it. For example we can end up with 10% religious tax (but only if you Muslim). When the case finally reaches the merits just cancel it and change to 12%. This might be non class certifiable, and will create both chaos and inequitable application of the law.
If judges really wanted to solve initial issue of conflicting decisions (not fragmented, since universal injunctions were making decision universal) they should’ve fixed class actions first.
I’m pretty sure we’ll see this all to play out really soon.
The actual parties will have been shipped off to another country, unable to bring the case, and anyone not already deported would lack standing to challenge the action.
That seems awfully convenient for the executive.
> The US supreme court has supported Donald Trump’s attempt to limit lower-court orders that have so far blocked his administration’s ban on birthright citizenship
See also:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_th...
> Are you arguing against our existing immigration laws that the executive has to enforce?
> weird legal technicality
Indeed, if your ancestors didn't cross the Bering Land Bridge at least 10K years ago then you're clearly not a native, and should be deported back to your continent of origin ASAP. And if you don't like it then I hope your lawyer can catch up to the trucks hauling you to a distant, deportation-happy district where you'll be processed!
Could you find me the one that lets the president's office strip citizenship from people?
Those of us with white skin and no accent may find that a silly prospect. Citizens who are different are already facing this risk.
Constitution does not provide for identical due process between illegal aliens and citizens.
Since expedited removal is authorized under 8 U.S. Code § 1225(b)(1), Courts have held up limited due process for those that not fully admitted or who can’t prove longstanding presence.
Then, you have entry fiction doctrine where those at the border are treated as if they have not entered the US under the law.
Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206 (1953) held that an immigrant stopped at the border had limited due process rights.
Finally, because of the Plenary Ppwer Doctrine, immigration is considered a sovereign function of the federal government and Congress and the executive have broad authority over who may enter and remain in the US
You do realize that the underlying case which SCOTUS limited the scope of preliminary injunctions relates to an Executive Order which directly contravenes the 14th Amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
I get it. You want to throw lots of folks out. If that's what you want, then that's what you want. But if they can strip one natural born citizen of their citizenship without any due process, they can do that to any citizen -- including you and me. No thanks.
No executive order can override the Constitution.
My point was narrower: when people bring up “due process” it’s important to recognize that not all persons receive the same level of due process in every context. Courts have long held that undocumented individuals and particularly those subject to expedited removal or caught at the border have limited procedural protections compared to citizens
All I am advocating for is better safeguards that Congress must pass not throwaway the entire structure by allowing local injunctions.
Understandably people are upset but point the anger at the right branch. Executive is operating within its legal parameters and the legislative branch needs to operate within theirs. Congress needs to provide better safeguards
Huh? Since when is issuing executive orders that attempt to contravene the plain language of the US Constitution, something that's clearly illegal, "operating within [the executive branch's] legal parameters"?
Whether Congress is doing its job or not (I'd argue they're not representing their constituents in any meaningful way -- hell, I wanted to vote against my congressman since I was moved into his district in the last two elections, but he ran unopposed) is irrelevant to a blatantly illegal assault on US citizens by executive order.
There are plenty of things to take Congress to task for, but executive orders (you know, from the executive branch) aren't one of them.
The remedy should come through the right constitutional channels: lawsuits, appeals, congressional action. The concern I raised is about courts going beyond their own limits to impose broad fixes when the real solution lies with Congress or SCOTUS.
The SCOTUS ruling is about Preliminary Injunctions[0], which aren't remedies and they aren't permanent.
They serve to prevent harm while litigation progresses. This isn't something new, nor (until very recently) has it been very controversial.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injunction#Preliminary_injunct...
Preliminary injunctions have long been part of the legal system and their role in preventing harm during litigation is well recognized. The recent ruling does not eliminate preliminary injunctions
The case at hand addresses their scope and the authority of district courts to extend them beyond the parties involved in a specific case
The only thing I have consistently raised is maintaining that structure so courts operate within defined authority
It’s about time that SCOTUS reigned things in
If every single case must be prosecuted individually, those who have been illegally robbed of due process will already be stuck in El Salvadorean (or South Sudanese, etc.) prisons and unable to challenge it in US courts.
In other words, ICE effectively gets carte blanche to continue violating constitutional due process under the ruling. The "judicial overreach" complaint is a distraction - injunctions can always be appealed at a higher level in the court system (excepting when the SC does it themselves), so there was already a mechanism to handle problematic injunctions.
The implications for the unconstitutional executive order regarding birthright citizenship is just as gross, as an individual whose citizenship gets restored via court challenge will almost certainly face repeated citizenship challenges by other red states for the rest of their lives, any of which may require additional time in court to address.
Obviously we do not need to litigate undocumented immigrants before deporting them.
Because what could go wrong with not determining if someone is a citizen or not before deporting them?
Let's just turn to our national ID system...oh wait...
> But a lot less could go wrong than just letting anyone into the country en mass with no practical way to remove them.
Are you suggesting the only two options are extraordinary rendition to concentration camps in El Salvador with no recourse or instant squatters rights for all foreigners?
> You effectively don't have a country at all under that regime.
Let me offer an existence proof: gestures all around to where we're currently standing
We do have birth certificates and in most states it is actually very hard to get state ID without at least residency so yes asking for ID is usually enough.
why not just shoot them? seems less cruel than deporting them to an active war zone in Libya or South Sudan, or incarcerating them for life in CECOT where they'll be raped and tortured before being murdered.
Someone might be deported, incarcerated, or otherwise harmed before the courts even rule on whether their rights were violated.
US legal system highly values procedural fairness and due process.
This is by design, not accident
Meaning the executive can just keep deporting without due process or honoring birthrights, so long as they back down for anyone with the means to challenge it. (And their lawyer is fast enough, and knows which district they were spirited off to in the middle of the night.)
Illegal aliens have less due process by law.
reversing that case law would be a bit much even for Alito, I think.
Non-citizens in removal proceedings get civil hearings, with fewer procedural protection. Expedited removal allows certain undocumented immigrants to be deported without ever seeing a judge, unless they claim asylum or prove long-term presence.
Courts have upheld that due process is contextual. It is not “one-size-fits-all” So yes, undocumented immigrants have a constitutional floor of protections but not the same ceiling as citizens or green card holders
The distinction I was trying to make isn’t that undocumented people have no rights and it’s just that the process they’re entitled to is different in scope
There are safeguards that could be added such as access to interpreters, better identity verification, etc
But the answer can’t be local injunctions which is what this entire SCOTUS decision was about
Congress could budget and pass a law to fix things. It’s not up to the Executive and Legislative Branch.
The executive swears to uphold the constitution. Not write EOs that clearly violate it, then strategically drop appeals when they lose, so as to undermine the constitution for everyone without the means to dispute their case.
If the executive is dropping appeals to avoid nationwide precedent, that’s a serious problem, but the long-term fix isn’t local injunctions
See my point?
Fortunately a thousand years of common law have figured out how to deal with this sort of thing, while those challenges are ongoing. It's called an injunction. It's issued when there's a strong case for an EO violating it, and is done when the violation, if allowed unabated, will cause irreparable harm to the the victims.
The legal process hinges on preventing irreparable harm while a case is being litigated. If it didn't, absolutely horrific things could be done to you under the color of law, and the people doing them would be incentivized to drag the cases out for as long as possible.
This is textbook, black-on-white, criminality from the executive.
Relief is still available through injunctive orders, class actions, appellate review, and coordinated litigation. These are all recognized parts of the legal system and remain available to address serious concerns
An injunction is not a veto. I'm tired of people using this disingenuous phrasing in order to make a weak argument sound stronger.
Doesn't this just change most of these lawsuits into a class action where the class is say all the people born in the US of non-citizen parents, with the class represntative in the most friendly venue and then a district judge can accept the class and issue the injuction if they see fit?
Then the executive branch can presumably appeal the injuction and the class certification, and in the meantime, the injuction isn't valid for people who aren't in the class, but they probably aren't covered by the executive order either.
And I guess a handful of people immediately effected might file separately too, but if the class is certified (even if challenged) their case will probably be joined?
Class certification for the entire United States of those classes of people might be too large. Usually the courts prefer a more narrow class
some people will fall through the cracks in the meantime (and you may not like this answer), but that doesn’t automatically justify expanding judicial authority beyond what Article III or the separation of powers allows
The system without national injunctions is functioning as designed
(I think there's a MUCH stronger argument to be made that the proper function of the US government has been broken by Presidents changing thing by executive order because nobody has enough votes to do much in the Senate. It seems like "nobody has the votes to make big changes" should be an indicator that not making big changes is the proper result.)
The status quo would be "issue a ruling, it may or may not get put on hold while the government appeals, eventually it gets to the Supreme Court if necessary." Seemed to be working. Republicans obviously have used this to challenge stuff themselves.
It is unclear why there is a need for giving the government an escape hatch to let them say "sure, we lost this one case, we'll stop enforcing things against these few people, we just won't appeal and will continue to do whatever we want nationally instead."
"Nobody has the votes" seems like a weird way to put it, because is implies that everyone wants to make changes, they just can't agree which changes to make. On the contrary, I think the issue is that most congresspeople do not want to make changes. Changes are scary. If your name is associated with a change, and that change becomes unpopular, it might threaten your reelection!
The split in Congress is driven by the split in the people and the people DO want actions taken. Just - different actions for each faction.
If there was only one fairly unified party of voters in the country and a Congressman was refusing to vote to do what the voters wanted them to do, they'd get voted out.
"Not doing anything to be careful" is a bug enabled by the population being split.
A certain amount of less-partisan stuff does get passed all the time. But, to get more subtle about it, I think the danger if you help pass something like consumer protection - even if MOST people on both sides would support it - isn't that you risk getting branded with it if it backfires. It's that you get labeled soft in a way that the die-hards who dominate primaries can be rallied against. The right wing has been VERY aggressive in pushing purity tests for decades, and eventually you have convinced everyone of the final-battle-of-good-and-evil stakes. The left has been doing it more and more too, sadly - but it's not like what they were doing before was working too great.
That situation also gives increasing sway to the rich lobbyists who also want to make sure those basic things don't happen. Your base won't get mad at you for failing to ban abortions nationally because obviously you can't. So they don't put much blame on you for not getting the smaller stuff done either, or scrutinize your donors too much.
This might have been the case in the region you grew up, or you might be deceived by narratives in mainstream political discourse (which are driven more by politicians, interest groups, and media than by popular opinion). Regardless, there are plenty of national policy polls that show high Republican support for a wide array of consumer protection policies. This one turned up from a quick web search:
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50343-national-po...
The 3 highest-supported consumer protection policies among Republicans:
- 88%: Increasing restrictions on telemarketers' use of automated dialing and robocalling
- 85%: Banning excessive price increases during emergencies
- 78%: Creating a federal digital-privacy bill of rights to protect personal data and privacy online
And here are the 3 lowest (the dataset is only for policies supported by a majority from both parties):
- 56%: Imposing stricter penalties on companies that use monopolistic practices
- 60%: Banning credit agencies from reporting information on unpaid medical bills
- 64%: Requiring all electronic device manufacturers to make their products compatible with the same type of charger
So it reads to me like we've ended up in a similar spot, but with the requirement that an insane amount of paperwork happens.
That is indeed a big issue.
What this means is that it’s now ok for the orange man to break the law. Rule of law will only be upheld in very limited circumstances in very limited areas.
In the meantime, when I sue John Doe and get an injunction, they are enjoined from their conduct everywhere; but when I sue the government, it should only apply to me? Makes no sense.
IANAL but I read SCOTUS opinions regularly and this one is hard to argue with. If things should be different then we need legislative/constitutional changes.
lol, yes, like birthright citizenship written plainly into the constitution.
What good are your further legislative/constitutional changes worth if the executive can just ignore them except for the single individuals who file suit?
Guess what: You're living in the world of bigger problems.
The judicial branch interprets the law, but it doesn’t direct executive enforcement decisions
Not appealing can be politically controversial and that’s part of how democracy works
We are not left with no tools. Just need to use the right ones
In practice it absolutely does, because now everyone is scrambling to try and protect their clients that were previously covered by the larger injunction. The supreme court could have just not taken the case in the first place, or let the injunctions stand as an appropriate use of injunctions (for grossly unconstitutional executive orders)
This is a ruling which chooses order over law. Order without justice is tyranny.
You mean like under their own judgement?
Do you mean to say we can have a functional judiciary with only a supreme Court to rule on everything?
"The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office."
This is why we should have small government. If the government has a narrowly scoped role, the fear of the other side getting elected goes away. With huge government comes great concern about who’s in it.
As proof of that principle, how many people are really fired up about who is elected locally? How about nationally? The reason is the federal government has way too much power.
My list starts with:
-fund basic research in science and engineering -fund nascent beneficial commercial efforts where private interests fear to tread - supply infrastructure and services that are useful to most but are natural monopolies are network effects monopolies. (i.e. roads, rail,air, healthcare, research labs, weather services to name a few) - punishing cheating. i.e. fraud, externalities such as pollution, shifting costs onto the public to enhance profitability, and all forms of financial engineering. - protection against catastrophic loss - protection of vulnerable people - limiting corporations and individuals from gaining society distorting power.
Except that's a popular myth of the DOGE chainsaw crowd. The US is half the size of nearly every other advanced economy as % of GDP.
District courts do not create precedent. Precedent comes from appellate courts.
This ruling does not "restore" a functioning balance, it damages it. This has never been a problem in the past because previous administrations (regardless of politics) didn't take illegal actions daily. Framing it as "politics" is disingenuous as many of the judges ruling against Trump were appointed by him.
The system was working as intended to check an executive acting outside of the law, but once again, the supreme court continues to empower the executive.
Constitution would have to be changed
In theory it's just an injunction, but the reality is this kind of stuff takes forever to get hashed out in the courts, and Trump will be well out of office before it gets settled.
I have no problem with SCOTUS injunctions, but there are too many district courts for this to work.
The way things were heading the president was going to be forced to start ignoring injunctions, and he would have been right to do so. The Roberts court had to make this ruling for the government to function.
There's no such thing as "courts overstep" in our system. The courts are the final word on things in the US. By definition, they cannot overstep. You or I can disagree with their rulings, but they have the force of law, unless overturned by a higher court.
There's only one court that has the authority to issue nationwide injunctions, and that's the Supreme Court.
For the government to rule by executive order.
For the government to be able to change with the winds of Trump's opinion.
Neither of which is "functioning correctly" by my definition.
Except that it's been working just fine that way since before I was born, so, empirically, you're wrong.
> the president was going to be forced to start ignoring injunctions [...] The Roberts court had to make this ruling for the government to function.
So basically you're saying their way to legitimize Trump ignoring court orders is to de-legitimize an entire type of court order that has been commonplace and accepted for 50 years.
This sounds like "we'll change the law so Trump doesn't have to break it". Authoritarianism it is, then, I guess.
I am legitimizing Trump ignoring national preliminary injunctions by district court judges, yes. These judges have broken the system.
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
> There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
> There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
No, they will not. Remember when Breonna Taylor was summarily executed for Kenneth Walker exercising his second amendment right to night time home defense - one of the exact scenarios the gun-fundamentalists are always fantasizing about - but then the Trumpists came out on the side of licking the jackboots?
Personally, I think it is likely that sometime during this Trump "presidency" we will see him call for more national gun control (obviously framed in terms of hurting some vulnerable group). We will see most of his supporters fall right in line, just as they have been doing on everything else. There will be heaps of rationalization about how it won't affect them of course, and they might even be right.
Morals, values, and other lofty ideals mean nothing to these people, beyond being trotted out as dishonest justifications to try and trick reasonable people into supporting their movement. I'm sure they meant something at some point, but that has been long forgotten. Their only real desire appears to be unrestrained power for their team, demonstrating it by hurting people who aren't on their team. This is why it has been impossible to have an actual discussion about what they actually want, or how Dear Leader and his policies fail at everything they claim to want - there is literally nothing of substance there.
Furthermore, I think it's bad to continue calling this movement "conservative", as it helps disguise their aims as business-as-usual rather than the sea change towards destruction of the American experiment. At best they used to be conservative. Then they got angry that the leaders they would choose kept selling them out and that fundamentalism didn't produce effective results, so they gave up on their constructive values and fell into blind team allegiance. Now they're just reactionary/autocratic/authoritarian/fascist.
I could extend some merit to the idea that injunctions should be limited in complex cases where case law is thin and the law is less than clear. When executive orders are clearly unconstitutional, however, I do not then see any reason for limits.
The law that states that growing wheat on your own land is interstate commerce.
My reading is that under the previous system, a single district could prevent an order federally, even if every other district judge agreed with the new order.
I don't see why a single district should be able to influence the entire country. I would understand that they could limit powers in their district, and potentially challenge laws at a state level, and then federally.
Let's look at how this could have impacted a topic that gets my attention in the US, gun laws.
I'm definitely left, so let's say a president came in and made some order about changing gun laws and made it harder to get a gun.
It seems to me, that if that were to occur, a single judge in a gun-loving district could block the order universally for all the other states?
That doesn't seem right. It does make sense that they could say that law doesn't apply to our district, and we will challenge that law being applied to our state and if the state agrees, they could then challenge the law federally.
I'm obviously making up a ton of stuff about a system that I don't understand.
Should a single person be able to pull a fire alarm? Or do we need building-wide consensus first?
A single person absolutely can and should pull the fire alarm!
Are you suggesting that an entire country should operate as a single building?
Different districts have different laws and by-laws, and a district judge SHOULD be able to take issue with any law being passed down from on high. But should one person be able to challenge and essentially negate the power of the President.
Remember, I'm trying to take how this would be viewed if it were not a Trump issue. It's really easy to say "oh it's Trump, so screw him!"
I'm just surprised that this is how the system works. A single judge can bring the entire system to a stand-still? Is that really how this works?
This isn't a single person pulling a fire alarm. The alarm has been pulled, it's a single person saying "turn that damn thing off, I don't agree with your fire".
Under normal circumstances, the president wouldn't be shooting the country in the foot, so I completely agree that in this instance, perhaps it is good that a district judge can do this. But if American politics starts getting played this way, I think you may see significantly more challenges in getting good laws passed. I am not saying this is a good law.
Except it's not "getting" played this way. It's been this way for a long, long time.
What you're missing is that Federal district and appeals courts are not the final say. They can make (and do so all the time -- and have done so without issue for a very long time) rulings that are in conflict with rulings from other Federal courts.
The Supreme court is charged with addressing such conflicts.
The way this has worked is that judges issue rulings and those rulings are often "stayed" (not put into effect) to allow for appeal. However, when significant harm is being done prior to such appeals playing out, judges will not stay those rulings.
That can create conflict between the 94 Federal court districts when a court in one district rules one way in a case and a court in another district rules another way in a similar case.
And the way that's resolved is that those cases are appealed to the Supreme court which removes the conflict.
The problem with today's ruling is that it empowers bad actors to ignore rulings from some inferior jurisdictions and operate with impunity in other inferior jurisdictions.
More tellingly, the ruling specifically limits inferior court rulings to the specific parties to a case. As such, if the government acts unlawfully, only those who have actively filed suit against the government are covered by such rulings -- even if the actions taken by the government are blatantly illegal and/or the government's actions will likely be deemed inappropriate on appeal.
Which opens a loophole allowing the government to circumvent the courts (which are a co-equal branch of government and not meant to be subservient to the other branches) by blatantly breaking the law (e.g., stripping a natural born and/or naturalized citizens of their rights as citizens and shipping them off to god knows where without due process) against those who have not filed suit (either because they don't have the resources to do so and/or are deprived of the opportunity to do so by the executive branch).
And as long as losing party (in this case the executive branch) doesn't appeal (either to appeals courts and/or the Supreme Court) their loss(es) in inferior court(s), the Supreme Court never has the opportunity to address the conflicts (if any, as this is still a loophole even if no other courts have ruled on similar cases), essentially giving the Executive branch carte blanche to do whatever they want to anyone who hasn't pre-emptively filed suit and/or anyone they illegally (i.e., without due process) hold incommunicado, whether in the US or on foreign soil.
I'm not sure how things work in your country (as you didn't say which one it was), but I'm guessing that you wouldn't appreciate being disappeared without recourse if the government unilaterally decides to do so.
The issue isn't whether a single Federal judge can make rulings affecting the nation, but rather that the Executive and Legislative Branches must heed the rulings of the Judicial Branch, regardless of where those rulings originate.
If the other branches don't like it, they can appeal (and the Executive Branch doesn't even have to wait for such cases to reach the Supreme Court via the appeals process, they can go directly to the Supreme Court and ask them for a ruling immediately) such rulings.
This decision stands that on its head, effectively saying that if you are not a named plaintiff in any Federal court case, any ruling doesn't apply to you unless and until the Supreme court rules on the case one way or another.
Which, as I mentioned, allows the Executive Branch to avoid judicial scrutiny by not appealing rulings against them.
In the past, the Executive Branch would need to get appeals courts and, eventually, the Supreme Court to rule, removing ambiguity and conflicts (if any), this ruling creates a fractured and ambiguous legal landscape where relief from government overreach only applies to those with the ability and resources to sue in Federal court.
This is not fixing something that's broken, it's creating a multi-tiered justice system that the Executive Branch can manipulate to do pretty much anything it wants, even if it's blatantly (like stripping natural born citizens of their citizenship -- cf. the Fourteenth Amendment[0] to our constitution) illegal.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... [1]
[1] Section 1 of the 14th amendment reads: "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." [2]
[2] To clarify, since you're not from/in the US, Amendments to our constitution, once ratified (by 2/3 majorities in both houses of congress and by the legislatures of 3/4 of the several states -- the 14th was ratified in 1868, so this is nothing new), are incorporated into our constitution -- which is the supreme law of the land in the US.
That is the appropriate way to determine national uniformity in law.
Moreover, assuming that the "winner" of a case has gotten "relief," they no longer have standing to sue.
That said, the issue at hand doesn't include a decision on the merits of a case, but rather what the scope of a Preliminary Injunction (PI)[0] might be.
In the example I used, if a court implements a PI it's to limit the potential harm to those impacted by the harm claimed by the plaintiffs.
The SCOTUS ruling limits the scope of such a PI to just those who are either directly named as parties to the case and/or those within the jurisdiction of the district court.
In that circumstance, there is no set of cases to be consolidated since no trial has been held.
Given a government acting in bad faith, this leaves open the option that those harmed by the action of the government can be detained and moved outside the jurisdiction of the district court. At which point, according the the SCOTUS majority, the government can cause the harm being litigated and anyone caught up in this would need to bring a new case in the new federal district jurisdiction, even though Federal law applies everywhere in the US.
Please note that at the point a PI is granted, no one has "won" anything -- only that the judge has ruled that there is harm (and as such, standing to bring the case) and that those bringing the case are likely to succeed on the merits.
Again, since a PI isn't precedent, and the litigants claiming harm have already gotten relief -- at least until the trial is complete, they have no standing to push anyone to extend the PI to additional litigants in other Federal district jurisdictions, even though the legal question is relevant across all those jurisdictions, as it's Federal action.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injunction#Preliminary_injunct...
While federal law applies uniformly, reasonable people and courts can disagree on controversial issues. Localized PIs allow diverse judicial input and foster a broader dialogue before a final ruling.
Court shopping for nationwide injunctions, common in cases like Obama’s DACA or Trump’s policies, lets one judge halt national policy…
Affirming a democratically elected executive’s mandate, Obama with DACA or Trump with immigration reforms is reasonable and respects the separation of powers.
IMO Congress needs to act more effectively, passing clear laws on issues like immigration to reduce reliance on executive orders and judicial battles.
That doesn't matter if it's a federal issue (which it would have to be if it's in federal court). A single district judge dictating national policy temporarily, while a higher court makes its determination, is exactly what they're there for.
Either the activity is legal (nationwide) by federal law, or it's illegal (nationwide) by federal law. Limiting to the plaintiffs violates equal protection.
I think this statement clarifies it for me > The issue isn't whether a single Federal judge can make rulings affecting the nation, but rather that the Executive and Legislative Branches must heed the rulings of the Judicial Branch, regardless of where those rulings originate.
And that makes perfect sense. Thanks for your thorough response.