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.
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 ...
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!
People like you are so fucking retarded you are personally an example of why democracy doesn't work.
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.
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
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.
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.
Onus is on Plaintiffs. That’s how our system works
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
> 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.
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
It can't just be, I don't know, a plain reading of the fucking law.
It's time to Balkanize.
The purpose of courts litigating the legality of executive actions is not establishing innocence or guilt, so what you're saying is completely irrelevant.
The president doesn't go to prison because some court found that he signed an illegal executive order. (But it sounds like you maybe think that should be the case. It's hard to tell, because you aren't saying anything coherent.)
> The POTUS doesn't need to ask for permission to politicized local judges
Let's play a simple game. If he signs a blatantly unconstitutional and illegal EO ordering the US Marshals to have you and your family arrested, tortured, and shot tomorrow, whose permission do you think he should need? Which parts of the government would be able to stop him?
You seem to think that no 'politicized'[1] judge should be allowed to say "Whoa, hold on there, that may be illegal."
---
[1] What the hell does 'politicized' mean? Is there a single person in government who is not 'politicized'? Is SCOTUS somehow not 'politicized'? Is the executive?
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.