News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by majormajor on Friday June 27, 2025 @06:29PM (#44400858)
>But, we did get conflicting nationwide rulings from different district courts, which encouraged forum shopping and rushed litigation.

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?

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Friday June 27, 2025 @06:34PM (#44400890)
Whether you were personally hurt isn’t the point. Conflicting nationwide rulings from different judges created legal chaos and undermined consistency

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

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by majormajor on Friday June 27, 2025 @06:36PM (#44400908)
This ruling opens the door for more inconsistency. Things can dead-end in a fractured state much more easily now.

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?

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Friday June 27, 2025 @06:47PM (#44400986)
These come to mind:

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

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by majormajor on Friday June 27, 2025 @06:54PM (#44401033)
And what happened next in those cases?

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.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Friday June 27, 2025 @07:10PM (#44401125)
No, all of these cases are not resolved to this day

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

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by ImPostingOnHN on Friday June 27, 2025 @08:02PM (#44401379)
I don't see any of the "chaos" you're talking about: the examples you give are of the system working as expected.
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Friday June 27, 2025 @08:26PM (#44401470)
If "working as expected" means conflicting nationwide orders from different judges, policy whiplash across states, and emergency SCOTUS intervention just to sort it all out..

then that’s exactly the kind of chaos the Court is trying to fix

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by ImPostingOnHN on Saturday June 28, 2025 @01:25AM (#44402467)
Yes, that is working as designed. It is the design chosen because it is better than the alternative of hundreds of conflicting orders leaving innocent people unprotected.

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.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Saturday June 28, 2025 @08:39AM (#44404286)
It’s not about sounding scary.

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.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by ImPostingOnHN on Saturday June 28, 2025 @11:10AM (#44405231)
More importantly, it is about whether our legal system should allow a king to set nationwide policy even when their orders conflict with the constitution.

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.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by magicalist on Friday June 27, 2025 @07:04PM (#44401100)
> Whether you were personally hurt isn’t the point. Conflicting nationwide rulings from different judges created legal chaos and undermined consistency

So now you can be a US citizen when in New York but not while in Kentucky. Sure to cause no chaos.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Friday June 27, 2025 @07:12PM (#44401134)
Huh? Federal laws apply everywhere.

The rulings just means an injunction only affects the parties in that case or a certified class and not everyone everywhere automatically

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by anonymars on Friday June 27, 2025 @08:22PM (#44401458)
Yeah, so when you say "federal laws apply everywhere", what happens when one state sues that it's unconstitutional and another doesn't?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44401294

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Friday June 27, 2025 @08:36PM (#44401508)
Then enforcement is paused for the parties in that case. Other courts may rule differently until the issue is resolved higher up
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by vkou on Friday June 27, 2025 @08:54PM (#44401576)
The whole strategy of the federal government with this is to never resolve the issue higher up.

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.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Friday June 27, 2025 @09:19PM (#44401663)
Follow the process

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.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by magicalist on Friday June 27, 2025 @10:48PM (#44402018)
> 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

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Saturday June 28, 2025 @08:41AM (#44404298)
I think the real answer is reforming the process so it doesn’t take so long to get relief. Not injunctive relief nationally at the lowest possible level
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by fzeroracer on Friday June 27, 2025 @11:50PM (#44402199)
What process? If you're a lawyer then detail the exact process for us.
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Monday June 30, 2025 @07:19AM (#44421880)
Look at the footnote by Cavanaugh. District judges under the APA can block agency rules or action just not the President. It is effectively like a nationwide injunction
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by vkou on Friday June 27, 2025 @11:10PM (#44402071)
> Follow the process

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.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Saturday June 28, 2025 @07:57AM (#44404031)
> courts have long held that undocumented individuals — particularly those subject to expedited removal or caught at the border — have limited procedural protections compared to citizens

Onus is on Plaintiffs. That’s how our system works

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by anonymars on Saturday June 28, 2025 @09:56AM (#44404729)
So, in the meantime then:

> So now you can be a US citizen when in New York but not while in Kentucky. Sure to cause no chaos.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Saturday June 28, 2025 @10:25AM (#44404930)
Citizenship is national not at state level
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by anonymars on Saturday June 28, 2025 @05:02PM (#44408185)
Sure, now what happens when different courts rule on this differently?
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Saturday June 28, 2025 @05:43PM (#44408408)
Eventually it will reach the Supreme Court if it is appealed.
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by anonymars on Saturday June 28, 2025 @08:03PM (#44409214)
And what about right now (or rather, after the thirty day stay expires)?
Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Sunday June 29, 2025 @04:17PM (#44416060)
It is a feature not a bug to have legal fragmentation in our judicial system. That’s how it was setup.

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

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by boroboro4 on Monday June 30, 2025 @05:03PM (#44427847)
We used to have this feature and not a bug of having different takes on slavery legality in the US. You might know how this ended.

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.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by firesteelrain on Monday June 30, 2025 @07:08PM (#44428891)
That’s not really a fair comparison. Slavery was a systemic moral atrocity, and its resolution required constitutional amendments and a civil war.

Legal fragmentation on injunctions isn’t about denying people’s humanity; it’s about how courts balance power between branches and avoid overstepping.

Re:US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Tr... by boroboro4 on Monday June 30, 2025 @08:49PM (#44429499)
To be honest I think this one is worse in a way because it permits laws impartiality in hands of bad faith executive (and we do have one).

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.