Trump v. CASA (2025)

Over the preceding decade, federal district judges increasingly issued universal or nationwide injunctions, blocking federal policies for everyone rather than only for the plaintiffs. Administrations of both parties complained that a single judge could halt national policy, and plaintiffs often filed in courts they expected to be favorable. On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order denying birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to mothers unlawfully or temporarily present and fathers who were not citizens or permanent residents. Three district courts quickly blocked it nationwide.

The administration asked the Supreme Court to narrow the injunctions without reaching the order's constitutionality. On June 27, 2025, the Court ruled 6 to 3, in an opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, that universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority Congress gave federal courts in the Judiciary Act of 1789, because such relief was not traditionally available in English and early American courts. Courts may give complete relief to the plaintiffs before them, but not to everyone. The Court left open relief through class actions, suits by states, and challenges under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting, warned that the ruling would let the government enforce plainly unconstitutional policies against anyone who had not sued, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called it a grant of power to an imperial executive. Soon after the ruling, a federal court certified a nationwide class of affected children and again blocked the order, and the Supreme Court later decided the citizenship question on the merits, holding in Trump v. Barbara on June 30, 2026, that the order was unconstitutional. Supporters say the decision restores limits on individual judges, while critics say it fragments protection of rights.