The Trump administration is pushing for the lifting of all previous nationwide injunctions that restricted President Donald Trump‘s agenda after a major Supreme Court ruling in favor of executive authority.
A White House official told the Washington Examiner that, in light of the ruling, all pending nationwide injunctions will face new scrutiny.
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“[The administration] began working immediately to have every injunction revisited,” the official said. “All of these injunctions are obstructing President Trump’s agenda, which the American people gave him a mandate to implement.”
The official also included a list of 32 injunctions and other executive orders that could see new life under the ruling. Among those are rulings related to layoffs attempted by the Department of Government Efficiency, several executive orders on border security, and orders related to election integrity.
The news comes after Trump’s win at the Supreme Court last week.
“Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” Trump said Friday in an impromptu press conference at the White House.
The high court ruled that district courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions, a significant victory for the president’s agenda in the face of mounting legal challenges. Local judges had handed down dozens of injunctions during Trump’s presidency, which administration officials described as a “colossal abuse of power.”
“These injunctions have blocked our policies from tariffs to military readiness, to immigration, to foreign affairs, fraud, abuse, and many other issues,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in the same news briefing. “The judges have tried to seize the executive branch’s power, and they cannot do that. No longer.”
Going forward, Trump said he plans to implement policies that would end birthright citizenship, end sanctuary city funding, suspend refugee resettlement, freeze “unnecessary” funding, and stop taxpayers from “paying for transgender surgeries,” among other things.
In the DOGE cases, the Trump administration has proposed sweeping layoffs to vast sections of the federal workforce to save taxpayer money and “drain the swamp.” However, Democrats and government employee unions have pushed back through lawsuits, and judges have blocked portions of DOGE’s work, saying it violates the Constitution’s appointments clause and separation of powers.
In the birthright citizenship case, which Trump says is related to border security because it will lessen the incentive for people to enter the U.S. illegally, district judges have ruled that the order violates the plain text of the 14th Amendment, which reads that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The Trump administration argues that children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and that the amendment was intended for the children of formerly enslaved people.
To the president’s opponents, last week’s ruling from a conservative-dominated Supreme Court means Trump is free to pursue what they view as extreme policies with fewer legal restraints. They also point to what they say is hypocrisy from Republicans, who did not complain when President Joe Biden saw his student loan forgiveness plans scuttled by nationwide injunctions.
Others point to the underlying issue in the case and vow to protect birthright citizenship with the tools still available to them.
“The Supreme Court’s opinion does not address whether President Trump’s order is constitutional, nor does it declare that a nationwide injunction is unavailable to the states,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford wrote in response to the ruling.
“The court merely says that a universal injunction against the order may not be appropriate in some cases and sets forth standards for the district court to use in making that determination,” he added. “Either way, Nevadans remain protected.”
Democratic strategist Tom Cochran argues that the ruling may prove to be a mixed bag for Trump, who can no longer point to courts for blocking his policies and instead will bear their full burden.
“It changes the game and Trump gains significant operational freedom,” Cochran said. “But, I’ll add that power cuts both ways. When controversial policies move faster without judicial speed bumps, the political backlash will land squarely on him with no possibility of a blame game.”
For Democrats, the key will be to stop fighting the process and start winning on substance, he added.
“When Trump’s policies hurt real families, that’s the story,” Cochran said. “Executives without immediate checks tend to overreach. That’s the scary part, but also it creates political opportunity for Democrats, if they can properly mobilize people.”
The majority opinion in Trump v. CASA held that universal injunctions, blocking laws or policies from being enforced against anyone, “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court’s 6-3 majority, reined in the rulings of lower courts to issue universal injunctions. She also slammed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent, which decried “an imperial Executive,” but Barrett noted Jackson’s dissent seemed to embrace “an imperial judiciary.”
In a scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that Republicans would live to regret the ruling.
“Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship,” she wrote. “Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”
John Shu, a constitutional law expert and former official in both Bush administrations, said that one immediate effect of the ruling was the DOJ’s lawsuit against Los Angeles’s sanctuary laws that was filed on Monday, positing that it likely would not have happened without the high court ruling.
“It’s related in the sense that if the Supreme Court had ruled the other way, I think the DOJ would not have been so aggressive in filing the lawsuit,” Shu said, noting the DOJ can now file suit in more localities without the risk of losing a nationwide injunction.
MSNBC legal analyst Melissa Murray took things a step further, calling the ruling a “death blow to the rule of law” with lower courts now “kneecapped” from stopping the Trump administration.
Shu took issue with this characterization as well.
“It is definitely not a blow to the rule of law. If anything, it enhances the rule of law,” Shu said, pointing to the Judiciary Act of 1789. “The statute doesn’t authorize nationwide injunctions. Congress could amend the Judiciary Act, but they haven’t done that.”
The ruling does not entirely end nationwide injunctions, with judges instructed to use them only in cases where doing so is the only way to provide “complete relief.” However, it could result in more work for the administration and its opponents, who will battle more local jurisdictions in the future and in more complex class action lawsuits.
The attorneys leading the birthright citizenship case have already taken steps to seek class action status, which would cover all children who would be denied citizenship under Trump’s executive order.
The broader issue of executive vs. judicial power came up during last Friday’s press briefing, with a reporter asking Trump what his message was to Americans who fear the ruling will give the White House and the executive branch more power.
Trump quickly dismissed the notion.
“It gives power back to people that should have it, including Congress, including the presidency,” Trump said. “And it only takes bad power away from judges.”
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Republicans, such as GOP strategist John Feehery, say the ruling is long overdue.
“What the Democrats have been doing to the Trump White House has been completely outrageous and anti-democratic,” Feehery said. “The Supreme Court should have stepped in earlier, in my humble opinion. But I am glad that they finally intervened.”
Feehery predicted that the ruling will benefit both Republican and Democratic administrations alike going forward.
“This will help Trump, but also help all future Presidents to implement the agenda that they campaigned on and that the voters voted for,” Feehery said. “District judges are not a good stand-in for the President. Nobody elected them to anything.”