Of all the things President Trump has done in the five months since he took office, among the most controversial was his executive order denying citizenship to the children of illegal—and some legal—immigrants in the United States. It was the subject of immediate legal challenge, and the case went to the Supreme Court, where most people expected the justices to deliver their verdict on nothing less than who is, and isn’t, an American citizen.
The judgment in that case, Trump v. CASA, Inc., arrived Friday, but instead of grappling with birthright citizenship, the six-justice conservative majority took on another controversial issue—the use of nationwide injunctions. That may not sound as exciting, but CASA is a very significant decision. The Court has slammed the brakes on the tool with which judges around the country have stymied huge parts of Trump’s agenda.
The president called a press conference after the decision to herald a “monumental victory for the Constitution.” By contrast, the CASA dissenting justices described the Court’s ruling as—in Justice Jackson’s words—“an existential threat to the rule of law.”
So, what are nationwide injunctions exactly, what did the Justices say about them, and did the Supreme Court just kowtow to Trump, blowing a hole in the rule of law?
