The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has just taken a sledgehammer to the frankly insane practice of allowing a single unelected federal District Court judge to override executive orders of the President and laws passed by Congress.
In a case challenging Executive Order 14160 signed by President Donald Trump in February seeking to end so-called “birthright citizenship” (which the 14th Amendment grants “to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”), the ruling in Trump v. CASA severely limits “universal injunctions” – which allow one lower court judge hearing a single case to block a law, policy or executive order for the entire nation.
For decades, court-shopping leftists have used universal injunctions to force their Marxist agenda on the rest of the country.
In Trump v. CASA, lawyers filed similar cases against the executive order in three Democratic strongholds: Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington State. Not surprisingly, all three district judges issued nationwide injunctions to stop the implementation of the Executive Order.
But when the case was eventually heard by SCOTUS, a 6-3 majority decided that such nationwide injunctions were themselves unconstitutional, and that district courts can only issue injunctions that apply to individual plaintiffs, not the whole country.
“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” the majority ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett succinctly stated.
“This landmark decision substantially narrows the permissible scope of judicial intervention in federal government actions, reshaping federal litigation practice. It requires litigants to carefully define their claims and relief, explicitly targeting only the direct injuries suffered by named plaintiffs,” according to an analysis by The National Law Review.
Although the ruling does not directly endorse Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship, it allows it to go into partial effect in 30 days while allowing new legal challenges to be filed. But it creates a new hurdle for those who relied on left-leaning judges to do their bidding.
The administration argues that foreign nationals who illegally enter the country or overstay the terms of their visas are in fact NOT “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. as they are still legally citizens of another country and therefore subject to that nation’s jurisdiction.
If Trump’s executive order stands, as hopefully it will, it will put an end to the “anchor baby” scam in which foreign pregnant women are encouraged to either sneak across the border or illegally overstay their visas in order to deliver their babies on U.S. soil. Groups like CASA then argue before sympathetic judges that the entire family is entitled to permanently stay in the U.S. because the youngest is supposedly a citizen who can sponsor them. But U.S. law requires that such children be at least 21 years of age before they can petition for their parents to become citizens.
The language of the 14th Amendment, which was passed to give freed slaves in the United States legal standing, has been deliberately misinterpreted by lower court judges who have been instrumental in promoting an “open borders” policy regardless of national security concerns, common sense, or the will of the American people.
People who deliberately break our laws should not be rewarded. Their babies are blameless, but they are still not U.S. citizens.