In a landmark 6-3 ruling on June 27, the US Supreme Court significantly curtailed the power of federal district courts to issue sweeping nationwide injunctions, declaring that such broad legal remedies exceed the authority granted by Congress. The decision comes in the case Trump v. CASA, Inc., which centered on lower courts’ responses to President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order targeting birthright citizenship.

The Court’s conservative majority, led by Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, concluded that universal injunctions-orders issued by lower courts to halt a government policy for the entire nation-violate the limits of judicial power under Article III of the Constitution. “Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,” Barrett wrote. “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joined Barrett in the majority. The liberal wing of the Court-Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson-dissented.

Though the ruling does not address the constitutional validity of Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order itself, it deals a serious blow to the legal mechanisms used to block its enforcement across the United........

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