The United States Supreme Court has ruled that lower courts likely overstepped their authority in issuing nationwide injunctions against presidential actions, limiting the ability of the judicial branch to check executive power.

Friday’s decision came in response to injunctions from federal courts in Washington, Maryland and Massachusetts which sought to block President Donald Trump’s ability to curtail the right to birthright citizenship.

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“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” the court’s majority said in its decision. “The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions.”

But the court’s majority added that its decision applies “only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary”. They could still apply, it said, to the plaintiffs in the cases at hand.

The ruling split the court once again along party lines, with its six conservative judges forming the majority and its three liberal judges issuing a dissent.

The decision was a major victory for the Trump administration, which has denounced “judicial overreach” as an unconstitutional obstacle to its policies.

Lower courts had come out strongly against Trump’s efforts to redefine birthright citizenship, a right established under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which was adopted in the wake of the US Civil War.

The amendment declared that “all persons born” in the US and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” would be citizens.

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The courts have repeatedly interpreted that text as granting citizenship to nearly all people born in the US, regardless of their parents’ nationalities. There were limited exceptions, including for the children of diplomats.

But in his 2024 re-election bid, Trump campaigned on a platform that would see the Fourteenth Amendment reinterpreted to exclude the children of undocumented immigrants.

The new policy, his platform said, “will make clear that going forward, the children of illegal aliens will not be granted automatic citizenship”.

On the first day of his second term, January 20, he followed through on that campaign promise, signing an executive order called, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”.

But immigration advocates said that Trump’s policy violated the Constitution, and lower courts sided with them, issuing nationwide injunctions that barred the executive order from taking effect.

More details to come…