Supreme Court Drops Hammer on Activist Judges

The United States Supreme Court has just dealt a massive blow to Democrat-aligned activist judges across the country who have been undermining President Donald Trump’s authority.

In a landmark 6–3 decision Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that federal district courts do not have the authority to issue sweeping nationwide injunctions, delivering a significant victory for Trump and a sharp rebuke to left-wing legal activists who’ve used friendly courts to block conservative policies.

The case, Trump v. Casa, centered on the Trump administration’s efforts to end so-called “birthright citizenship,” the practice of granting automatic citizenship to children born to illegal aliens.

Rather than rule directly on that explosive question, the Department of Justice (DOJ) took aim at the broader abuse of judicial power, and the Court sided with that strategy.

In a decisive opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court’s conservative majority slammed the practice of lower courts issuing “universal injunctions” to block federal policies nationwide.

Barrett noted that such sweeping rulings were never part of the American legal tradition and have no basis in the Constitution.

“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” Barrett wrote.

“The bottom line?” she continued.

“The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history.

“Its absence from 18th- and 19th-century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority.”

The Court’s ruling effectively strips left-wing groups of one of their most powerful weapons: shopping for activist judges to single-handedly derail conservative policies from the Oval Office.

Justice Barrett’s opinion dove deep into the original meaning of equity jurisdiction, concluding that no court at the founding, or even in England’s High Court of Chancery, exercised anything remotely like the sweeping power some judges now claim.

“We must therefore ask whether universal injunctions are sufficiently ‘analogous’ to the relief issued ‘by the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution…’ The answer is no,” Barrett wrote.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented bitterly, writing:

“The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”

Barrett was blunt in her rebuttal:

“We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.

“JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

The majority decision was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Multiple concurring opinions further emphasized that national policies must be debated and passed through Congress, not blocked by unelected judges with partisan aims.

Justice Alito, in his concurrence, warned of continued attempts by progressive litigants to abuse class-action lawsuits and standing rules to achieve policy goals through the courts.

The ruling also sends a powerful message to the Biden administration, which has benefited from a judicial double standard when conservative states have tried to use similar tactics to block left-wing policies.

Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network called the ruling a “victory for our constitutional separation of powers.”

“The Court has shut the door on the abuse of universal injunctions,” she said.

“Justice Alito’s concurrence sounds the alarm that litigants have been attempting to abuse class actions and standing processes as well and shows that the Court is well aware of the problem and prepared to police those boundaries to shut down judicial activists.”

“Looks like a lot of people were crying wolf on Justice Barrett,” she added.

The decision marks yet another key judicial win for Trump-era legal arguments and continues a broader trend of reining in the activist judiciary that has long served as a backdoor legislative arm for the Left.

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