What does the Trump v. Casa decision actually do?
On Friday, June 27th, the Supreme Court released their decision in Trump v. Casa, a case regarding the national injunction against Trump’s executive order jeopardizing birthright citizenship. This was a complicated decision that is difficult to parse without legal training, but it has important implications (though not necessarily the ones getting the most press attention) and we want to try to shed some light on what it means.
First of all, birthright citizenship is still in effect. This ruling is specifically related to a legal question that the Trump administration focused on to try to lift the national injunction against their executive order, not the issue at the heart of the case of birthright citizenship itself, which is still working its way through the courts. This decision may signal the way the Court will lean when and if it ultimately hears a birthright citizenship case, and it certainly increases the administrative burden on people who are bringing suit against the government for infringement of their constitutional rights, but birthright citizenship is still protected by the Constitution, and the Constitution is the law of the land.
The fundamental change that this ruling brings is in the way court cases are handled. With this decision, SCOTUS has made it more difficult for courts to stop the Trump administration from enforcing unconstitutional policies. Up to now, a federal district court has been able to order a national injunction in cases that dealt with issues of constitutionality, which would bar the policies under review from being implemented until their constitutionality can be decided by the courts. National injunctions don’t nullify the policies, but they put a pause on them to ensure that they don’t infringe on anyone’s rights while the substance of the case is argued in court. With the Casa ruling, federal courts are now severely limited on when they can place a national injunction on Trump administration policies; they can only issue narrow injunctions for the plaintiffs in the case they’re hearing—meaning that each person impacted by a rule would need to individually sue representatives of the federal government for relief from the courts.
While the courts are barred from issuing national injunctions, there are still ways to similarly stop a policy from affecting people until its constitutionality is determined. One way is through a class action suit, undertaken when many people in multiple states are harmed by the same policy. A class action suit allows these people to band together and have their individual cases heard as one case; an injunction could still be put into place on behalf of the plaintiffs of a class action suit, which, as long as the class was defined well, would have the same effect as a national injunction—the policy couldn’t be implemented or enforced until its legality has been determined.
Another option is for state Attorneys General to file a lawsuit on behalf of a state; in this case, an injunction could be filed protecting the state that the AG represents. This could help protect citizens of states with AGs willing to stand against the administration, and the majority ruling also leaves open the possibility for state AGs to seek nationwide injunctions. However, the gutting of the ability for a court to issue a national injunction without satisfying the newly heightened standards means that residents of states with unsympathetic Attorneys General who are unwilling to file suit against the administration could be unable to get relief under this method.
So what can we do now?
This decision weakens our ability to slow down or stop unconstitutional actions by the federal government; make no mistake, this ruling is an escalation of the administration’s centralization of power. But that doesn’t mean things are hopeless: there are still things we can do, right now, to push back against this ruling and its implications and to safeguard our ability to stop unconstitutional rules from taking effect without having their day in court:
Scrupulously document when the administration acts illegally. This documentation will be crucial in supporting class action lawsuits, which are likely our best bet in achieving something like a national injunction in cases of unconstitutional policies taking effect.
Put pressure on state Attorneys General (for us here in Massachusetts, this means Andrea Campbell) to start and join lawsuits on behalf of their state. Since injunction powers are now limited, the best way to ensure the citizens of a state will be protected by an injunction would be for each state AG to sign on behalf of the state to get relief to the people of that state.
Push Congressional offices to stop legislative restrictions on injunctive relief. In addition to this Supreme Court ruling, Congressional Republicans are also pushing for enshrining in law this restriction against federal injunctions. Currently, this is taking the form of Sen. Grassley’s (currently struck) reconciliation amendment; though this has been removed from the budget bill, it seems likely that Republicans may be galvanized by the SCOTUS decision to undertake additional efforts to legislatively restrict nationwide injunctions.
The things that this decision does pragmatically to our court system, though surmountable, are challenging. We’ll have to push all the harder in order to seek relief from unconstitutional orders because of this ruling. That means that more people will be harmed as courts in each state hear cases or class action lawsuits are compiled. Cases with conflicting decisions in different states could then take years to make their way through the appeals process before being heard by the Supreme Court, which would only then decide any constitutional issues at a national scale.
This decision sets a troubling precedent: the Constitution is the fundamental document that holds our country together, and this decision weakens the ability of the Constitution to equally govern in all states. This means that the Constitution’s ability to protect all Americans is threatened. We must push for our officials to protect us in all the ways that they can, but in the broader scheme, we must also keep pushing against the relentless progress of this administration in establishing the institutional controls to centralize their power over us.
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