The Trump administration wasted no time after the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling to remind federal judges that their ability to block policies is now severely limited.
Just days after the Supreme Court limited lower courts’ power to issue nationwide injunctions, officials started submitting letters, filing notices and updating key arguments in multiple cases to remind judges that they must take the Trump v. CASA precedent into consideration when making any sort of decision.
Over and over again, the administration delivered judges a singular message: It is an “error” to issue an injunction that impacts anyone not involved in a given case.
The Justice Department cited the Trump v. CASA ruling in a filing in its lawsuit against the entire federal district court in Maryland to argue the chief judge there overstepped on deportations.
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In a filing in Pacito v. Trump, a case challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order effectively halting the entry of refugees into the U.S., government lawyers stated that previous “sweeping” injunctions that had been issued in the case “cannot stand under the key tenets outlined in CASA.”
The injunction, which was later stayed by an appeals court, was “overbroad, unnecessarily extending far beyond the parties involved. The Supreme Court confirmed as much in CASA,” according to a court filing from the government, which argued the court must be careful to “avoid contravening” the justices’ “clear directive against excessively broad injunctive relief any further.”
NOTUS reviewed nearly 300 active legal cases involving the Trump administration, which include challenges to the president’s military trans ban, foreign aid pauses, limits on people trying to enter the U.S. and the birthright citizenship executive order. DOJ attorneys have filed more than a dozen motions reminding judges of the Supreme Court’s ruling, showing the massive legal implications for the order and how the administration is pushing to further weaken judicial review of its policies.
In Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights v. Noem, which challenges a Trump policy that allows for the expedited removal of certain migrants, government lawyers said in a court filing that the judge presiding over the case must remember that lower courts now lack “statutory authority to issue ‘universal injunctions.’”
The Supreme Court’s “restrictions on universal injunctions” prevent a federal judge from fully ending Trump’s pause on foreign aid because the court would “‘lack authority to issue’ broader equitable ‘relief that extended beyond the parties,’” government lawyers said in a court filing in AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. U.S. Department of State.
Other filings regarding the Trump v. CASA ruling are anticipated in cases involving nationwide injunctions, including National Job Corps Association v. Department of Labor, a challenge to the Department of Labor’s decision to eliminate Job Corps, a federal career training program, at the direction of DOGE.
But the Trump administration is using the case to essentially upend the judicial branch’s ability to review the constitutionality of executive actions.
The administration sued all 15 federal judges in Maryland on June 24 — three days before the Supreme Court’s Trump v. CASA ruling — over the chief judge’s two recent “standing orders” that block the government from rushing deportations of certain migrants who are detained in Maryland.
The Trump administration’s lawsuit accused the court of issuing what’s essentially an “automatic injunction against the federal government.”
The Trump v. CASA ruling gave them ammunition. Days after the Supreme Court issued its ruling, Department of Justice lawyers cited it in a new filing in the case against Maryland judges.
The orders are “fundamentally inconsistent with the judicial role, which is not to ‘exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch’ but to ‘resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them,’” DOJ lawyers wrote, explicitly citing the Trump v. CASA opinion.
“As the Supreme Court emphasized only last week, the ‘admonition’ that ‘everyone, from the President on down, is bound by law’ applies to ‘judges too,’” the filing states.
The sued federal judges have until July 29 to formally respond in the case, which the chief judge transferred out of Maryland to avoid a conflict of interest. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals sent it over to U.S. District Judge Thomas T. Cullen in Virginia.
The case is expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court, which will get another chance to review judicial authority.
In the meantime, the administration’s lawsuit against judges has “a chilling effect on the independence of judges in their sworn duty to uphold the law,” said retired federal Judge Liam O’Grady, a George W. Bush appointee, who joined with about 40 judges to create the Keep Our Republic’s Article III Coalition.
The Justice Department is required to act “as the attorney on behalf of the judge” when they get sued by parties, O’Grady said. “This time, we’re at odds.”
The Supreme Court’s Trump v. CASA ruling also bolstered political pressure against injunctions.
Trump’s recently enacted reconciliation bill contains sections targeting nationwide injunctions. The law provides funds to the Justice Department to hire more attorneys to challenge injunctions against the government, it requires courts to track injunctions issued against the administration and it establishes training programs for judges on why lower courts do not have the “constitutional and statutory authority” to issue nationwide injunctions.
After Trump went as far as to call for a judge to be impeached for blocking one of his policies, some House Republicans echoed his calls. While House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan hasn’t fully backed judicial impeachments, he has said the option is “on the table.” (Jordan’s office did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.) Chief Justice John Roberts has said that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
The Supreme Court’s Trump v. CASA decision left a carveout for class-action lawsuits to halt the president’s policies from going into effect across the country. However, after a federal judge blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order last Thursday in a class-action lawsuit, the White House said that the decision was “an obvious and unlawful attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s clear order against universal relief.”
“This judge’s decision disregards the rule of law by abusing class action certification procedures. The Trump Administration will be fighting vigorously against the attempts of these rogue district court judges to impede the policies President Trump was elected to implement,” White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said in a statement to NOTUS.
It’s unclear how the executive branch plans to respond to the decision. When asked if the Trump administration plans to ask the Supreme Court to intervene or whether they would sue the judge presiding over the class-action lawsuit, an administration official joked to NOTUS that the only person who really knows what’s going to happen next is immigration architect Stephen Miller.
Miller did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.
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