Anti-Trump groups seek new legal strategies after Supreme Court limits injunctions

The Supreme Court’s earthquake ruling limiting judges’ authority to constrain the president with universal injunctions also pointed a way forward for President Trump’s opponents: class-action lawsuits.

Within hours of the 6-3 ruling Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant rights advocates filed the first class-action lawsuit to try to stop Mr. Trump’s changes to birthright citizenship from taking effect.

The groups said they were shifting legal tactics after the high court said universal injunctions were likely illegal. District judges have used universal injunctions to halt a president’s policies based on the briefest of arguments.

“The Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship, and no procedural ruling will stop us from fighting to uphold that promise,” said Tianna Mays, legal director for Democracy Defenders Fund, one of the groups that joined the ACLU in filing the challenge.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing the key opinion for the court’s ruling, said judges were becoming too imperious by delivering broad blockades on a president’s actions with little legal backing.

“These injunctions — known as ‘universal injunctions’ — likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts,” Justice Barrett wrote.

Mr. Trump called the ruling a “monumental” win.

“This brings back the Constitution,” he said.

Injunctions are blocks to action issued by courts. They are generally limited to the parties that are suing or have been sued.

In recent decades, though, federal judges have increasingly issued rulings that go beyond the parties in front of them. In the birthright citizenship cases, for example, the judges said their injunctions applied to every state and every child born to illegal immigrant or temporary migrant parents, even though it was Democratic-led states or immigration advocacy groups that brought the challenges.

Justice Barrett, in a ruling joined by the court’s other Republican appointees, said Congress never envisioned these injunctions when it created the lower courts and gave them jurisdiction to decide cases.

The high court’s three Democratic appointees vehemently dissented. They expressed concern about unchecked power and an unshackled president.

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the court creates,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”

The case exposed competing visions of the federal judiciary. To the court’s Republican appointees, judges are servants of the law entrusted to decide cases before them. The court’s Democratic appointees saw them more as legal warriors capable of thwarting the will of a president’s excesses.

“The majority ignores the Judiciary’s foundational duty to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “The majority’s ruling thus not only diverges from first principles, it is also profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate.”

Justice Barrett delivered a vicious rejoinder: “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. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

Besides, Justice Barrett said, a president’s opponents who want broad rulings have other options: chiefly, the class-action lawsuit, which has a long legal pedigree and can deliver nationwide rulings that cover even people not initially parties to a lawsuit.

Attorneys file class-action lawsuits for some plaintiffs but argue there are more. They ask a judge to certify the class, which means the eventual ruling can cover everyone “similarly situated.”

Plaintiffs must meet stricter requirements to prove that broad relief is necessary. Class actions bind all class members to the outcome, meaning a government win would prevail nationwide.

Under the universal injunction system, plaintiffs could sue in multiple courts but needed to prevail in only one, where a judge was willing to issue a universal injunction to stop the president.

Justice Barrett said injunctions can be issued quickly on the barest of briefings. Appeals courts are asked to rule on them in a matter of days or even hours.

Mr. Trump’s opponents said the president’s birthright citizenship changes cried out for a universal ruling.

Otherwise, they said, a child born to temporary migrant parents in one state could be recognized as a citizen while another child born just across the state line might not be.

“In the face of authoritarian attacks, we’re filing a class-action lawsuit to defend the fundamental rights of immigrant families across the country,” said Aarti Kohli, executive director of Asian Law Caucus.

The Congressional Research Service identified 25 nationwide injunctions against Trump administration actions during its first 100 days.

The Justice Department suggests the number is higher, with at least 40 issued as of last month.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said 35 were issued by judges in just five of the country’s more than 90 judicial districts, underscoring the problems with universal injunctions.

Both parties have complained about and cheered universal injunctions at times.

Republicans cheered when a federal judge in southern Texas issued a universal injunction that halted President Obama’s 2014 attempt to create an executive amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants by building off his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Democrats cheered as a judge in Washington state halted Mr. Trump’s first travel ban in 2017.

Republicans again hailed court injunctions stopping President Biden’s immigration and environmental policies.

Democrats are now begging courts to stop Mr. Trump’s unprecedented use of executive authority to cut spending, reshape the federal bureaucracy, enforce immigration laws and rewrite the global order of trade policy.

Although the justices largely ignored the legality of Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship policy in their ruling, the debate will eventually return to the high court.

At issue is whether Mr. Trump’s directive to federal agencies not to recognize automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrant or temporary visitor parents conflicts with federal law or the 14th Amendment.

That amendment recognizes citizenship for “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Mr. Trump argues that illegal immigrants and temporary visitors aren’t “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. and can be excluded.

Lower courts addressing the issue have delivered a tsunami of rulings against Mr. Trump, issuing broad blockades that stretch well beyond the parties in those cases.

The Supreme Court sent the cases back to the lower courts to narrow their injunctions. Mr. Trump must wait at least 30 days before trying to enforce his policy.

The judges in the cases have set speedy briefing schedules to figure out how to proceed.