Supreme Court Makes Biggest Ruling of Term
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We got a bombshell of a Supreme Court decision. Have a seat for this one, everybody. The United States Supreme Court 6-3 MAGA majority has just ruled for the first time in American history that federal courts...

The district court level, the first line of defense to protect our Constitution, no longer have the power to issue nationwide or what's called universal injunctions to block abuses of executive power. Now it's going to have to be done through individual class action cases that

and or individual lawsuits in all 50 states about something so fundamental like birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment. No, the United States Supreme Court didn't just rule that the 14th Amendment can be changed by executive order like Donald Trump wants. But it did just...

totally turn upside down and reverse about 100 years of precedent, allowing federal courts at the district court level and at the court of appeals level to issue injunctions that stop an abuse of power by the executive branch. No, says the supermajority, the MAGA majority, led by Amy Coney Barrett and joined by all the usual suspects, Roberts, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh. What they say is,

No, you can't ever use it because it's not part of the history of America. And the only court that's allowed to make effectively a nationwide declaration about whether the executive branch is out of control or not is the United States Supreme Court, which means only the parties that are in front of that judge. You know, we have three different nationwide injunctions that just got struck down or stopped.

about birthright citizenship. We got Maryland, we got Massachusetts, we got California, sorry, Seattle, Washington. They're all only now about those states. What about the other 47 states and the people born in those states under the 14th Amendment? No, the Supreme Court says, well, we're not here on the merits of the 14th Amendment.

That's for another day. We're only about whether a nationwide injunction can go beyond the very parties that are in front of the judge, and it cannot. We are now going to take back the power to declare things in due course with a right order of operation, as Kavanaugh said, about a case.

Meaning we only got two ways now to rein in an abuse of power lawless, or as Amy Coney, as Katonji Brown Jackson says in her dissent, I'll read from, a law-free zone of Donald Trump. Use a class action, which means you have to go through Rule 23 of the Rules of Civil Procedure to certify a class. It's a time-consuming process. And then you've got to have the class action.

And then you have to have a ruling about it. That's one. Or two, you've got to move quickly off of a preliminary injunction, get it up on an emergency basis to a willing appellate court, get it up on an emergency basis to a willing United States Supreme Court to make a declaration about the substance of the matter, the merits of the case. So as of right now, let me just summarize it this way as I continue this hot take. I'm Michael Popak on the Midas Touch Network.

I might have gotten so breathless I forgot to identify the channel or myself. What it means for right now is that those three judges that have blocked the executive order of Donald Trump on birthright citizenship have to move now quickly, now that the case has been returned to them, over the next 30 days. Narrow their injunction from a nationwide injunction to a narrow injunction only involving that state

Particularly, then those lawyers have to move quickly and they will, like the ACLU, Democracy Now!, Democracy Forward, move quickly to get to the appellate court quickly, get a ruling there declaring Donald Trump's 14th Amendment attack to be unconstitutional, then take an emergency application to a Supreme Court.

I mean, that is what even Sotomayor in her dissent, two dissents, one by Jackson, one by Sotomayor, even she lays out the roadmap of how to use the class action vehicle and or the direct appeal, get to the Supreme Court to make the ruling. So birthright citizenship is still existing in the twilight because of this ruling. Let's dive into it. I'm Michael Popak. All right. So.

The case is called Trump versus Casa Incorporated. It will now go down in constitutional jurisprudence as one of the worst upside down decisions I have ever seen. And I've been practicing for 35 years. We were troubled on Legal AF on the Midas Dutch Network originally when the Supreme Court decided to take up

Not the challenge to the underlying substance of the merits of the constitutional attack by Donald Trump on the 14th Amendment. Not taking on the executive order that destroys or tries to destroy birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment guarantee. The Supreme Court said, no, no, we're not dealing with the substance. We're only dealing with the remedy fashioned by the court.

in three different courts about nationwide injunctions. Kavanaugh has hated universal injunctions. Alito has hated them. Kavanaugh has hated them. And they saw this as the opportunity. Unfortunately, right below it is a major issue that screams out for the equitable powers of a judge to fashion an appropriate relief system.

that protects against a nationwide declaration. See, now we have nothing to match. You've got Trump making nationwide, global, universal declarations and federal judges not able to rein him in to match with a universal or global injunction. And Amy Coney Barrett writing for the court says that's okay.

If you see an abuse of power by the president, the answer to that is not an abuse of power by the courts. The courts are limited by Congress and the Judiciary Act of 1789 and precedent to only have the equitable powers that Congress has given them or the Constitution has given them. And she said, I looked through 200 years of precedent, and I don't see any precedent for universal injunctions, even though the United States Supreme Court before the MAGA majority, which

They endorsed nationwide injunctions in dozens and dozens of cases and never called it out. But now that they got the numbers, now it's now destroyed. So the definitive ruling, which I'm going to read to you from, is that there is no longer an ability generally for a trial court level judge or an appellate court level judge to issue an injunction other than for the parties or class of parties that are in front of them.

And if you want to oppose a nationwide declaration by a president for an abuse of power, you're going to have to do it case by case or class action by class action, then take it to an appellate court, then try to get the Supreme Court interested, and then have the Supreme Court make the declaration, oh, the executive order on 14th Amendment attack, yeah, that's unconstitutional. As babies are born in this twilight, are they American citizens? Aren't they? Red states denying they're U.S. citizens in the meantime.

Not giving them federal programs, not giving them federal funding, not giving them schooling, education, health care, literacy, poverty alleviation programs, denying them while the blue states, of course, don't do that. And then we're just waiting around to get the case back up to the United States Supreme Court one month, two months, three months, two years from now. Let me read to you from the dissents first, then I'll go back to the actual rulings. I kind of gave you the outline of the actual rulings.

Here's what Katonji Brown Jackson said. She said on page 14 of her dissent, "I am not the first to observe that a legal system that operates on two different tracks, one of which grants to the executive, Trump, the prerogative to disregard the law is anathema to the rule of law. Thus, the law-free zone that results from this court's near elimination of universal injunctions is not an unfamiliar archetype.

Also eerily echoing history's horrors is the fact that today's prerogative zone is unlikely to impact the public in a randomly distributed manner. Those in the good graces of the executive have nothing to fear. The new prerogative that the executive has to act unlawfully will not be exercised with respect to them. Those who accede to the executive's demands, too, will be in the clear. Those that bend the knee, that obey.

The wealthy and the well-connected will have little difficulty securing legal representation, going to court and obtaining injunctive relief in their own name if the executive violates their rights.

The zone of lawlessness the majority has now authorized will disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, and the unpopular, those who may not have the wherewithal to lawyer up and will all too often find themselves beholden to the executive's whims. This is yet another crack in the foundation of the rule of law, which requires equality and justice in its application."

And the majority skips over these consequences. She also says on page 16 that the court's dismissive treatment, she means the majority, of the solemn duties and responsibilities of the lower courts is also destructive. Sworn judicial officers, the lower courts must now put on blinders and take a see no evil stance with respect to harmful executive conduct, even though those same officials have already announced that such conduct is likely unconstitutional.

but their claim is that Executive Order No. 14-160, that's the attack on the birthright citizenship, violates the Constitution. If the court agrees with them, why on earth must it permit the unconstitutional government action to take effect at all? So to Mayor...

similarly spends a considerable amount of time reminding everybody what this case is about. Even though the majority came out and said, we are not ruling on birthright citizenship. We're only ruling on nationwide injunctions. The substance and merits of birthright citizenship is for another day. Sure, as babies are born in red states denied citizenship. Sotomayor says in her dissent,

She says on page 15 of her dissent, it is a bedrock principle that parties who request to stay must show they will likely suffer irreparable harm. Because Amy Coney Barrett for the majority said they're going to suffer irreparable harm. We were like, well, what is the irreparable harm? That you can't strip constitutionally protected birthright citizenship away from babies? No, according to Amy Coney Barrett, the majority. The irreparable harm is that the judiciary is exceeding their power under the Judiciary Act of 1789.

To which Sotomayor says, what grave harm does the executive face that prompts a majority of this court to grant its relief? The answer, the government says, is the inability to enforce the citizenship order against non-parties. The problem, however, is that the executive branch has no right to enforce the citizenship order against anyone. It is unquestionably unconstitutional.

It defies logic to say that maintaining a centuries-long status quo for a few months longer will irreparably injure the government. She also has an invitation where she invites people to bring class actions. She's basically laying out a roadmap that the states and others should use

In order to oppose and bring this quickly to the Supreme Court, she says on page two, the government does not ask for complete stays of the injunction as it ordinarily does. Why? The answer is obvious. To get such relief, the government would have to show that the order is likely constitutional.

The order against birthright citizenship of the 14th Amendment, an impossible task in light of the Constitution's text, history, this court's precedents, federal law and executive branch practice. So the government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asked this court to hold that no matter how illegal a law or policy. Courts can never simply tell the executive to stop enforcing it against anyone. Instead, the government says it should be able to apply the citizenship order.

whose legality it does not defend to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit. The gamesmanship in this request is apparent, yet shamefully the court plays along. A majority of this court, Sotomayor writes, decides that these applications of all cases provides the appropriate occasion to resolve the question of universal injunctions and the centuries-old practice once and for all. In its rush to do so, it disregards basic principles of equity as well as the long history of injunctive relief.

granted to non-parties. Kavanaugh and others in their concurrences are like, yeah, we don't want this to be a new slippery slope where class actions are now being used inappropriately, trying to shut all the other exit ramps. So here's what happens next. Let me end the hot take this way. Here's what happens next.

The lawyers will now scramble to get back in front of the judges to narrow and recast the injunctions already in place in Washington State, Massachusetts and in Maryland to the parties involved. They'll then also seek class action certification to certify a class of all those similarly situated.

OK, so they'll have these double barreled approach. Then they will there will be an appellate, hopefully a fast appellate process through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the First Circuit Court of Appeals. They will likely rule against the Trump administration on the merits of the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship. Then they parties who are on the losing end.

We'll seek an expedited emergency application over the summer, even though this is the last day of the term, from this same Supreme Court. Now on the merits. Yes or no? Thumbs up or thumbs down, MAGA? Are you going to strip 14th Amendment citizenship?

Birthright citizenship and it's beating hard out of the Constitution by way of a presidential executive order. Yes or no. So we may be talking about this over the summer or at the beginning of the new fall term in October. In the meantime, babies born and their mothers and families are in purgatory.

created by this United States Supreme Court. We'll follow it closely here on the Midas Touch Network. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel. And in addition to that, Legal AF, the Substack, where I'm posting this 120-page combined decision so that you can read it for yourself. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak.

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