LOS ANGELES (TNS) — The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. CASA, Inc., but only on the issue of whether individual federal district court judges can halt a presidential action in the entire country, possibly for years.

President Donald Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” signed on his first day back as president, declared that U.S. citizenship would not be automatic for children born in the United States to parents who are in the country temporarily or illegally. Lawsuits followed, but the Supreme Court was not yet considering the merits of the lawsuits or the constitutionality of the order.

Susan Shelley

The justices were only considering whether U.S. District Court judges, one level below the federal Courts of Appeals, have the power under the Judiciary Act of 1789 to impose a universal injunction that stops “executive branch officials from applying the Executive Order to anyone, not just the plaintiffs” in the case before that court.

By a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court held that universal injunctions “likely exceed” the authority that Congress has given to federal courts. So the Trump administration’s applications for “partial stays” of the lower court injunctions were granted, allowing the executive branch to develop and issue “public guidance” about how the Executive Order on birthright citizenship would be implemented.

The majority opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett left some avenues open for these and other plaintiffs to pursue nationwide relief, such as potential class actions. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh pointed out in separate concurring opinions that the issue of universal injunctions had many paths back to the Supreme Court in future cases.

Still, the ruling put a significant dent in the ability of district court judges to “roam at large in the trackless fields of their own imaginations,” as an early 19th century jurist, New York Supreme Court Chief Justice James Kent, described the problem.

One justice who supports roaming in trackless fields is the newest member of the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. She wrote a separate dissenting opinion, in which she complained that the “legalese” in the majority’s opinion was a “smokescreen” to obscure “a far more basic question of enormous legal and practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?”

That question is an acid trip through a trackless field, because one district court judge does not determine what the law is. If every district court judge in the United States had the power to halt an action of the elected government for years every time somebody filed a lawsuit complaining about it, we could cancel elections for the rest of time.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has moved in the direction of restoring some of the constitutional accountability that existed before Congress began delegating its power to “independent” agencies and courts began usurping policy-making powers. For example, in West Virginia v. EPA (2022), the court said the Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its authority with an expansive interpretation of Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act that would force the closure of existing power plants. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that it was a “major questions case,” a doctrine that “took hold” because of a “particular and recurring problem: agencies asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.”

In another instance of the court pulling power back from unelected bureaucrats, the justices reversed the 40-year-old “Chevron doctrine” with their decision last year in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Under the “Chevron doctrine,” federal courts deferred to agencies’ interpretations of the law on the theory that agency officials were the best experts. However, this made unelected bureaucrats the prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner of any person or entity accused of failure to comply with an agency regulation. With the Loper Bright decision, the Supreme Court restored a meaningful path to challenge a government agency’s rulings in federal court.

President Trump entered his second term determined to end the permanent bureaucracy’s ability to willfully block the policies of the elected president and Congress. He signed executive orders reorganizing the federal workforce and withdrawing civil service protection from employees with responsibility for policy implementation. He fired the heads of independent agencies that answer to no one. Immediately there were lawsuits, and federal district judges rushed to issue temporary restraining orders for the short term, followed by preliminary injunctions that could have lasted for years until the lawsuits were finally resolved.

Many of Trump’s executive actions seem designed to tee up specific issues for the Supreme Court, inviting the reversal of decisions that date back decades, such as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt fired a Federal Trade commissioner who did not support the New Deal. Commissioner William Humphrey sued, arguing that he could not be fired over policy differences because the FTC was independent. Roosevelt contended that a president must be able to replace executive branch officials who disagree with the president’s policies. Roosevelt lost that argument. Trump might win it. He eventually may win the cases related to enforcing immigration law, too, regardless of whether lower courts rule against him.

The structure of government in the United States limits and divides power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Over the years, the lines have been smudged by Congress delegating power to agencies or the president, and by courts usurping policy-making powers that the framers of the Constitution excluded them from having.

Our system of government works as intended when the people elected to run the government are accountable to the voters for government decisions. It doesn’t work as intended when the voters elect people to run the government, but the people who actually run the government were never elected.

The country has put almost 250 years on the engine. We’re due for a tune-up.

(Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley)