Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a scathing dissent in response to the Supreme Court’s majority opinion on Friday that limited federal judges’ ability to temporarily pause President Donald Trump’s executive orders nationwide.
The 6-3 decision, authored by Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, allows the president to implement his order to end automatic birthright citizenship as litigation on the matter continues. As The New York Times reported, “the practice of giving citizenship automatically to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary residents and visitors would end in the 28 states that have not challenged the order.”
The decision is expected to have far-reaching impacts on other aspects of the president’s agenda, as he stated later Friday that his administration “can now promptly file to proceed” with policies that had been subject to nationwide injunctions.
Jackson, the newest member of the court, joined fellow Democratic-appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissent that was also joined by Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee. But Jackson wrote a separate dissent as well, in which she warned that the court’s “decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”
She continued: It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called ‘universal injunctions’ is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says “do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,” what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution—please allow this. That is some solicitation. With its ruling today, the majority largely grants the Government’s wish. But, in my view, if this country is going to persist as a Nation of laws and not men, the Judiciary has no choice but to deny it. Scroll to Page 98 below to read Jackson’s full dissent, or click here.
Hayley Miller is the senior breaking news and blogs editor for MS NOW.
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