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By Limiting Nationwide Injunctions, Supreme Court Declares 'Open Season on All Our Rights'
In a ruling that stems from the president's birthright citizenship order, the "conservative supermajority just took away lower courts' single most powerful tool for reining in the Trump administration's lawless excesses."
Jun 27, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a flurry of decisions Friday morning, including a ruling related to U.S. President Donald Trump's attack on birthright citizenship that led legal experts, elected Democrats, immigrants, and rights advocates to warn—as MoveOn Civic Action spokesperson Britt Jacovich put it—that the justices "just made it easier for Trump to take away your rights."
Three different federal judges had granted nationwide injunctions blocking Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship with an executive order that Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, described as "blatantly illegal and cruel." Rather than considering the constitutionality of the president's order, the justices examined the relief provided by lower courts.
"The Supreme Court has green-lighted Trump to run roughshod over a critical constitutional right. This is not a slide into authoritarianism—this is a one-way plummet."
In Friday's 6-3 ruling for Trump v. CASA, the right-wing justices held that "universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts," with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, delivering the majority opinion.
"The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority just took away lower courts' single most powerful tool for reining in the Trump administration's lawless excesses," wrote Slate's Mark Joseph Stern. "I understand there is some debate about the scope of this ruling, but my view remains that the Supreme Court has just effectively abolished universal injunctions, at least as we know them. The question now is really whether lower courts can craft something to replace them that still sweeps widely."
"Trump's Justice Department is about to file a motion in every lower court where it faces a universal injunction citing this case and arguing that the injunction must be narrowed," the journalist explained. "This will have huge downstream consequences for a ton of other extraordinarily important and controversial cases."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a dissent, joined by the other two liberals, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also wrote her own. Many other critics of the high court's majority decision echoed their warnings about the expected consequences of the ruling.
"The Supreme Court has green-lighted Trump to run roughshod over a critical constitutional right. This is not a slide into authoritarianism—this is a one-way plummet," said Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper, co-executive directors of the grassroots coalition Popular Democracy, in a Friday statement.
"This ruling takes away the power of lower courts to block unconstitutional moves from the government on a federal level— allowing the government to act with impunity and apply law inconsistently across the country," they stressed. "As Justice Sotomayor wrote, 'No right is safe in the new legal regime this court creates.'"
Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants and a citizen by birthright, said Friday that "I agree, Judge Sotomayor, no right is safe under the new regime, not even the ones clearly guaranteed under our Constitution."
"For more than 100 years, the 14th Amendment has reaffirmed that all people born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, with equal rights under the law. It has been and is the law of the land, consistently upheld by courts and scholars across the political spectrum," she noted. "But in limiting nationwide injunctions, Trump's loyalists have decided to—once again—put him above the rule of law, our Constitution, and the principles of our nation."
Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog Accountable.US, highlighted that same line from Sotomayor and also explained that "results like this are the result of a yearslong takeover by Trump and special interest allies to capture the courts and install conservative majorities that help him advance an extreme ideological agenda."
"Let's be clear: The Trump administration appealed this case to undermine the power of federal judges, rather than address his blatantly unconstitutional executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship," Ciccone said.
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs at the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said that "as Justice Jackson notes, '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.'"
"Today, six justices on the Supreme Court eliminated one of the most effective checks on Donald Trump, clearing a path for him to impose his extreme, anti-democratic agenda on any American who can't afford a lawyer or doesn't join the game of litigation Whac-A-Mole now required to protect their basic rights," he added. "This ruling should send a chill down every American's spine."
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) also described the decision as chilling and argued on social media that "the Supreme Court is declaring open season on all our rights."
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, called out the high court for failing "every American," and said that "we must heed Justice Jackson's warning," citing that same line from her dissent.
Maggie Jo Buchanan, interim executive director of the group Demand Justice, pointed to another line, agreeing that "as Justice Jackson wrote in her dissent, the court has created an 'existential threat' to the rule of law and the system of checks and balances upon which our nation was founded."
"The same six justices who gave Trump king-like immunity for criminal acts have now limited the ability of the judicial branch to protect everyday Americans from unconstitutional or illegal executive overreach," she said, referring to a decision issued a year ago. "Just as Republican leaders in Congress duck their heads and carry out Trump's bidding, the Republican appointees on the court do so as well."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also took aim at both his GOP colleagues and the justices, saying that "the Supreme Court's decision to limit courts of their long-held authority to block illegal executive actions is an unprecedented and terrifying step toward authoritarianism, a grave danger to our democracy, and a predictable move from this extremist MAGA court."
"Congressional Republicans have to choose between being bystanders or co-conspirators," Schumer added, urging them to challenge Trump. "Congress must check this unimpeded power, but for that to happen, Republican members must stand up for core American democratic values and not for unchecked presidential power of the kind that our Founders most deeply feared."
In addition to sounding the alarm about what the high court's decision means for all future legal battles, critics noted that although the justices didn't weigh in on Trump's birthright citizenship order, it could soon start to impact families nationwide.
"The administration's attempt to deny citizenship to many children born in the United States is unquestionably unconstitutional, and nothing in today's Supreme Court opinion suggests otherwise. Yet, the court has nonetheless created a real risk that the administration's unconstitutional order will go into effect in many parts of the country in 30 days," said Sam Spital, associate director-counsel at the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), vowing to continue the fight against the order.
FWD.us president Todd Schulte pointed out that with its new ruling, "the Supreme Court has opened the door to a fractured system in which a child born in one state is recognized as a citizen, but a child born in another is not."
"If the president's order is allowed to go into effect by the lower courts, there will be immediate chaos for parents, hospitals, and local officials, and long-term harm for families and communities across the country," he warned.
Juana, a pregnant mother, CASA member, and named plaintiff in a lawsuit over the order, said Friday that "I'm heartbroken that the Supreme Court chose to limit protections instead of standing firmly for all families like mine."
"Every child born here deserves the same rights, no matter who their parents are," Juana declared. "I joined this lawsuit not just for my baby, but for every child who deserves to be recognized as fully American from their first breath. We won't stop fighting until that promise is real for everyone."
Shortly after the ruling, organizations including the ACLU, Democracy Defenders Fund, and LDF filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a proposed class of babies subject to Trump's executive order and their parents.
"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. "Our plaintiffs, and millions of families across this country, deserve clarity, stability, and justice. We look forward to making our case in court again."
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Supreme Court Porn ID Ruling 'A Blow to Freedom of Speech and Privacy,' Says ACLU
"The legislature claims to be protecting children from sexually explicit materials, but the law will do little to block their access, and instead deters adults from viewing vast amounts of First Amendment-protected content," said Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU.
Jun 27, 2025
Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law requiring users to share personal identification to view adult material online.
The law, which mandates websites that host sexual content to require users to provide photo IDs or biometric scans to verify that they are over 18, was challenged by several adult websites and free speech organizations. They argued that it violated adult users' First Amendment rights.In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines siding with Texas, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion that the law "only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults," and therefore did not require "strict scrutiny" from the Court.
But advocates for free speech and online security have warned that such laws—which have passed in 24 states—have the potential to be much more invasive, both to personal expression and privacy.
Following the ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) decried the Court's decision as "a blow to freedom of speech and privacy."
"The Supreme Court has departed from decades of settled precedents that ensured that sweeping laws purportedly for the benefit of minors do not limit adults' access to First Amendment-protected materials," said Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU. "The legislature claims to be protecting children from sexually explicit materials, but the law will do little to block their access, and instead deters adults from viewing vast amounts of First Amendment-protected content."
The ACLU's concerns echoed those expressed in Justice Elena Kagan's dissenting opinion, in which she said the court should have applied "strict scrutiny," which would have required the bill to use the least restrictive means possible to meet its goal. Applying strict scrutiny is standard in cases involving content related restrictions on expression, and has been used in past cases related to obscenity.
"No one doubts that the distribution of sexually explicit speech to children, of the sort involved here, can cause great harm," she added. "But the First Amendment protects those sexually explicit materials, for every adult. So a state cannot target that expression, as Texas has here, any more than is necessary to prevent it from reaching children."
During oral arguments in January, Kagan warned of the potential "spillover danger" if the court were to weaken strict scrutiny for free expression cases.
"You relax strict scrutiny in one place," she said, "and all of a sudden, strict scrutiny gets relaxed in other places."
Friday's ruling comes as red states have introduced laws increasingly cracking down on public discussion of sex and gender.
These have included laws banning sexual education or the discussion of LGBTQ+ identities in schools, bans on books containing "divisive" topics including sex and gender, and bans on drag shows in public spaces. Many states have also introduced laws allowing parents to challenge books containing "divisive" concepts, including discussions of sexuality and LGBTQ+ identity.
On Friday, the Supreme Court also ruled on religious liberty grounds in favor of parents' rights to opt their children out from classes with storybooks involving LGBTQ+ characters.
"As it has been throughout history, pornography is once again the canary in the coal mine of free expression," said Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, which was one of the plaintiffs in the Texas case.
Beyond burdening adults' free expression, critics warned that requiring photo identification poses a privacy risk to porn viewers.
The conservative justices defended the law as tantamount to others that require identification to access alcohol or to enter adults-only spaces. In his majority opinion, Thomas wrote that the law is "appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data."
However, Kagan argued in her dissent that requiring photo ID for online activity is fundamentally different because the user has no idea if their identifying information is being tracked or logged.
"It is turning over information about yourself and your viewing habits—respecting speech many find repulsive—to a website operator, and then to… who knows?" she said.
Evan Greer, founder of the online privacy advocacy group Fight for the Future, wrote on BlueSky that the ruling bodes ill for internet privacy more generally.
"This is bad in a variety of ways that have nothing to do with porn and everything to do with expanding invasive surveillance of every single internet user, including all adults," Greer said.
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'Dangerous Power Grab' as Supreme Court Sides With DOGE on Social Security Data
"This action by six far-right justices is an affront to every principle of government transparency and the rule of law."
Jun 07, 2025
Defenders of Social Security are responding with critical anger to a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday that side with the Trump administration in a legal battle over access to sensitive data of tens of millions of Americans by the Department of Government Efficiency, the government-eviscerating agency first spearheaded by right-wing libertarian and mega-billionaire Elon Musk.
The unsigned emergency order from the court came in response to an emergency application from the Trump administration defending DOGE's ability to have access to Social Security databases that two labor unions, alongside the Alliance for Retired Americans, had file a legal suit to protect. By its ruling, the Supreme Court stayed a lower federal court's ruling that said DOGE must "disgorge" and "delete" any of the data it accessed or downloaded from the agency files.
While the underlying case plays out, DOGE is now authorized to retain the data and access to the information, which critics say cannot be entrusted to the newly-created department and unvetted personnel who control it.
"This is a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people," said the coalition behind the challenge in response to the decision. "This ruling will enable President Trump and DOGE's affiliates to steal Americans' private and personal data. Elon Musk may have left Washington, D.C., but his impact continues to harm millions of people. We will continue to use every legal tool at our disposal to keep unelected bureaucrats from misusing the public's most sensitive data as this case moves forward."
"If Americans' personal Social Security data is misused or abused by this administration, the Supreme Court's majority will have been fully complicit."
While the majority ruling was unsigned, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elana Kagan backed what was described as a "blistering" dissent, authored by Jackson, countering the determination and warning against continued access for DOGE while the case makes its way through the lower courts.
"On the one hand, there is a repository of millions of Americans' legally protected, highly sensitive information that—if improperly handled or disseminated—risks causing significant harm," she wrote. "On the other, there is the government's desire to ditch the usual protocols for accessing that data, before the courts have even determined whether DOGE's access is lawful."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, called the majority's ruling "extremely troubling" for a host of reasons.
"We echo the concerns of the minority, as articulated by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, that the decision creates 'grave privacy risks' by giving DOGE 'unfettered data access — despite its failure to show any need or any interest in complying with existing privacy safeguards,'" said Richtman. "It is hard to justify the court's action, especially in light of the incompetent, reckless manner in which DOGE has already interfered with the operations of the Social Security Administration, prompting a spike in new Social Security claims by older people who fear the situation will only get worse."
Devon Ombres, senior director for Courts and Legal Policy at the center-left Center for American Progress, echoed those concerns.
"This action by six far-right justices is an affront to every principle of government transparency and the rule of law. DOGE has shown no need to review every American’s personal information, and the high court provides no explanation in granting it access," said Ombres. "Americans have no way to know how DOGE will use or misuse this information, nor what DOGE is or what it is doing. Shame on the court for rubber-stamping this administration’s lawlessness and further undermining the public’s trust in government, which President Trump has eroded."
Citing Musk, who recently left his position at DOGE and has been engaged in a high-profile spat with President Donald Trump in recent days, Richtman said the Tesla and SpaceX founder and world's richest man cannot be trusted, giving the lies he told about Social Security fraud that "undermined people's faith in the system."
"This hardly inspires confidence that DOGE has either the sense of ethics or public service to be entrusted with Americans' private data, leading us to believe that the court simply is abetting another dangerous power grab by the Executive branch," said Richtman. "If Americans' personal Social Security data is misused or abused by this administration, the Supreme Court's majority will have been fully complicit."
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