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- [00:06]
Jessica Mendoza
Last Friday, the Supreme Court issued its final rulings of the session, and they included a major decision.
- [00:14]
Jess Bravin
The decision that the entire country was waiting for. The Supreme Court ruled on universal injunctions.
- [00:19]
Unnamed Legal Analyst
This is the power of a single judge to block an executive order for the entire country. The decision which resulted from a case related to an executive order on birthright citizenship.
- [00:30]
Jess Bravin
This is a big win for President Trump.
- [00:32]
Unnamed Legal Analyst
The court ruled 6 to 3 along partisan lines.
- [00:39]
Jessica Mendoza
That ruling wasn't even on the Supreme Court's original schedule. It's one of many cases this session that the justices were asked to weigh in on. Our colleague Jess Bravin covers the high court, and he says that it's those cases that are coming to define this moment in the court's history.
- [00:55]
Jess Bravin
I think this last Supreme Court session, how it's remembered will depend a lot on what happens in the next Supreme Court session. And the reason is this, is that the most suspenseful and perhaps important decisions that we got in this past term were not from the regular docket. I mean, historically, those have been the most important cases, but not this term. The ones that I think have been most significant have been what they call the emergency docket or the shadow docket. And we won't have final decisions on the merits of those arguments at least until the end of next term. And it looks good for the administration based on most of the emergency decisions the Supreme Court has made, but they're still preliminary decisions. So I think we have to say this is really the first act and there's kind of a cliffhanger.
- [01:40]
Jessica Mendoza
Another season of the of SCOTUS under Trump 2.0, right?
- [01:44]
Jess Bravin
Haven't jumped the shark yet.
- [01:49]
Jessica Mendoza
Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, June, June 30th. Coming up on the show, the Skoda season finale explained.
- [02:18]
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- [02:46]
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- [03:21]
Jessica Mendoza
So President Trump took office in late January, and things heated up almost immediately. How did his administration sort of change things for the court, change the schedule for the court in some ways?
- [03:32]
Jess Bravin
Well, in one ways, it was not a big surprise. President Trump made clear he had a very ambitious, aggressive agenda. And so the things that he was talking about, the things that his supporters were talking about, were very aggressive interpretations of power, very dramatic changes to the way the government was organized and operated. And the president, as promised, the day he took office, he began issuing executive orders and presidential statements and so forth that very sharply tried to change a lot of things about the government.
- [04:05]
Jessica Mendoza
Many of those executive orders met legal challenges and ended up in federal court. Normally, what happens in those cases is that one side wins and the other side files an appeal to a higher court. That process can continue until the case reaches the highest court in the land. But Jess says that this year, a lot of cases wound up in front of the Supreme Court through a sort of shortcut, the emergency docket.
- [04:30]
Jess Bravin
It's the emergency docket because it involves asking the Supreme Court to intervene in litigation that's already going on. So there's already a lawsuit in the lower courts. And you think that they are so wrong that if this lower court order is allowed to remain in effect and your rights will be so damaged that it's an emergency, you need the Supreme Court to, you know, like the super friends to come in in an emergency and rescue you from the villainous lower courts that are interfering with your rights. And so that's what it is. It's an emergency.
- [05:02]
Jessica Mendoza
Has the emergency docket, has that been more packed than usual? Have we seen a lot more of them this year?
- [05:08]
Jess Bravin
Yes, it has. And that's because there are many, many more challenges to Trump administration policies. And that's because there are many, many more provisional orders blocking those policies, which come from many, many more lawsuits.
- [05:24]
Jessica Mendoza
I mean, what has that meant for the court? How were they able to keep up with that new workload?
- [05:29]
Jess Bravin
It's a lot more work for them. And this is likely to continue over this summer. So it has changed their workload a lot. And justices have sometimes talked about that, sometimes viewing it as kind of annoyance, sometimes more substantively into saying, look, we're making very consequential decisions based on very little information, and that's a problem, and maybe we should be having more hearings or find a way to make this at least more regular than it is.
- [05:56]
Jessica Mendoza
Right. These cases are these big, impactful decisions, and they only have so much time to really review the information, and they're not hearing oral arguments. It's just case after case after case. This year, the court has taken emergency cases over a variety of the Trump administration's actions. They include a ban on transgender service members in the military, the removal of officials from independent government agencies, and the repeal of temporary protected status for some migrants. In those cases and others like them, the court has often ruled in favor of the administration allowing the policy changes to take place. And so after the rulings from this session, how would you characterize how this Supreme Court views presidential authority and the power of the executive branch?
- [06:45]
Jess Bravin
This Supreme Court is very deferential to that. And so the Supreme Court, the way they're approaching, at least the majority, is that we're not ruling on Donald Trump. We're ruling on, like, a generic president. Most presidents have not tried, across the board, so many aggressive assertions of unilateral power. And so you could say this court is trying to be very neutral and not have, like, a Trump specific type of decision. So we know this is a court that is very deferential to executive power, and that's the message.
- [07:22]
Jessica Mendoza
And on the very last day of this term, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that could change the relationship between the judicial and executive branches of government. That's next.
- [07:42]
Unnamed Legal Analyst
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- [08:15]
Jessica Mendoza
One of the first executive orders President Trump issued when he took office in January had to do with birthright citizenship. That's the constitutional right that anyone born on US Soil is automatically a US Citizen.
- [08:28]
Jess Bravin
He issued an order that said anyone born in the United States whose parents, or at least who does not have one parent with lawful permanent residency, does not get U.S. citizenship. And that's an interpretation of the 14th Amendment that's never been applied before. It's always been applied since the 19th century, as if you're born in the United States, you're a citizen, regardless of your parents legal status. And so he wanted to change that. And the way he wanted to change that was not by amending the Constitution, that which is normally how you change it. It was to say the interpretation of the Constitution that has been the norm for more than a century is wrong. My interpretation is right, and I'm just going to impose it. And that got immediate pushback.
- [09:13]
Jessica Mendoza
That pushback took the form of lawsuits brought to court by New Jersey and other Democratic led states, and one filed by pregnant women concerned about their future children's status. In each case, the Trump administration lost in the lower courts, and federal judges issued nationwide injunctions that stopped the policy from taking effect. In response, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to step in, and it.
- [09:38]
Jess Bravin
Asked the Supreme Court not to say we are right on the issue, but to say, simply said, tell the lower courts that they have exceeded their power in blocking the policy nationwide. We're not going to challenge the court's right to protect the individual plaintiff from our allegedly illegal action. The person who goes to court. They get an injunction, they are protected, but it shouldn't protect anybody else. Only the litigant.
- [10:06]
Jessica Mendoza
Trump and his administration say that federal judges should not have the power to issue nationwide injunctions. And they aren't the only ones.
- [10:15]
Jess Bravin
Democratic presidents don't like it when a very conservative judge in South Texas issues a ruling that, you, you know, takes mifepristone off the market, or, you know, they don't like that either. And they don't think it's unfair that, you know, the litigant can pick a judge somewhere who they think they're going to get a good hearing from and then stop a project for the whole country. And, you know, as one government lawyer said, you know, our opponents, they just have to win somewhere once. We have to win every single case that's brought against us everywhere in the country about a policy in order to implement our policy. So that question of universal injunctions has been brewing for years, but it has really been an issue for the Trump administration because they've accused judges who've enjoined some of their policies of being radicals and insurrectionists and tyrannical.
- [11:05]
Jessica Mendoza
So this decision isn't actually about birthright citizenship. It's about whether or not lower courts have the power to pause policy changes that apply nationwide. And in the end, the court ruled in favor of the Trump administration. Do we know what the majority said in its decision?
- [11:23]
Jess Bravin
Yes, the majority said that federal courts don't have a license to stop the government from acting illegally across the board. They only have a license to decide cases that are in front of them between particular litigants, and therefore, they should not issue Injunctions that go beyond what is necessary to provide relief to the party before it.
- [11:48]
Jessica Mendoza
What did the president say with regards to this ruling?
- [11:51]
Jess Bravin
President was overjoyed.
- [11:52]
Unnamed Legal Analyst
This was a big decision.
- [11:55]
Jessica Mendoza
An amazing.
- [11:56]
Unnamed Legal Analyst
Decision, one that we're very happy about.
- [11:59]
Jess Bravin
So this is one that he won, at least on this procedural thing, and he was delighted about it. And he thanked the justices in the majority by name for ruling in his favor.
- [12:13]
Jessica Mendoza
To be clear, the court did not weigh on the merits of the case. Arguments over birthright citizenship will likely take place next session. And though the ruling limits the use of nationwide injunctions, the justices did outline cases where federal judges can put a hold on national policy changes.
- [12:32]
Jess Bravin
Justice Amy Coney Barrett gave an example of how a remedy can affect everybody, even though it's only done in the name of one party. And the example she gave was this. Let's say your neighbor's playing a music too loud at night and you get like a court order or something, like turn off the radio after 10pm or something. Right. Well, there's no way to enforce that without also bringing relief to all the other people in the neighborhood. So in other words, all the neighbors don't have to file their own lawsuit in municipal court against the guy with the music after 10pm Right. Only one person has to do that. And then if he has to turn off the music, everyone benefits. So she gave that as an example of how there's a universal remedy. You know, the only way to give a remedy to the party is to do it in a way that protects everybody.
- [13:19]
Jessica Mendoza
And so is this ruling as big a victory as Trump says?
- [13:24]
Jess Bravin
It was a significant victory, and it was also significant in that the court really accepted the, you know, procedural framework that the Justice Department put forward. So it was a big victory. There's no question about that. Does it allow him to do anything he wants anytime, anywhere? No, it doesn't. But it makes it easier for the government to implement its policies, so it gives them more of an edge. How much of an edge? We don't know.
- [13:48]
Jessica Mendoza
What about for the balance of power in government more broadly? What does this ruling mean for that? Does it limit the ability of the judicial branch to check the power of the executive branch?
- [14:00]
Jess Bravin
It limits the ability of the lower courts to do it. It doesn't limit the ability of the Supreme Court to do it, in other words. And if there's ever any occasion where there's a case before them where they believe that they need to step in, they can always do that. So they can always. And in fact, Justice Kavanaugh in a concurring opinion, pointed this out. He said, look, however these lower court injunctions go, people are going to race up to us either way, and we're going to get involved if it's that big an issue, sooner probably rather than later. So maybe this is not that big a deal because we already were deciding these, you know, whether these injunctions should stay or not up until now. And so, at least for now, the message is, you know, this is what you voted for, America, and we're not going to interfere with it, you know, unless we feel that we absolutely must.
- [14:53]
Jessica Mendoza
So, Jess, how significant is this moment in Skoda's history?
- [14:58]
Jess Bravin
I mean, I have to say that I think this is a real watershed moment for the Supreme Court, for the separation of powers, because we've never seen a situation where a president has been so aggressive in pushing the limits of his own power and Congress has been acquiescent to those decisions, that the Supreme Court is really the last official check on what the president can do and what it decides the president can do is going to set the terms not just for this guy, but for all the ones in the future. So this is a real essential time in defining not just what the Supreme Court is and what the presidency is, but really what is the nature of the American constitutional structure? And is it one where maybe you have three co equal branches, but one is more co equal than others? And that's the presidency. I mean, that's certainly what President Trump is implementing. I mean, that's what his actions reflect. And the extent to which that is true is something that's going to be decided through a series of cases by the Supreme Court.
- [16:16]
Jessica Mendoza
That's all for today. Monday, June 30th. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every Weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.