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Amy Coney Barrett was Right about Something [1]

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Date: 2025-07-20

Defending the 6-3 rightwing majority of the Supeme Court’s decision in Trump v CARA, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was right about something. Barrett wrote, “universal injunctions were not a feature of federal court litigation until sometime in the 20th century . . . such injunctions remained rare until the turn of the 21st century, when their use gradually accelerated. Ninety-six of them — over three quarters — were issued during the administrations of President George W. Bush, President Obama, President Trump, and President Biden.” Until this Supreme Court decision, nationwide injunctions preventing government action issued by a federal district court would put a hold on implementing a Presidential Executive Order. Barrett concluded that the absence of universal injunctions by federal district courts “renders any claim of historical pedigree” implausible.

But of course, the United States never before had a political party like the current Republican Party that since the 1990s has been undermining the functioning of the federal government and a criminal in the White House that treats the Constitution with total contempt. Barrett noted, without apparent understanding why, that “[d]uring the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions.”

Prior to the 1990s when a Republican majority in the House of Representatives tried to shut down the federal government, Presidential Executive Orders were also rare except in the time of war. While setting up the national government, President George Washing ton issued only eight Executive Orders and the next five Presidents issued a total of 10. The first big jump was during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era when the United States was trying to figure out a post-slavery society. Presidents Johnson, Grant, and Hayes issued 388 Executive Orders. The greatest number of Executive Orders were issued during national emergencies by President Wilson during World War I (1,803) and President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression and World War II (3,727).

Trump appointee Barrett is correct that prior to 1963, broad lower court injunctions were exceedingly rare, and according to some legal definitions of what constitutes a universal injunction and may have actually been none. Again, according to the definition used, about 25 universal injunctions were issued between 1963 and 2000. However during Donald Trump’s first term as President, the number of universal injunctions skyrocketed because of illegal or unconstitutional actions by Trump that led to over 50, and by some definitions over 60, district court ordered nationwide injunctions.

The majority decision written by Barrett used limitations on lower court injunctions to allow Trump’s Executive Order 14160 redefining American citizenship to go into effect without ruling on the legality of an action that defies the 14th amendment to the Constitution awarding birthright citizenship to anyone residing in the United States and subject to its laws. Because of the ways the legal system operates, it could take years for the substantive issue to reach the Supreme Court and in the meantime there will be a chaotic situation where a person born in one state will be recognized as a United States citizen and a person born in another state will be denied citizenship rights.

In a dissent to the majority decision in Trump v. CASA, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson charged that the court’s decision marked an “existential threat to the rule of law” because “It gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate.” Justice Jackson has accused the Court’s rightwing majority of distorting the law, and twisting” the meaning of the text of the Constitution and employing a “hyper narrow reading of American history” to justify their preconceived ideological interpretations of the law.

Justice Jackson concluded her dissent in Trump v. CASA “Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway. But this Court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.”

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