President Donald Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders aimed at reshaping immigration policy, only to see many of them tied up or halted by federal judges. Now, he’s looking to the Supreme Court to break that pattern.

On Thursday, the Justices will hear arguments in a high-stakes case that sits at the intersection of two fiercely contested areas of law: birthright citizenship and the power of federal courts to block presidential actions nationwide. While the case is ostensibly about Trump’s executive order ending automatic citizenship for the U.S.-born children of non-citizens, legal observers agree the real fight is over the judicial tool that has repeatedly thwarted Trump’s agenda: universal injunctions.

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The Trump Administration is not directly asking the court to review the constitutionality of its citizenship order, but is rather urging the Court to curtail or eliminate the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions, which have frozen Trump’s policy in place while litigation unfolds. Trump’s lawyers argue that universal injunctions exceed the constitutional authority of individual judges and prevent the government from implementing policy while cases wind through the courts. Broader relief, they say, should come only through mechanisms like class-action lawsuits—not sweeping injunctions issued by single district judges.

“These injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the Trump Administration,” the Justice Department wrote in a March filing, noting that more were issued in February 2025 alone than during the first three years of the Biden Administration.

If the Justices rule in Trump’s favor, his Administration could attempt to deny citizenship to thousands of children born in some states, while being barred from doing so in others.

Birthright citizenship

Trump’s executive order, issued on his first day back in office, would deny citizenship to babies born on American soil if both parents lack U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency—even if they are in the country legally on temporary visas. But legal experts say the order violates the doctrine of birthright citizenship guaranteed under the 14th Amendment and more than 120 years of court precedent set by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1898 ruling United States v. Wong Kim Ark. “This order is blatantly unconstitutional,” says Rachel Rosenbloom, a law professor at Northeastern University in Boston who is writing a book about the history of efforts to restrict constitutional birthright citizenship. “Many historians, legal scholars, and judges who have looked at this order have said there’s simply no way that this order is constitutional.”

Indeed, a lower court ruling by U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland read that “No court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation…This court will not be the first.”

Rosenbloom adds that Trump “is trying to radically restrict birthright citizenship” but notes that it’s not the first time the government has attempted to do so. “The government tried before in Wong Kim Ark but it failed… no court has endorsed the Trump Administration’s interpretation of birthright citizenship in the time since that decision.”

The legal consensus is similarly skeptical. Lower courts have uniformly struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, citing the 14th Amendment’s text—“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”—and decades of precedent recognizing that birthright citizenship applies regardless of parental immigration status.

But in its appeal, the Trump Administration has sidestepped that constitutional question, choosing instead to challenge the scope of the court orders that blocked the policy from taking effect.

What are universal injunctions?

Universal injunctions are orders that block a federal policy from taking effect across the country, even for people not directly involved in a lawsuit. Though relatively rare until the mid-2010s, their use exploded as Republican-led states challenged Obama-era immigration policies and Democratic-led states returned fire under Trump.

Trump, more than any other President, has felt their sting. He faced 64 nationwide injunctions during his first term and is on pace to surpass that in his second term as more than 200 lawsuits have been filed against his Administration. These court orders have frozen policies ranging from pandemic-era workplace rules to immigration enforcement and federal funding reallocations.

In response, Trump has railed against what he calls “unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges,” warning that unless the Supreme Court acts, “our Country is in very serious trouble!”

Critics of these injunctions—including several Supreme Court justices—argue that they grant too much power to individual district judges and encourage forum shopping, where plaintiffs seek out ideologically sympathetic courts. “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks,” Justice Elena Kagan said in 2022.

Justice Neil Gorsuch has called universal injunctions “patently unworkable,” and Justice Clarence Thomas has suggested the Court should consider ending the practice entirely.

Yet others, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, have urged caution. In a 2024 opinion, she described the issue as “contested and difficult,” warning against sweeping decisions that could undermine the judiciary’s ability to provide meaningful relief.

By selecting a case where the underlying policy is widely considered legally indefensible, the Court may be trying to isolate the injunction issue from the merits of Trump’s executive order. Even so, legal experts argue that this is precisely the kind of case where a broad injunction is not only justified but necessary. “Nationwide injunctions have been somewhat controversial,” Rosenbloom says, “but this case is the perfect example of why you do sometimes need a nationwide injunction. It would be complete chaos if this order were allowed to go into effect for certain people and not for others.” She warns that scaling back the injunctions would place a staggering burden on the courts and affected families.

The cases before the Court—Trump v. CASA, Trump v. Washington, and Trump v. New Jersey—stem from lawsuits brought by states, immigrants’ rights groups, and pregnant women who feared their children would be denied citizenship under Trump’s order. Judges in all three cases issued broad injunctions blocking the policy nationwide.

In Seattle, Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour called the order “blatantly unconstitutional.” In Boston, Judge Leo Sorokin said its enforcement could not proceed anywhere in the country. And in Maryland, Judge Boardman emphasized that “the government will not be harmed by a preliminary injunction that prevents it from enforcing an executive order likely to be found unconstitutional.”

Appeals courts declined to narrow those rulings—prompting the Administration to bypass the usual route of Supreme Court review and instead seek emergency relief. In an unusual move, the Justices granted argument, suggesting at least some saw urgency in resolving the dispute before the Court’s next term begins.

The Justices could affirm the injunctions as properly tailored to protect constitutional rights while litigation proceeds, or they could limit the orders to apply only to the plaintiffs who brought suit—or the states that joined the challenge. That middle ground could still unleash practical chaos, forcing local officials to create systems for determining which babies are entitled to citizenship and which are not.

The broader implications go well beyond immigration. A ruling that sharply limits or abolishes universal injunctions would weaken one of the judiciary’s most powerful tools for checking executive overreach—a shift that could benefit not only Trump but future presidents of either party.

The case arrives at a moment of deep internal division on the Court. Justices Samuel Alito and Thomas have expressed outrage at what they view as judicial overreach. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has sought to soften hardline rulings with concurring opinions aimed at compromise. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a surprise move last month, joined the Court’s liberals in opposing Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act for his mass deportation efforts.

And on Thursday, the Supreme Court faces perhaps its most politically and constitutionally explosive case since Chief Justice John Roberts swore in Trump for a second term in January.