The US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Friday by curbing the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding his policies but it left unresolved the issue of whether he can limit birthright citizenship.
The Republican president welcomed the ruling and said his administration can now seek to proceed with numerous policies such as his executive order aiming to restrict birthright citizenship that he said "have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis". "We have so many of them. I have a whole list," Trump told reporters at the White House.
The court's 6-3 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not let Trump's birthright citizenship order go into effect immediately, directing lower courts that blocked it to reconsider the scope of their orders.
The ruling also did not address its legality. The justices granted a request by the Trump administration to narrow the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state that halted enforcement of his directive while litigation challenging the policy plays out.
With the court's conservatives in the majority and its liberals dissenting, the ruling specified that Trump's executive order cannot take effect until 30 days after Friday's ruling.
The ruling thus raises the prospect of Trump's order eventually taking effect in some parts of the country. Federal judges have taken steps including issuing numerous nationwide orders impeding Trump's aggressive use of executive action to advance his agenda.
The three judges in the birthright citizenship cases found that Trump's order likely violates citizenship language in the Constitution's 14th Amendment. "No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation - in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so," Barrett wrote.
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