Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett took aim at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissenting opinion in Trump v. CASA—a ruling related to President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship executive order.

Why It Matters

The Court handed down its decision in the birthright citizenship case, one of its most significant of the current term, on Friday.

The 6-3 decision does not weigh in on the legality of birthright citizenship, the idea which ensures that children born in the U.S. are citizens regardless of whether their parents are. Instead, it delivered a procedural victory to the Trump administration, ruling that federal judges do not have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions that go beyond relief for individual plaintiffs on cases.

It's a win for Trump, whose executive orders have been held up in the courts as judges issue injunctions temporarily pausing many from taking effect as legal cases challenging those policies make their way through the legal system. These injunctions have been a check on executive authority from Democratic and Republican presidents in recent years.

What To Know

Barrett wrote the majority opinion, which sided with the Trump administration. In her ruling, the conservative justice said her liberal colleague's "position is difficult to pin down."

"She might be arguing that universal injunctions are appropriate—even required—whenever the defendant is part of the Executive Branch," Barrett wrote. "If so, her position goes far beyond the mainstream defense of universal injunctions."

Barrett went on to describe the dissent as "more extreme still," and said that Jackson's opinion "is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself."

"We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary," she wrote.

She continued that nobody "disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law," but that the judicial branch "does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation—in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so."

Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion, warning that the administration's position against universal injunctions is "a request for this Court's permission to engage in unlawful behavior." She also joined a separate dissent penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor but wanted to emphasize her view that the decision is an "existential threat to the rule of law."

"When the Government says 'do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,' what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution—please allow this," Jackson wrote.

Jackson warned that the majority ruling could create a "zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes."

"I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more," Jackson wrote in her dissent.

Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett (left) and Ketanji Brown Jackson (right) attend former President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. on February 7, 2023. Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett (left) and Ketanji Brown Jackson (right) attend former President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. on February 7, 2023. JACQUELYN MARTIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images What People Are Saying

Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the victory in a post to X, formerly Twitter: "Today, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump. This would not have been possible without tireless work from our excellent lawyers @TheJusticeDept and our Solicitor General John Sauer. This Department of Justice will continue to zealously defend @POTUS's policies and his authority to implement them."

Fox News host Laura Ingraham wrote on X: "Justice Barrett's brutal takedown of the dissent authored by Justice Jackson is something one wouldn't have predicted from oral arguments."

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, wrote on X of the decision: "Has the Supreme Court decided to change the culture and character of America? The Congress must thoroughly examine this decision by the Supreme Court to find ways to legislate and protect the Constitutional right to citizenship for all those born in America. Hopefully one day soon the Court will have the courage to correctly rule that if you're born here, you're an American—instead of hiding behind the Administration's game on nationwide injunctions."

What Happens Next?

The ruling states that Trump's executive order "shall not take effect until 30 days
after the date of this opinion."

Update 6/27/25 11:54 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.