The US Supreme Court on the last day of rulings for its current term gave US President Donald Trump his latest in a series of victories at the nation’s top judicial body, one that might make it easier for him to implement contentious elements of his sweeping agenda as he tests the limits of presidential power.
With its six conservative members in the majority and its three liberals dissenting, the court on Friday curbed the ability of judges to impede his policies nationwide, resetting the power balance between the federal judiciary and presidents.
The ruling came after Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court to narrow the scope of so-called “universal” injunctions issued by three federal judges that halted nationally the enforcement of his January executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
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The ruling said that judges generally can grant relief only to the people or groups who brought a particular lawsuit.
The decision did not permit immediate implementation of Trump’s directive, instead instructing lower courts to reconsider the scope of the injunctions.
The ruling was authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed by Trump during his first term in office.
Trump has scored a series of victories at the Supreme Court since returning to office in January. These have included clearing the way for his administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face, and ending temporary legal status held by hundreds of thousands of migrants on humanitarian grounds.
The court also permitted implementation of Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military, let his administration withhold payment to foreign aid groups for work already performed for the government, allowed his firing of two Democratic members of federal labor boards to stand for now and backed his Department of Government Efficiency in two disputes.
In other cases during the nine-month term, the court sided with a Republican-backed ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, endorsed South Carolina’s plan to cut off public funding to Planned Parenthood and made it easier to pursue claims alleging workplace “reverse” discrimination.
The court also spared two American gun companies from the Mexican government’s lawsuit accusing them of aiding illegal firearms trafficking to drug cartels and allowed parents to opt elementary-school children out of classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read.
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