Tag Archives: Justice Elena Kagan

MSNBC: Supreme Court issues ruling on Trump’s power to fire FTC commissioner without cause

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Chief Justice John Roberts had previously blocked the reinstatement of the agency’s lone Democratic commissioner whom Trump sought to fire.

The Supreme Court has backed President Donald Trump’s power to fire the lone Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission without cause, agreeing at the same time to consider overturning a longstanding precedent that has protected independent agencies.

The high court’s three Democratic appointees dissented from the decision Monday to lift a lower court order that sided with the commissioner, Rebecca Slaughter, while litigation proceeds. The high court’s order said the justices will hear oral argument in the case during its December argument session.

“Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the three Democratic appointees, calling out how the Republican-appointed majority has helped Trump in this and other cases in his second term. “Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers,” she wrote.

Monday’s order follows Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision on Sept. 8 to temporarily halt Slaughter’s reinstatement while the full Supreme Court considered whether she should be reinstated while litigation over her firing continued. That word from the full court came Monday, as the majority sided with Trump ahead of the December hearing and, in doing so, signaled that it will side with him in its final decision. The court, whose next term starts in early October, typically issues the term’s decisions by early July, meaning a final decision in the Slaughter case should come by then next year.

In July, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s attempt to fire Slaughter was unlawful. A divided appellate panel refused to lift the judge’s order on Sept. 2, citing the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor precedent that endorsed for-cause removal protections. The Roberts Court has weakened that precedent, and the Trump administration has targeted it. The precedent arose in the context of the FTC specifically, raising the possibility that the justices could overturn it outright in Slaughter’s case.

The Supreme Court’s order Monday said the justices want the parties to brief and argue these two questions, specifically naming the 90-year-old precedent:

(1) Whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled. (2) Whether a federal court may prevent a person’s removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law.

Dissenting from the appellate panel’s Sept. 2 refusal to lift U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan’s order, Trump appointee Neomi Rao acknowledged the Humphrey’s precedent but noted that the Supreme Court has been siding with Trump on his firing powers lately. In any event, the district judge was powerless to order Slaughter’s reinstatement, Rao wrote.

The administration cited Rao’s dissent in seeking to lift AliKhan’s order, casting the case as the latest in Trump’s second term to warrant relief from lower court overreach. “In this case, the lower courts have once again ordered the reinstatement of a high-level officer wielding substantial executive authority whom the President has determined should not exercise any executive power, let alone significant rulemaking and enforcement powers,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote to the justices on Sept. 4. Sauer asked the justices to lift AliKhan’s order immediately.

Opposing even a temporary pause in the judge’s order (which Roberts granted Sept. 8), Slaughter’s lawyers said the government wouldn’t be harmed by her continuing to serve while the administration’s application to the justices is pending. They sought to distinguish recent cases in which the court sided with the administration by noting that Slaughter “is the sole Democratic member on a Commission with a three-Republican majority,” so her presence on the FTC wouldn’t result in any meaningful action opposed by the majority.

On Sept. 15, her lawyers further wrote that Congress hadn’t granted Trump the broad power he claims and that if he “is to be given new powers Congress has expressly and repeatedly refused to give him, that decision should come from the people’s elected representatives.” They further argued that “[a]t a minimum, any such far-reaching decision to reverse a considered congressional policy judgment should not be made on the emergency docket,” referring to the court’s rulings made without full briefing, hearing or explanation, which have frequently helped Trump in his second term. It’s the majority’s use of the docket in this way that Kagan and the Democratic appointees called out on Monday.

Supreme Court issues ruling on Trump’s power to fire FTC commissioner without cause
Chief Justice John Roberts had previously blocked the reinstatement of the agency’s lone Democratic commissioner whom Trump sought to fire.

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-ftc-commissioner-fire-cause-trump-rcna231388

Newsweek: Elena Kagan warns Supreme Court “overriding” Congress to give Trump a win

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ustice Elena Kagan warned Monday that the Supreme Court is “overriding” Congress to hand President Donald Trump sweeping new powers over independent agencies.

Her dissent came after the court, in a 6-3 decision, allowed Trump to fire Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter while the justices consider whether to overturn a 90-year-old precedent limiting presidential removals.

The conservative majority offered no explanation, as is typical on its emergency docket, but signaled a willingness to revisit the landmark 1935 Humphrey’s Executor ruling.

Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the court has repeatedly cleared firings that Congress explicitly prohibited, thereby shifting control of key regulatory agencies into the president’s hands.

“Congress, as everyone agrees, prohibited each of those presidential removals,” Kagan wrote. “Yet the majority, stay order by stay order, has handed full control of all those agencies to the President.”

Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment via email on Monday afternoon.

Why It Matters

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly faced decisions regarding Trump’s use of his powers since his return to the White House in January. Cases have included attempts to fire large swaths of the federal government workforce, as well as changes to immigration policy and cuts to emergency relief funding, with arguments that it is Congress, not the president, that holds such powers.

What To Know

Monday’s decision is the latest high-profile firing the court has allowed in recent months, signaling the conservative majority is poised to overturn or narrow a 1935 Supreme Court decision that found commissioners can only be removed for misconduct or neglect of duty.

The justices are expected to hear arguments in December over whether to overturn a 90-year-old ruling known as Humphrey’s Executor.

In that case, the court sided with another FTC commissioner who had been fired by Franklin D. Roosevelt as the president worked to implement the New Deal. The justices unanimously found that commissioners can be removed only for misconduct or neglect of duty.

That 1935 decision ushered in an era of powerful independent federal agencies charged with regulating labor relations, employment discrimination and public airwaves. However, it has long rankled conservative legal theorists, who argue that such agencies should answer to the president.

The Justice Department argues that Trump can fire board members for any reason as he seeks to implement his agenda. However, Slaughter’s attorneys argue that regulatory decisions will be influenced more by politics than by the expertise of board members if the president can fire congressionally confirmed board members at will.

“If the President is to be given new powers Congress has expressly and repeatedly refused to give him, that decision should come from the people’s elected representatives,” they argued.

The court will hear arguments unusually early in the process, before the case has fully worked its way through lower courts.

The court rejected a push from two other board members of independent agencies who had asked the justices to also hear their cases if they took up the Slaughter case: Gwynne Wilcox, of the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris, of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The FTC is a regulator enforcing consumer protection measures and antitrust legislation. The NLRB investigates unfair labor practices and oversees union elections, while the MSPB reviews disputes from federal workers.

What People Are Saying

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote: “The President and the government suffer irreparable harm when courts transfer even some of that executive power to officers beyond the President’s control.”

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissent: “The majority may be raring to take that action, as its grant of certiorari before judgment suggests. But until the deed is done, Humphrey’s controls, and prevents the majority from giving the President the unlimited removal power Congress denied him.”

Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, in an amicus brief filed in Trump v. Slaughter: “Because the President’s limited authority to temporarily withhold funds proposed for rescission under the ICA does not permit the President to withhold those funds through their date of expiration without action from Congress, the district court’s injunction imposes no greater burden on the government than already exists under that law. The stakes for Congress and the public, however, are high. The fiscal year ends on September 30, less than three weeks from today.”

What Happens Next

The court has already allowed the president to fire all three board members for now. The court has suggested, however, that the president’s power to fire may have limits at the Federal Reserve, a prospect that is expected to be tested in the case of fired Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

Elena Kagan warns Supreme Court “overriding” Congress to give Trump a win
Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, said the court has repeatedly cleared firings that Congress prohibited.

https://www.newsweek.com/kagan-supreme-court-congress-trump-win-ftc-2133934

CNN: Kavanaugh faces blowback for claiming Americans can sue over encounters with ICE

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s breezy suggestion this week that Americans who are roughed up by ICE can sue agents in federal court is drawing pushback from civil rights attorneys who note the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has in recent years made those cases nearly impossible to win.

Writing to explain the court’s emergency ruling Monday that allowed the Trump administration to continue “roving” immigration patrols in Southern California, Kavanaugh brushed aside concerns that masked ICE agents had pushed, shoved and detained Hispanics – in one instance throwing a US citizen against a fence and confiscating his phone.

“To the extent that excessive force has been used,” Kavanaugh wrote in a 10-page concurrence, “the Fourth Amendment prohibits such action, and remedies should be available in federal court.”

But in a series of recent decisions – including two that involved incidents at the border – the Supreme Court has severely limited the ability of people to sue federal law enforcement officers for excessive force claims. Kavanaugh, who was nominated to the court by Trump during his first term, was in the majority in those decisions.

“It’s bordering on impossible to get any sort of remedy in a federal court when a federal officer violates federal rights,” said Patrick Jaicomo, a senior attorney at the libertarian Institute for Justice who has regularly represented clients suing federal agents.

Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, said that it can be incredibly difficult for a person subjected to excessive force to find an attorney and take on the federal government in court.

“What we’ve seen is, term after term, the court limiting the avenues that people have available to sue the federal government,” Bonds told CNN.

Sotomayor dissents

To stop a person on the street for questioning, immigration officials must have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is in the country illegally. The question for the Supreme Court was whether an agent could rely on factors like a person’s apparent ethnicity, language or their presence at a particular location, to establish reasonable suspicion.

A US district court in July ordered the Department of Homeland Security to discontinue the practice of making initial stops based on those factors. The Supreme Court on Monday, without an explanation from the majority, put that lower court order on hold – effectively greenlighting the administration’s approach while the litigation continues in lower courts.

In a sharp dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited the stories raised by several of the people in Southern California who had been caught up in the crackdown.

“The government, and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, US citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” wrote Sotomayor, joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Jason Gavidia, a US citizen, was approached in June by masked agents who repeatedly questioned his citizenship status, pressing him to name the hospital in which he was born, according to court records. When he could not answer that question, he said, agents racked a rifle, took his phone and pushed him up against a metal fence.

He was later released.

Another US citizen, Jorge Viramontes, was grabbed and escorted by agents into a vehicle and held in a “warehouse area” for further questioning, according to court documents.

Richard Re, a Harvard Law professor, viewed Kavanaugh’s remark in the opinion differently. Maybe, Re wrote on Tuesday, Kavanaugh was attempting to signal something about where he thinks the law should go.

“When you have an important sentence that’s very ambiguous, it’s usually deliberately so,” Re, who clerked for Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge, told CNN.

“I think it’s not clear what to make of that remark,” Re said. “It could suggest a genuine interest, on at least one pivotal justice’s part, in revitalizing Fourth Amendment remediation.”

Limited recourse

The court has for years been limiting the ability of people who face excessive force to sue federal agents, litigation that proponents say can act as a check on such behavior.

In 2020, the court’s conservative majority blocked a damages lawsuit from the family of a 15-year-old Mexican boy who was shot and killed across the border by a Border Patrol agent.

Three years ago, the court similarly rejected a suit from a US citizen who owned a bed and breakfast near the Canadian border and who said he was pushed to the ground as Border Patrol agents questioned a guest about their immigration status.

Lawsuits against federal police are controlled by a 1971 precedent, Bivens v.
Six Unknown Named Agents, that involved federal drug agents who searched the home of a man without a warrant. The Supreme Court allowed that lawsuit, but in recent years it has significantly clamped down on the ability of people to file suits in any other circumstance besides the warrant involved in the Bivens case. The right to sue federal agents, the court has maintained, should be set by Congress, not the courts.

Americans may also sue the government for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act, if its employees engage in wrongdoing or negligence. But federal courts have carved out a complicated patchwork of exceptions to that law as well. Earlier this year, in a case involving an FBI raid on the wrong house, a unanimous Supreme Court allowed the family to sue, but also limited the scope of a provision of the law that was aimed at protecting people who are harmed by federal law enforcement.

The tort law, Bonds said, is “incredibly narrow, incredibly complex and definitely not a sure thing.”

‘Shadow docket’ criticism

Kavanaugh’s opinion came as the court has faced sharp criticism in some quarters for deciding a slew of emergency cases in Trump’s favor without any explanation.

The Supreme Court has consistently sided with Trump recently, overturning lower courts’ temporary orders and allowing the president to fire the leadership of independent agencies, cut spending authorized by Congress and pursue an aggressive crackdown on immigration while litigation continues in lower courts.

Those emergency cases don’t fully resolve the legal questions at hand – and the court is often hesitant to write opinions that could influence the final outcome of a case – but they can have enormous, real-world consequences.

Emergency cases are almost always handled without oral argument and are addressed on a much tighter deadline than the court’s regular merits cases.

In that sense, Kavanaugh’s opinion provided some clarity about how at least one member of the court’s majority viewed the ICE patrols.

He noted Sotomayor’s dissent and pointed out that the issue of excessive force was not involved in the case.

“The Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness standard continues to govern the officers’ use of force and to prohibit excessive force,” Kavanaugh said.

What he didn’t explain, several experts note, is how a violation of those rights could be vindicated.

“Sincerely wondering,” University of Chicago law professor William Baude posted on social media, “what remedies does Justice Kavanaugh believe are and should be available in federal court these days for excessive force violations by federal immigration officials?”

Kavanaugh faces blowback for claiming Americans can sue over encounters with ICE | CNN Politics
Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s breezy suggestion this week that Americans who are roughed up by ICE can sue agents in federal court is drawing pushback from civil rights attorneys who note the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has in recent years made those cases nearly impossible to win.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/politics/kavanaugh-blowback-ice

Charlotte Observer: ‘Victory’: DHS Praises SCOTUS Ruling on Deportations

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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled to allow the Trump administration to fast-track deportations to third countries like Sudan without notice or a chance to contest. The 6-3 ruling drew dissent from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who warned it risks torture or death for deportees.

This is simply inhumane. And it will come back to haunt us big time.

…

Sotomayor wrote, “The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard.”

As some countries have refused deportees, the administration has utilized third-country agreements. Immigrant advocates warned the Supreme Court ruling weakens due process and risks deportees’ safety.

 Sotomayor wrote, “Apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a district court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled.”

‘Victory’: DHS Praises SCOTUS Ruling on Deportations
More for You

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/victory-dhs-praises-scotus-ruling-on-deportations/ss-AA1HMtgW

The Nation: The Supreme Court Gifts Trump Even More Power

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The court seems ready to give the president extraordinary power over what had been independent worker- and consumer-protection agencies.

The court seems ready to give the president extraordinary power over what had been independent worker- and consumer-protection agencies.

Here’s a troubling news alert for everyone who cares about workers and consumers being protected from illegal, exploitative, and dangerous business practices: The Supreme Court appears ready to give President Donald Trump extraordinary power over what for nearly a century have been independent expert federal worker and consumer protection agencies insulated from White House interference.

The court showed its hand in Wilcox v. Trump—the case involving Trump’s unprecedented effort to fire Gwynne Wilcox—a Senate-confirmed member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the first Black woman to ever serve as a member of the NLRB.

Members of independent agencies like the NLRB, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), are nominated by the president and confirmed by the US Senate for defined terms. They are protected by law against being removed from office except where there has been wrongdoing and only after notice and a hearing. The Supreme Court has recognized and respected these “for cause” removal protections for 90 years.

That is, until now. Upon taking office for his second term, Trump decided that he has the power to unilaterally remove members of independent boards and commissions whenever and for whatever reason he wants. The list of casualties is long—in addition to Wilcox, he has fired members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the FTC, the CPSC, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and more. And by firing these officials, Trump has left these consumer- and worker-protection agencies without a quorum to act and hold corporations accountable.

…

The court’s order is going to embolden a president who has already shown himself willing to push or violate the boundaries of his power. Now that the Supreme Court has nodded at his power to fire members of independent boards and commissions, he will undoubtably continue to do so, even before the Supreme Court definitively rules on the merits of the question in its next term.

The Supreme Court Gifts Trump Even More Power
The court seems ready to give the president extraordinary power over what had been independent worker- and consumer-protection agencies.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/wilcox-trump-federal-agencies

Raw Story: ‘Rubber-stamping’ Supreme Court just shot itself in the foot: analyst

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Legal experts are claiming that the U.S. Supreme Court may come to regret its emergency “shadow docket” decision allowing President Donald Trump to fire members of two federal boards — a move that was considered illegal.

Without hearing the merits of the case, the court issued its ruling Thursday that permitted Trump to fire a member of the National Labor Relations Board and a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, an agency that ensures federal employment decisions are not influenced by politics.

In a preview of Slate’s “Amicus” podcast, legal journalist Mark Joseph Stern exclaimed, “He illegally fired people, and the Supreme Court just rubber-stamped it!”

Stern explained that the 6-3 ruling along conservative and liberal lines will empower Trump “to disregard the law in areas where the Supreme Court doesn’t want him to. And eventually, when the Supreme Court tells him he can’t do something, he might just say: You’ve already given me so much power that I’m going to choose not to respect yours any further.”

…

“So, magically, this decision does not apply to Jerome Powell, who gets to remain chair of the Fed.”

Raw Story: ‘Rubber-stamping’ Supreme Court just shot itself in the foot: analyst

https://www.rawstory.com/scotus-decisions

USA Today: ‘Spaghetti against the wall?’ Trump tests legal strategies as judges block his policies

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The Trump administration is fighting to kill 40 court orders blocking its new policies.

  • Solicitor General John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to halt nationwide injunctions against Trump policies but said if class-action lawsuits took their place, he would oppose them too.
  • Legal experts said if the Supreme Court abolishes nationwide injunctions, Trump could cut his losses by limiting the reach of court rulings that go against him.

As the Trump administration fights to kill 40 court orders blocking some of his most controversial or aggressive new policies, legal experts say the government’s strategy is to break the cases apart, into individual disputes, to delay an eventual reckoning at the Supreme Court.

One called President Donald Trump’s legal strategy a “shell game.” Another said government lawyers were “throwing spaghetti against the wall” to see what sticks.

“Their bottom line is that they don’t think these cases should be in court in the first place,” said Luke McCloud, a lawyer at Williams and Connolly who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “They are looking for a procedural mechanism that will make it the most challenging to bring these sorts of cases.”

‘Spaghetti against the wall?’ Trump tests legal strategies as judges block his policies
Some of Trump’ most aggressive policy changes are being blocked by judges all the way to the Supreme Court. To some, the response feels like a shell game.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/17/trump-legal-strategies-federal-judges-injunctions/83673013007

Raw Story: Trump’s DOJ screwed up by rushing the ‘worst possible case’ to the Supreme Court: expert

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A decision to send Solicitor General John Sauer to defend an executive order signed by Donald Trump before the Supreme Court this week was a massive mistake that could haunt the president going forward.

That is the opinion of conservative lawyer George Conway who appeared on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” Saturday morning where he was asked to weigh in by co-hosts Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Daniels and fill-in host María Teresa Kumar.

Discussing Trump’s attempts to undermine birthright citizenship enshrined by the 14th Amendment, Conway asserted the DOJ used the wrong case at the wrong time.

“This is the worst possible case and that was Justice [Elena] Kagan, former Solicitor General Kagan’s point,” he began. “To bring up to the Supreme Court on the procedural technical issue of when you can issue a nationwide injunction.”

“You want to go up on a case where you’re going to you have a chance of winning, where the court thinks that, ultimately, your position is right,” he stated.

Trump’s DOJ screwed up by rushing the ‘worst possible case’ to the Supreme Court: expert

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-supreme-court-2672034883

Daily Express: Supreme Court justice mocks Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship

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The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to consider ending the judicial power for sweeping injunctions, but did not ask for a ruling on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.

President Donald Trump has been ridiculed by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan after he proposed to put an end to birthright citizenship.

Appointed by former President Barack Obama, Kagan chastised the U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer for not challenging Trump’s orders and for challenging the judicial authority to issue nationwide injunctions, a move that makes no sense for the administration’s ultimate goal.

…

“Nobody is going to lose this case,” Kagan said, stating that any parent whose kids are denied American citizenship can uphold the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the right of citizenship to anyone born on American soil.

“It’s just, you’re going to have, like, individual by individual by individual, and all of those individuals are going to win,” Kagan said.

She added that the only people who could lose are the ones who cannot afford to challenge the administration.

Before Sauer could answer, Kagan cut him off again.

Sauer began, “The tools that are provided to address hypotheticals like this…”

And a coup de grâce from Justice Kagan:

“This is not a hypothetical. This is happening out there, right? Every court has ruled against you,” Kagan said.

Supreme Court justice mocks Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to consider ending the judicial power for sweeping injunctions, but did not ask for a ruling on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.

https://www.the-express.com/news/politics/171847/supreme-court-justice-mocks-trumps

Raw Story: ‘Oof’: Legal experts shocked by Trump DOJ proposal revealed in big Supreme Court hearing

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University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman wrote her own comical paraphrasing of U.S. Supreme Court justices’ comments. In one case, she pointed out Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s “partial list of the SCOTUS precedents (4) this order violates.”

Litman then paraphrased Chief Justice John Roberts in her own words.

“Chief: let’s stop this murder, please,” she quipped.

In one exchange, Justice Elena Kagan asked, if they assume this is a completely illegal executive order, how do the courts actually stop it?

Sauer said it would file a class action.

Kagan said that he would then argue that there isn’t a class to certify under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Sauer agreed, so Kagan asked what other options there were.

Sauer suggested every affected individual would sue.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned if Sauer was seriously proposing such an idea.

Litman wrote her own paraphrasing: “Oh dang Elena Kagan ‘assume you’re really f—— wrong and this order is wildly illegal. Are you saying every individual child has to sue to establish their citizenship?'”

Lawyer and journalist at Rewire, Imani Gandy commented, “Every child of undocumented immigrants has to file their own lawsuit. Millions of lawsuits. Makes perfect sense.”

Civil litigator Owen Barcala posted on Bluesky, “This is such a good point, I’m frustrated I didn’t see it. If the gov issues a clearly illegal order that applies to millions and it is losing in every individual case, why would it ever appeal the losses? So what if they can’t enforce it as to a dozen people if they can still do it for millions?”

MSNBC and Just Security legal analyst Adam Klasfeld cited a debate between Sotomayor and Solicitor General John Sauer.

“Sotomayor notes that barring nationwide injunctions, as the Trump admin asks, would mean that courts would be powerless to stop a ‘clearly, indisputably unconstitutional’ act, taking every gun from every citizen. We couldn’t stop that?” Klasfeld posted on Bluesky, quoting the justice.

&c.

https://www.rawstory.com/birthright-citizenship-2672024689