(Washington) The majority conservative Supreme Court granted a precious victory to the Trump administration on Friday by limiting the power of judges to block the decisions of the executive which they consider illegal.
By six votes against three, those of the six conservatives against the three progressives, the highest jurisdiction of the United States considers that the decisions of national scope issued by federal judges “probably exceed the powers conferred by the congress in the federal courts”.
“When a court concludes that the executive power has acted illegally, the response of this court cannot be to go beyond its powers too,” wrote the majority judge Amy Condey Barrett.
Photo Sarah Silbiger, Reuters archives
Conservative judge Amy CONEY BARRETT
Successive, republican and democratic administrations have often expressed their frustration towards these suspensions with universal scope which allow a single federal judge to block their policy, on subjects of national importance, such as abortion, immigration or even student loans.
This decision could therefore be fraught with consequences for all disputes against the Trump administration, but also against the administrations of its successors.
Donald Trump described as “brilliant” the decision in his favor of the Supreme Court, and promised to implement the “many” measures contested before the courts.
“Thanks to this decision, we can now justify ourselves to advance these numerous measures that have been blocked in an erroneous way nationally,” said the American president at a press conference at the White House, before adding: “We have so much. »»
Photo Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, Agency France-Presse
Donald Trump reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision at a press conference at the White House.
However, the Court did not rule on the constitutionality of a presidential decree of Donald Trump which returns to the law of the soil, at the origin of this litigation.
The case relates to the suspension of this presidential decree on citizenship, declared unconstitutional by all the courts and federal appeal courses which have been seized.
Conversely, judge Sonia Sotomayor, in a written opinion of disagreement which the other progressive judges associate, describes the decision of the Court of “invitation to the government to bypass the Constitution”.
“Executive power can now apply policies that flout established case law and violate the constitutional rights of countless individuals and the federal courts will be hampered to fully stop these actions,” she deplores.
“No right is certain in the new legal regime created by the Court,” summarizes Mr.me Sotomayor, while his progressive colleague Ketanji Brown Jackson sees “a threat to the rule of law”.
“Patchwork of rights”
The Trump administration asked the Court not to lift the suspension of its decree at this stage, but to limit the scope of suspensions only to justice, denouncing what it describes as a drift.
This decision “risks creating a patchwork of rights to acquire American nationality,” said Steven Schwinn, professor of constitutional law at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
In this configuration, “the law of the soil will be recognized in certain places and for certain people, those who have obtained their case in court, but not in the places where there was no legal action and for the people who live there,” he explains.
“This conception in patchwork of individual rights is contrary to the tradition and history of the United States and the rule of law,” he said.
Donald Trump signed the decree on the right of the ground just arrived at the White House on January 20, one of the most criticized measures of his new mandate, saying that he wanted to fight illegal immigration.
The principle of soil law, devoted by the 14the Amendment of the Constitution, provides that any child born in the United States is automatically American citizen, and has been applied for more than 150 years.
The administration’s decree prohibits the federal government from issuing passports, citizenship certificates or other documents to children whose mother illegally or temporarily stays in the United States, and whose father is not an American citizen or permanent resident of the famous “green card”.
The 14the Amendment was adopted in 1868, after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, in order to guarantee the rights of the freed slaves and their descendants.
The Court also validated a law passed in Texas which requires pornographic sites to check the age of their users, a camouflet for the pornography industry.
The high magistrates estimated that this text, adopted in 2023 by the local Parliament, was “written adequately” and was based on “the upper interest” of Texas “to protect children from sexual content”, according to the decision published on Friday.
