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The United States Is About to Embark on a Terrifying Experiment in Mass Statelessness
slate.com
Slate said:In a 6–3 ruling along ideological lines, the court declared that federal judges no longer have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions, an essential tool for halting executive orders across the country while their legality is challenged. The case centered on Executive Order 14160, signed by President Donald Trump in January, which directs federal agencies to stop recognizing the U.S. citizenship of children born to undocumented or temporary-status parents. The ruling did not assess the constitutionality of that executive order. Instead, it limited who can be protected from it.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a blistering dissent read aloud from the bench, called the decision “a travesty for the rule of law.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson went further, warning that the court’s ruling gives the president “the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate.” But the damage is already unfolding. Without the shield of nationwide injunctions, the path is now clear for federal agencies to selectively enforce the executive order, denying documentation to newborns in some states while recognizing it in others, based not on constitutional principle but on geography.
The United States Is About to Embark on a Terrifying Experiment in Mass Statelessness
This scenario, until recently, might have read like a dystopian projection. But after the court’s decision on Friday, it is no longer hypothetical.