A federal judge agreed Thursday to issue a new nationwide block against President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.

The ruling from US District Judge Joseph Laplante is significant because the Supreme Court last month curbed the power of lower court judges to issue nationwide injunctions, while keeping intact the ability of plaintiffs to seek a widespread block of the order through class action lawsuits, which is what happened Thursday in New Hampshire.

Ruling from the bench, Laplante granted a request from immigration rights attorneys to certify a nationwide class that “will be comprised only of those deprived of citizenship” and issued a preliminary injunction indefinitely blocking Trump’s Day One order from being enforced against born and unborn babies who would be impacted by the policy.

  • pezhore@infosec.pub
    25·
    2 days ago

    Yes, but with exceptions for class action and for administrative process act (apa) nationwide injunctions.

    The idea being, if you’re a member of a class in multiple states, you should be included in the injunction for the class even if (as the majority stupidly concluded) you aren’t the person actually asking for the injunction.

    On a side note, the podcast Main Justice does a good job explaining these nuances.

    Edit: this doesn’t mean things are solid for the class certification. The government will no doubt appeal (potentially directly to SCOTUS) to say the class definition is too wide/invalid. It’s not normal to just call Roberts up and ask for a hearing without going through the various appellate courts first, but we’re not in normal anymore.

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
      11·
      2 days ago

      In the previous opinion, SCOTUS didn’t say that nationwide class actions or APA suits are legal. They just declined to rule on those, and I believe a justice said class actions might be viable substitutes in a concurring opinion.

      My guess is we’re going to find out what they think about this class action pretty fast.

      • pezhore@infosec.pub
        5·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, not to mention Alito (IIRC) made some concurring option that basically said, don’t fucking try to make everything a class action we’ll be watching for that.