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.
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.
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.