Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson join, dissenting.
Children born in the United States and subject to its laws are United States citizens. That has been the legal rule since the founding, and it was the English rule well before then. This Court once attempted to repudiate it, holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857), that the children of enslaved black Americans were not citizens. To remedy that grievous error, the States passed in 1866 and Congress ratified in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which enshrined birthright citizenship in the Constitution. There it has remained, accepted and respected by Congress, by the Executive, and by this Court. Until today.
It is now the President who attempts, in an Executive Order (Order or Citizenship Order), to repudiate birthright citizenship. Every court to evaluate the Order has deemed it patently unconstitutional and, for that reason, has enjoined the Federal Government from enforcing it. Undeterred, the Government now asks this Court to grant emergency relief, insisting it will suffer irreparable harm unless it can deprive at least some children born in the United States of citizenship. See Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, Exec. Order No. 14160, 90 Fed. Reg. 8849 (2025).
The Government does not ask for complete stays of the injunctions, as it ordinarily does before this Court. Why? The answer is obvious: To get such relief, the Government would have to show that the Order is likely constitutional, an impossible task in light of the Constitution’s text, history, this Court’s precedents, federal law, and Executive Branch practice. So the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone. Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.
The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along. A majority of this Court decides that these applications, of all cases, provide the appropriate occasion to resolve the question of universal injunctions and end the centuries-old practice once and for all. In its rush to do so the Court disregards basic principles of equity as well as the long history of injunctive relief granted to nonparties.
No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit. Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent.
The majority ignores entirely whether the President’s Executive Order is constitutional, instead focusing only on the question whether federal courts have the equitable authority to issue universal injunctions. Yet the Order’s patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority’s error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case. As every conceivable source of law confirms, birthright citizenship is the law of the land.
The Citizenship Clause provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. That means what it says. Nestled in the Fourteenth Amendment alongside the Equal Protection Clause, the Citizenship Clause does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or, importantly here, parentage. It refers instead to “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Ibid.
Besides birth, there is only one condition: that one be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Yet that condition too leaves no room for ambiguity. To be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States means simply to be bound to its authority and its laws. See N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language 732 (C. Goodrich & N. Porter eds. 1865) (defining jurisdiction as the “[p]ower of governing or legislating,” or “the power or right of exercising authority”). As the Government would presumably concede, virtually everyone born in the United States and present in its territory is subject to its authority and its laws. After all, “[t]he jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute.” Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 7 Cranch 116, 136 (1812) (Marshall, C. J., for the Court). Once a citizen of another nation steps onto United States soil, she is (with narrow exception) “amenable to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Id., at 144. That is why “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.” Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202, 211, n. 10 (1982).
Few constitutional questions can be answered by resort to the text of the Constitution alone, but this is one. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship.
Unsurprisingly given the clarity of the Citizenship Clause’s text, every other source of interpretation confirms this conclusion. Consider, first, its history. Long before the Fourteenth Amendment, and indeed before the founding, the common-law rule of jus soli (literally, right of the soil) governed English citizenship. That rule rendered a person’s birthplace determinative of her citizenship status. Thus, “the children of aliens, born . . . in England,” generally were “natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such.” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 361–362 (1765); see also H. Broom & G. Denman, Constitutional Law Viewed in Relation to Common Law 31 (2d ed. 1885) (describing Calvin’s Case (1608), which established that “[e]very one born within the dominions of the King of England . . . is . . . entitled to enjoy all the rights and liberties of an Englishman”).
That English common-law rule carried over to the United States after the founding. Shortly after the Constitution’s ratification, James Madison observed that “it [was] an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance,” i.e., of citizenship. 1 Annals of Cong. 404 (1789). Birth, he explained, could convey citizenship in two ways: either through “place” (under the “right of the soil” principle) or through “parentage” (as for one born to United States citizens). Ibid. “[B]ut, in general,” Madison explained, “place is the most certain criterion” and “it is what applies in the United States.” Ibid. Mere decades later, Justice Story wrote that “[n]othing is better settled . . . than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country . . . are subjects by birth.” Inglis v. Trustees of Sailor’s Snug Harbour in City of New York, 3 Pet. 99, 164 (1830). Well before the Fourteenth Amendment, then, it was the undisputed “law of the United States [that] every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever were the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.” Lynch v. Clarke, 1 Sand. Ch. 583, 663 (N. Y. Ch. 1844).
Though the law was clear, the Nation did not always live up to its promise. Infamously, this Court departed from the birthright citizenship principle in Dred Scott, 19 How. 393, holding that the children of enslaved black Americans “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution.” Id., at 404. Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction Congress corrected that grave error. Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27, declared that “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power” would be “citizens of the United States.” The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship followed two years later.
The lawmakers who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment understood that it would extend citizenship to all children born here, regardless of parental citizenship. Indeed, some objected to its passage on those grounds, complaining that it would permanently extend citizenship to immigrants who “invade [state] borders” and “settle as trespassers.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2891 (1866). Proponents agreed, if not with the anti-immigrant sentiment, that the Clause would extend citizenship to the children of immigrants. For example, Senator Conness of California (one of the Amendment’s lead supporters) confirmed on the floor “that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law.” Id., at 2892. “We have declared that by law” in the Civil Rights Act, he explained, and “now it is proposed to incorporate the same provision in the fundamental instrument of the nation.” Id., at 2891. Not one Senator disagreed with this understanding of the Clause.
In the end, “[t]he Citizenship Clause was no legal innovation.” J. Ho, Defining “American”: Birthright Citizenship and the Original Understanding of the 14th Amendment, 9 Green Bag 2d 367, 369 (2006); see also id., at 368 (“Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. That birthright is protected no less for children of undocumented persons than for descendants of Mayflower passengers”). “It simply restored the longstanding English common law doctrine of jus soli” abrogated by Dred Scott. Ho, 9 Green Bag 2d, at 369; see also M. Ramsey, Originalism and Birthright Citizenship, 109 Geo. L. J. 405, 472 (2020) (The “central purpose” of the Citizenship Clause “was, of course, to overrule Dred Scott”).
Following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, this Court confirmed the Amendment’s plain meaning in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649 (1898). At issue was the citizenship of Wong Kim Ark, a young California resident born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents. Id., at 652. When Wong returned to California from a trip to China, a custom’s collector denied him entry on the sole ground that he was not a citizen of the United States. Id., at 653.
This Court held that “[t]he Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory.” Id., at 693. As the President does today, the Government in Wong Kim Ark rested its case on the Clause’s sole qualifier. Wong was not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, the Government claimed, because at birth his parents were aliens in the United States who were “subjects of the emperor of China,” thus making Wong a subject of the emperor of China as well. Id., at 652–653. This Court squarely rejected that attempt to limit the Citizenship Clause’s reach. Instead, it held, the “‘subject to the jurisdiction’” qualifier excludes only “children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation, and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign State,” id., at 682, “with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes,” id., at 693.1
That holding conclusively settled any remaining dispute over the Citizenship Clause’s meaning. Since then, all three branches of Government have unflinchingly adhered to it.
This Court, for one, has repeatedly reaffirmed Wong Kim Ark’s holding. Notwithstanding legislation purporting to render Japanese persons “ineligible” for citizenship, we held in Morrison v. California, 291 U. S. 82 (1934), that a child with Japanese parents “is a citizen of the United States if he was born within the United States.” Id., at 85. The Court recognized the same rule even during World War II, when individuals of Japanese ancestry were subject to curfew and exclusion orders. See Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 96–97 (1943). So too has the Court recognized that the child of parents unlawfully present in the United States “is, of course, an American citizen by birth.” United States ex rel. Hintopoulos v. Shaughnessy, 353 U. S. 72, 73 (1957). The same is true of children whose parents gained admission into the United States by unlawful means. See, e.g., INS v. Errico, 385 U. S. 214, 215–216 (1966); INS v. Rios-Pineda, 471 U. S. 444, 446 (1985).
Congress, for its part, has also reaffirmed the principles of birthright citizenship by enshrining it in a federal statute. Section 201 of the Nationality Act of 1940 provides that all those “born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” “shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” 8 U. S. C. §1401(a); see also Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U. S. 554, 560 (2019) (recognizing “longstanding interpretive principle” that if statutory term “‘is “obviously transplanted from another legal source,” it “brings the old soil with it”’”).
For at least the last century, the Executive Branch has adhered to the same principle. When Congress proposed to reaffirm birthright citizenship in the 1940 Nationality Act, cabinet officials described it as “a statement of the common-law rule, which has been in the United States from the beginning of its existence.” House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Nationality Laws of the United States, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 7 (Comm. Print 1939). Indeed, the Government concedes even now that the Executive Branch has recognized the vitality of birthright citizenship “at least back to World War II, if not earlier.” App. to Opposition to Application in No. 24A886, p. 323a. That explains, among other things, why the Social Security Administration and the Department of State have long accepted proof of one’s birthplace as proof of citizenship. See 44 Fed. Reg. 10369, 10371 (1979); 20 CFR §§422.107(d), 422.103(c)(2) (2024); 22 CFR §§51.40, 51.42 (2024).
Some decades ago, the Office of Legal Counsel was asked to respond to a House bill that would have denied birthright citizenship to “‘children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.’” 19 Op. OLC 340, 341 (1995). The answer well summed up the state of the law: This “office grapples with many difficult and close issues of constitutional law. The lawfulness of this bill is not among them. This legislation is unquestionably unconstitutional.” Ibid.
Undeterred by the Constitution, history, Supreme Court precedent, federal law, and longstanding Executive Branch practice, President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order No. 14160 on the day of his inauguration that purported to redefine American citizenship. The Order declares that United States citizenship does not extend to persons who are born to a mother unlawfully present in the United States, or lawfully present on a temporary basis, and a father who is neither a citizen nor lawful permanent resident. Ibid. It further prohibits federal agencies from issuing citizenship documentation to such persons or accepting state documentation to that effect, and it directs a slew of federal officials to conform agency regulations to the Order. Id., at 8449–8450. The prohibition, according to the Order, applies “only to persons who are born within the United States after 30 days from the date of th[e] order.” Id., at 8449.
Shortly after the President issued the Citizenship Order, several groups of plaintiffs (together, respondents) challenged the Order in Federal District Courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington. Respondents include: a group of pregnant women2 whose children will not be United States citizens under the terms of the Citizenship Order; two immigrants-rights organizations with thousands of members across the country who are likely to give birth to children who would also be denied citizenship under the Order; and 22 States, the District of Columbia, and the city of San Francisco. In their respective suits, respondents asserted that the Citizenship Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and §1401(a).
Respondents also sought a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the Citizenship Order during the pendency of the litigation. If allowed to go into effect, they said, the policy would inflict irreparable harm on their children (and their members’ children) by denying them “enjoyment of the full privileges, rights, and benefits that come with U. S. citizenship,” and rendering them vulnerable to unlawful deportation before the Courts could adjudicate their constitutional claim. Complaint in No. 8:25–cv–00201 (D Md., Jan. 21, 2025), p. 6, ¶12; see also Complaint in No. 2:25–cv–00127 (WD Wash., Feb. 4, 2025), ECF Doc. 106, pp. 33–36, ¶¶120–139 (Washington Complaint).
As for the States, they attested that enforcement of the Citizenship Order would cost them millions of dollars in federal funding and impose significant administrative burdens. The States “administer numerous programs for the benefit of their residents, including for newborns and young children, some of whom are wards of the plaintiff States who are entitled to care by statute.” Id., at 23, ¶79. Those social welfare programs include ones provided for by state law, as well as ones established by federal law, such as Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program: Several of them “are funded in part by federal dollars, with federal funding frequently tied to the citizenship and immigration status of the individuals served.” Ibid. By stripping some children within the States of their citizenship, the Order would reduce the States’ federal funding, “forc[ing the States] to bear significantly increased costs to operate and fund programs that ensure the health and well-being of their residents.” Id., at 6, ¶8, 4–5, ¶6; see also Opposition to Application in No. 24A886 (New Jersey), pp. 9–11; Complaint in No. 1:25–cv–10139 (D Mass., Jan. 21, 2025), pp. 23–42, ¶¶121–201. Relatedly, because the States must verify the citizenship status of the individuals they serve, the States alleged that the Citizenship Order would force them to expend significant sums to “modif[y] their . . . operational structures and administration” to account for the changes in citizenship. Washington Complaint 6, ¶8; see also Opposition to Application in No. 24A886 (New Jersey), at 9–11.
All three District Courts preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the Citizenship Order. Each court determined that the Citizenship Order was likely unlawful, that respondents were likely to face irreparable harm without an injunction, and that the equities and public interest cut decisively in respondents’ favor. See 763 F. Supp. 3d 723, 727, 744–745 (Md. 2025); 765 F. Supp. 3d 1142, 1152–1153 (WD Wash. 2025); Doe v. Trump, 766 F. Supp. 3d 266, 274, 285–287 (Mass. 2025).
The District Courts further determined that only injunctions blocking the Citizenship Order’s enforcement nationwide would completely redress respondents’ injuries. For the organizational plaintiffs, the Maryland District Court explained that those plaintiffs have “‘over 680,000 members . . . who reside in all 50 U.S. states’” and “hundreds of them expect to give birth soon.” 763 F. Supp. 3d, at 746. The Washington District Court found that “a geographically limited injunction would be ineffective” for the state plaintiffs “as it would not completely relieve [the States] of the Order’s financial burden(s).” 765 F. Supp. 3d, at 1153. For one thing, that court explained, the constant flow of people moving in and out of various States meant some children born to noncitizen parents in a nonplaintiff State would later reside in a plaintiff State. Once there, those children (under state law) would be eligible for state benefits. Yet due to the Citizenship Order, the plaintiff States would no longer receive federal funding to support those benefits. In addition, the plaintiff States would have to create an entirely new administrative and recordkeeping system to accommodate children who were not citizens under the Order and born in a nonplaintiff State. So if the District Court allowed birthright citizenship to continue for children born in the plaintiff States, but not in any other State, that would not completely redress the States’ financial injury. Ibid.
For identical reasons, the Massachusetts District Court also found that the state plaintiffs’ injuries could be redressed only by a universal injunction. See 766 F. Supp. 3d, at 288 (“The harms [the States] have established stem from the [Order’s] impact on the citizenship status—and the ability to discern or verify such status—for any child located or seeking various services within their jurisdiction”).
The Government filed motions to stay the injunctions in three separate Courts of Appeals. Nowhere did the Government contest the District Courts’ uniform holdings that the Citizenship Order likely violated the Constitution. Instead, it challenged only the scope of the ordered relief, arguing that the injunctions should be narrowed to block the Order’s enforcement against only the individual persons named in the complaints.
All three appellate courts denied the Government’s request and left the preliminary injunctions intact. See 131 F. 4th 27 (CA1 2025); 2025 WL 654902 (CA4, Feb. 28, 2025); 2025 WL 553485 (CA9, Feb. 19, 2025). The Fourth Circuit, which reviewed the preliminary injunction issued to the organizational plaintiffs, concluded that “[t]he district court . . . carefully explained why an injunction limited to the parties—including organizations with hundreds of thousands of members nationwide—would be unworkable in practice and thus fail to provide complete relie[f] to the plaintiffs.” 2025 WL 654902, *1. The First and Ninth Circuits left undisturbed the Massachusetts and Washington District Courts’ respective determinations that only universal injunctions would fully redress the States’ injuries. See 131 F. 4th, 42–43; 2025 WL 553485, *1.
On March 13, the Government filed emergency applications with this Court requesting partial stays of the three preliminary injunctions of the Citizenship Order. The Government renews its contention that the injunctions must be narrowed to benefit only formal parties in these cases.
In partially granting the Government’s remarkable request, the Court distorts well-established equitable principles several times over. A stay, this Court has said, “‘is not a matter of right,’” but rather “‘an exercise of judicial discretion.’” Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 433 (2009). For centuries, courts have “close[d] the doors” of equity to those “tainted with inequitableness or bad faith relative to the matter in which [they] seek relief.” Precision Instrument Mfg. Co. v. Automotive Maintenance Machinery Co., 324 U. S. 806, 814 (1945). Yet the majority throws the doors of equity open to the Government in a case where it seeks to undo a fundamental and clearly established constitutional right. The Citizenship Order’s patent unlawfulness is reason enough to deny the Government’s applications.
The Government also falls well short of satisfying its burden to show that it will likely suffer irreparable harm absent a stay and that it will likely succeed on the merits of its challenge to the scope of the injunctions. Nken, 556 U. S., at 434–435. The Executive Branch has respected birthright citizenship for well over a century, and it advances no plausible reason why maintaining the status quo while the litigation proceeds would cause it irrevocable harm. Nor could it, for the Constitution and federal law prohibit the enforcement of the Citizenship Order.
For all that, moreover, the Government is not even correct on the merits of universal injunctions. To the contrary, universal injunctions are consistent with long-established principles of equity, once respected by this Court. What is more, these cases do not even squarely present the legality of universal injunctions. That is because, even if the majority were right that injunctions can only offer “complete relief to the plaintiffs before the court,” ante, at 17, each of the lower courts here correctly determined that the nationwide relief they issued was necessary to remedy respondents’ in juries completely. So even ignoring the traditional stay factors and accepting the majority’s view of the merits, there is no reason to grant relief in these cases.
It is a bedrock principle that parties who request a stay must show they will likely suffer irreparable harm absent such relief. Indeed, “[t]he authority to grant stays has historically been justified by the perceived need ‘to prevent irreparable injury to the parties or to the public’ pending review.” Nken, 556 U. S., at 432 (quoting Scripps-Howard Radio, Inc. v. FCC, 316 U. S. 4, 9 (1942)). Thus, an apparent likelihood of success on the merits never suffices on its own to justify this Court’s intervention: Our emergency docket is not a mechanism for an expedited appeal. Accordingly, “this Court can avoid delving into the merits” “[i]f the [applicant does not] demonstrat[e] an irreparable injury.” Labrador v. Poe, 601 U. S. ___, ___ (2024) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in grant of stay) (slip op., at 3); contra, ante, at 8–11 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).
What grave harm does the Executive face that prompts a majority of this Court to grant it relief? The answer, the Government says, is the inability to enforce the Citizenship Order against nonparties. For the majority, that answer suffices. See ante, at 24 (“When a federal court enters a universal injunction against the Government, it ‘improper[ly] intrude[s]’ on ‘a coordinate branch of the Government’ and prevents the Government from enforcing its policies against nonparties”).
The problem, however, is that the Executive Branch has no right to enforce the Citizenship Order against anyone. As the Executive itself once put it, the Order is “unquestionably unconstitutional.” Supra, at 9. It defies logic to say that maintaining a centuries-long status quo for a few months longer will irreparably injure the Government. See Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, 602 U. S. 339, 345–346 (2024) (The “purpose” of equitable relief “‘is merely to preserve the relative positions of the parties until a trial on the merits can be held’”). The President’s “mandate . . . to exercise his executive power,” Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, 123 (1926), in any event, does not permit him to rewrite the Constitution or statutory provisions at a whim. By forging ahead and granting relief to the Government anyway, this Court endorses the radical proposition that the President is harmed, irreparably, whenever he cannot do something he wants to do, even if what he wants to do is break the law.
The majority claims that it can sidestep “analysis of the Executive Order” altogether because (in its view) every overbroad injunction necessarily causes irreparable harm sufficient to warrant emergency intervention. Ante, at 24. Yet where a purportedly overbroad injunction orders the Government to do only what this Court has expressly held it is required to do, it is hard to see how it could cause any harm. At oral argument, the Government conceded it was bound to follow this Court’s precedent. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 62–63. This Court’s precedent establishes beyond a shade of doubt that the Executive Order is unconstitutional. See supra, at 3–9. Thus, by enjoining the Government from violating settled law, the District Courts’ orders do not cause the Government any harm.
The majority’s contrary position is self-refuting. Suppose an executive order barred women from receiving unemployment benefits or black citizens from voting. Is the Government irreparably harmed, and entitled to emergency relief, by a district court order universally enjoining such policies? The majority, apparently, would say yes.
Nothing in this Court’s precedents supports that result. It turns one of the “‘most critical’ factors we must consider in deciding whether to grant a stay” into a box-checking exercise whenever the relevant enjoined action is an executive one. Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project, 582 U. S. 571, 584 (2017) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Even accepting that “[a]ny time a State is enjoined by a court from effectuating statutes enacted by representatives of its people, it suffers a form of irreparable injury,” Maryland v. King, 567 U. S. 1301, 1303 (2012) (Roberts, C. J., in chambers), that democratic consideration cuts against the Government in these cases. Through the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress and the States constitutionalized birthright citizenship. Congress also codified birthright citizenship in §1401(a). It is thus the Citizenship Order, not the District Courts’ injunctions, that prevents the “‘effectuat[ion]’” of a constitutional amendment and repeals a “‘statut[e] enacted by representatives of [the American] people.’” Id., at 1303.
Simply put, it strains credulity to treat the Executive Branch as irreparably harmed by injunctions that direct it to continue following settled law. “All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it.” United States v. Lee, 106 U. S. 196, 220 (1882); but see Trump v. United States, 603 U. S. 593 (2024). The injunctions do no more harm to the Executive than the Constitution and federal law do.
A majority of this Court nonetheless rushes to address the merits of the Government’s applications, holding that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts.” Ante, at 1–2. A majority that has repeatedly pledged its fealty to “history and tradition” thus eliminates an equitable power firmly grounded in centuries of equitable principles and practice. By stripping all federal courts, including itself, of that power, the Court kneecaps the Judiciary’s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies. That runs directly counter to the point of equity: empowering courts to do complete justice, including through flexible remedies that have historically benefited parties and nonparties alike.
A brief recounting of equity’s history demonstrates the majority’s grave error. The American legal system grew out of English law, which had two primary judicial institutions: the common-law courts and equity courts. Equity courts arose because of the inflexibility of the common-law system; their purpose was to look beyond formal writs and provide remedies where the common law gave inadequate relief. In Blackstone’s words, equity was meant “to give remedy in cases where none before was administered.” 3 Commentaries on the Laws of England, at 50.
Adaptability has always been a hallmark of equity, especially with regard to the scope of its remedies. While common-law courts were “compelled to limit their inquiry to the very parties in the litigation before them,” equity courts could “adjust the rights of all, however numerous,” and “adapt their decrees to all the varieties of circumstances, which may arise, and adjust them to all the peculiar rights of all the parties in interest.” J. Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence §28, pp. 27–28 (2d ed. 1839). After all, equity’s “constant aim” was “to do complete justice.” J. Story, Commentaries on Equity Pleadings §72, p. 74 (2d ed. 1840). Accordingly, equity courts could “decid[e] upon and settl[e] the rights of all persons interested in the subject-matter of the suit, so that the performance of the decree of the Court may be perfectly safe to those, who are compelled to obey it, and also, that future litigation may be prevented.” Ibid.
For equity courts, injunctions were “manifestly indispensable for the purposes of social justice in a great variety of cases.” Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence §959a, at 227. Unlike this Court, then, those courts “constantly decline[d] to lay down any rule which shall limit their power and discretion as to the particular cases, in which such injunctions shall be granted, or withheld.” Ibid. Justice Story underscored the “wisdom in this course”: Equity courts needed flexibility to craft injunctions for particular cases, as it was “impossible to foresee all the exigencies of society which may require their aid and assistance to protect rights or redress wrongs.” Ibid.
In their pursuit of complete justice, equity courts could award injunctive and other equitable relief to parties and nonparties alike. For centuries, they did so through what was known as “bills of peace.” If a plaintiff or group of plaintiffs filed such a bill, an English court could use a single case to settle disputes affecting whole communities, for “the inherent jurisdiction of equity” included the power “to interfere for the prevention of a multiplicity of suits.” 1 J. Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence §260, p. 278 (1881). Bills of peace issued in cases “‘where the parties [were] very numerous, and the court perceive[d] that it [would] be almost impossible to bring them all before the court; or where the question is of general interest, and a few may sue for the benefit of the whole.’” Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., 527 U. S. 815, 832 (1999) (quoting West v. Randall, 29 F. Cas. 718, 722 (No. 17,424) (CC RI 1820) (Story, J.)). In such cases, a court could “grant [equitable relief] without making other persons parties,” instead considering them “quasi parties to the record, at least for the purpose of taking the benefit of the decree, and of entitling themselves to other equitable relief, if their rights [were] jeopard[iz]ed.” Id., at 723.
Early American courts embraced bills of peace and extended their logic to cases “which [were] not technically ‘bills of peace,’ but ‘[were] analogous to,’ or ‘within the principle’ of such bills.” 1 Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence §269, at 293. One example was taxpayer suits, which allowed courts to enjoin universally the enforcement of a challenged tax. Sometimes, such suits were filed “by any number of taxpayers joined as co-plaintiffs, or by one taxpayer suing on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated.” Id., at 277. But taxpayer suits were not always representative in nature: Even “a single taxpayer suing on his own account,” if victorious, could enjoin the collection of a tax against anyone. Ibid. Individual plaintiffs, moreover, could secure an order “to set aside and annul any and every illegal public official action . . . whereby a debt . . . would be unlawfully created.” Ibid. By allowing “complete and final relief [to] be given to an entire community by means of one judicial decree,” American courts (like their English counterparts) spared nonparties and themselves from the burden of “an indefinite amount of separate litigation.” Id., at 278.
Federal courts have also exercised equitable authority to enjoin universally federal and state laws for more than a century. For instance, before deciding the constitutionality of a new federal law in Lewis Publishing Co. v. Morgan, 229 U. S. 288 (1913), this Court entered an order blocking the law’s enforcement against parties and nonparties. See M. Sohoni, The Lost History of the “Universal” Injunction, 133 Harv. L. Rev. 920, 944–946 (2020). In Lewis, two newspaper publishers challenged as unconstitutional a federal law requiring publishers to file with the Postmaster General twice-yearly disclosures about their editorial board membership, corporate ownership, and subscribership. Sohoni, 133 Harv. L. Rev., at 944. After the District Court upheld the law and authorized a direct appeal to the Supreme Court, one of the publishers moved for a restraining order. The proposed order sought relief not only for the publisher who filed it, but asked the Court to “‘restrai[n]’” the Postmaster General and other federal officials from enforcing the law against “‘appellant and other newspaper publishers.’” Id., at 946. This Court readily agreed, see Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin v. Burleson, 229 U. S. 600, 601 (1913) (per curiam), even as it would have sufficed for the movant publishers’ sake to enjoin the Act’s enforcement against them alone pending their appeal.
In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925), too, this Court affirmed a universal injunction of Oregon’s compulsory public schooling law. See Sohoni, 133 Harv. L. Rev., at 959–962. Two private school owners challenged that law in a suit against the Governor of Oregon and other state officials. “The plaintiffs did not sue on behalf of a represented group or class; they sued for themselves, alleging that the law was an unconstitutional interference with their property rights.” Id., at 959. Yet a three-judge federal court awarded them a universal injunction. See id., at 960–961. This Court, in affirming that relief, twice described it as “appropriate.” Pierce, 268 U. S., at 530, 533. The Court understood that the injunction it affirmed would provide relief to nonparties, commenting that such relief was necessary because enforcing the Act would result not only in the “destruction of appellees’ primary schools,” but would also destroy “perhaps all other private primary schools for normal children within the State of Oregon.” Id., at 534.
Cases like Lewis and Pierce were not outliers. Throughout the early 20th century, federal courts granted universal injunctions even when a narrower remedy would have sufficed to redress the parties’ injuries. See, e.g., West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 642 (1943) (affirming an injunction that shielded the plaintiff class of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and any other children with religious scruples, from complying with a state law requiring children to salute the American flag); see also Sohoni, 133 Harv. L. Rev., at 943–993 (collecting cases). It is certainly true that federal courts have granted more universal injunctions of federal laws in recent decades. But the issuance of broad equitable relief intended to benefit parties and nonparties has deep roots in equity’s history and in this Court’s precedents.
The universal injunctions of the Citizenship Order fit firmly within that tradition. The right to birthright citizenship is “clear,” the Citizenship Order is an “‘illegal act,’” and without the “‘preventive process of injunction,’” the right will be “‘irreparably injured.’” Arthur v. Oakes, 63 F. 310, 328 (CA7 1894) (Harlan, J.) (describing standard for when an injunction should issue). It would be “‘almost impossible,’” moreover, “‘to bring all [affected individuals] before the court,’” Ortiz, 527 U. S., at 832, justifying the use of one suit to settle the issue of the Citizenship Order’s constitutionality for all affected persons. See 1 Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence §260, at 450–451. Complete justice, the “constant aim” of equity, Story, Commentaries on Equity Pleadings §72, at 74, demands a universal injunction: “‘the only remedy which the law allows to prevent the commission’” of a flagrantly illegal policy. Arthur, 63 F., at 328. The District Courts, by granting such relief, appropriately “settle[d] the rights of all persons interested in the subject-matter” of these suits, binding the Government so as to prevent needless “future litigation.” Story, Commentaries on Equity Pleadings §72, at 74.
Of course, as a matter of equitable discretion, courts may often have weighty reasons not to award universal relief. Among other things, universal injunctions can prevent different district and appellate courts from considering the same issues in parallel, forestalling the legal dialogue (or “percolation”) the federal system uses to answer difficult questions correctly. Not so here, however, because the Citizenship Order is patently unconstitutional under settled law and a variety of district and appellate courts have reviewed the issue. So too can universal injunctions encourage forum shopping, by allowing preferred district judges in a venue picked by one plaintiff to enjoin governmental policies nationwide. They also operate asymmetrically against the Government, giving plaintiffs a litigation advantage: To halt Government action everywhere, a plaintiff must win only one universal injunction across many potential lawsuits. Yet this is not a scenario where granting universal relief will encourage forum shopping or give plaintiffs the upper hand. Quite the opposite: By awarding universal relief below, the District Courts just ordered the Government to do everywhere what any reasonable jurist would order the Government to do anywhere.
There may be good reasons not to issue universal injunctions in the typical case, when the merits are open to reasonable disagreement and there is no claim of extraordinary and imminent irreparable harm.3 See Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence §959a, at 227 (“[Injunctive relief] ought . . . to be guarded with extreme caution, and applied only in very clear cases”); cf. ante, at 13 ( “[The] use [of bills of peace] was confined to limited circumstances”). The universal injunctions in these cases, however, are more than appropriate. These injunctions, after all, protect newborns from the exceptional, irreparable harm associated with losing a foundational constitutional right and its immediate benefits. They thus honor the most basic value of our constitutional system: They keep the Government within the bounds of law. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 163 (1803).
The majority’s contrary reasoning falls flat. The majority starts with the Judiciary Act of 1789, which gives federal courts jurisdiction over “all suits . . . in equity.” §11, 1 Stat. 78. In the majority’s telling, universal injunctions are inconsistent with equity jurisdiction because they are not “sufficiently ‘analogous’ to the relief ‘“exercised by the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the enactment of the original Judiciary Act.”’” Ante, at 6 (quoting Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo, S. A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc., 527 U. S. 308, 318–319 (1999)). In reaching that ahistorical result, the Court claims that the English Chancellor’s remedies were “typically” party specific, and emphasizes that party-specific principles have permeated this Court’s understanding of equity. Ante, at 6–9.
The majority’s argument stumbles out the gate. As the majority must itself concede, injunctions issued by English courts of equity were “typically,” but not always, party specific. Ante, at 7. After all, bills of peace, for centuries, allowed English courts to adjudicate the rights of parties not before it, and to award remedies intended to benefit entire affected communities. Taxpayer suits, too, could lead to a complete injunction of a tax, even when only a single plaintiff filed suit.
The majority seeks to distinguish bills of peace from universal injunctions by urging that the former (but not the latter) typically applied to small and cohesive groups and were representative in nature. See ante, at 13. Yet those are distinctions without a difference. Equity courts had the flexibility to “adapt their decrees to all the varieties of circumstances, which may arise, and adjust them to all the peculiar rights of all the parties in interest.” Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence §28, at 28. There is no equitable principle that caps the number of parties in interest. Indeed, in taxpayer suits, a single plaintiff could get the relief of “annul[ling] any and every kind of tax or assessment” that applied to an entire “county, town, or city.” 1 Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence §260, at 277.4 “[T]he inherent jurisdiction of equity to interfere for the prevention of a multiplicity of suits,” moreover, is what empowered common law courts to issue bills of peace. Id., at 450–451 (4th ed. 1918). That is why early American courts understood taxpayer suits, in which even a “single taxpayer suing on his own account” and not on behalf of others could secure a total injunction, to be a natural extension of a bill of peace. Id., at 277 (1881).5
It is also unclear why “‘cohesive[ness]’” or “representative[ness]” would preclude even those universal injunctions that, like here, benefit a discrete and cohesive group. Ante, at 13. The Citizenship Order itself applies only to a subset group of newborn children: that is, children born to a mother unlawfully or temporarily present, and a father who is neither a citizen nor lawful permanent resident. Those mothers and fathers share “not only [a common] interest in the question, but one in common in the subject-matter of th[is] suit.” Scott v. Donald, 165 U. S. 107, 116 (1897). Nor is there any doubt that at least the individual respondents adequately represent the injunction’s beneficiaries: Like all affected parents, they “are necessarily interested in obtaining the relief sought” to preserve their children’s citizenship. Emmons v. National Mut. Bldg. & Loan Assn. of NY, 135 F. 689, 691 (CA4 1905) (explaining the “well-known doctrine of equity jurisprudence” that “‘the relief sought by [a plaintiff]’” must be “‘beneficial to those whom he undertakes to represent’” (quoting 1 R. White, F. Nichols, & H. Garrett, Daniell’s Chancery Practice 243 (6th Am. ed. 1894))). What was true of bills of peace is thus true of these universal injunctions and universal injunctions generally, too: Both allow courts to “‘adjudicate the rights of members of dispersed groups without formally joining them to a lawsuit through the usual procedures.’” Ante, at 13.
That bills of peace bear some resemblance to modern day Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 class actions does not mean they cannot also be a historical analogue to the universal injunction. Contra, ante, at 13 (“The bill of peace lives in modern form” as the “modern class action . . . governed in federal court by Rule 23,” “not as the universal injunction”). In the majority’s view, Rule 23 class actions, but not universal injunctions, would “be recognizable to an English Chancellor” because the limitations on class actions mirror those that applied to bills of peace. Ante, at 14 (Rule 23 “requires numerosity (such that joinder is impracticable), common questions of law or fact, typicality, and representative parties who adequately protect the interests of the class”); cf. supra, at 25 (explaining why the universal injunctions in these cases are consistent with those limits). To the extent that English Chancellors would care about the differences between Rule 23 and universal injunctions, the majority provides absolutely no reason to conclude they would think the former permissible and not the latter. To the contrary, unlike the Court today, the English Chancery Court recognized that principles of equity permit granting relief to nonparties. The history of bills of peace makes that apparent, particularly because they went beyond what Rule 23 permits. See ante, at 13–14 (“[T]he modern Rule 23 is in some ways ‘more restrictive of representative suits than the original bills of peace’”). They are thus a common ancestor to both class actions and universal injunctions.
In any event, nothing in Rule 23 purports to supplant or modify federal courts’ equitable authority under the Judiciary Act to grant relief to nonparties, nor could it. Contra, ante, at 14. The majority frets that universal injunctions, if permissible, will empower federal courts to create de facto class actions at will, thereby circumventing Rule 23’s procedural protections. Ibid. Those concerns, however, have not been borne out in reality. Rule 23 has coexisted with universal injunctions against the Government for decades. Universal injunctions also cannot supplant the paradigm form of class actions, which seek money damages. In all events, to the extent the majority’s concern has any teeth, reviewing courts are already well equipped to safeguard Rule 23’s procedural protections. If there is a genuine lack of clarity as to the lawfulness of challenged Government action, district courts may well abuse their discretion by reflexively issuing universal injunctions where a Rule 23 class action would be more appropriate. See Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 542 U. S. 656, 664 (2004) (standard of review for preliminary injunctions is “‘abuse of discretion’”).
The majority next insists that the practice of “founding-era courts of equity in the United States” cuts against universal injunctions, and that this Court “consistently rebuffed requests for relief that extended beyond the parties.” Ante, at 8. The majority’s account is irreconcilable with early American bills of peace and the history of taxpayer suits. It further contradicts this Court’s practice, in cases like Lewis, Pierce, and Barnette, of affirming and granting universal injunctions even when narrower, plaintiff- focused injunctions would have offered complete relief to the parties. See supra, at 20–21. The majority instead focuses on one case from 1897, in which this Court “permitted only a narro[w] decree between ‘the parties named as plaintiff and defendants in the bill,’” ante, at 7 (quoting Scott, 165 U. S., at 117), over others, including from the same period, doing just the opposite. The majority offers no principled basis to deem the question resolved by a single case from 1897 while cases just a few years later charted a different course. Indeed, if the relevant inquiry turns on “founding-era practice,” then there is no reason why a case from 1897 should be dispositive. Ante, at 9, n. 7.
In the majority’s telling, Scott merely “illustrates that as late as 1897, this Court adhered to a party-specific view of relief.” Ante, at 7–8, n. 6. Nothing in Scott, however, dictates that equitable relief must always be party specific. To the contrary, just one year after Scott, the Court endorsed the opposite view: “Only a court of equity,” the Court explained, “is competent to . . . determine, once for all and without a multiplicity of suits, matters that affect not simply individuals, but the interests of the entire community.” Smyth v. Ames, 169 U. S. 466, 518 (1898); see also id., at 517 (“[T]he circuit court of the United States, sitting in equity, can make a comprehensive decree covering the whole ground of controversy, and thus avoid the multiplicity of suits that would inevitably arise under the statute”).6 The majority does not identify a single case, from the founding era or otherwise, in which this Court held that federal courts may never issue universal injunctions or broad equitable relief that extends to nonparties. That is to be expected, given the historical support for such relief and its use in bills of peace and taxpayer suits.
Most critically, the majority fundamentally misunderstands the nature of equity by freezing in amber the precise remedies available at the time of the Judiciary Act. Even as it declares that “‘[e]quity is flexible,’” ante, at 11, the majority ignores the very flexibility that historically allowed equity to secure complete justice where the rigid forms of common law proved inadequate. Indeed, “[i]n th[e] early times [of the common law] the chief juridical employment of the chancellor must have been in devising new writs, directed to the courts of common law, to give remedy in cases where none before was administered.” 3 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, at 50. Adaptability has thus always been at the equity’s core. Hence why equity courts “constantly decline[d] to lay down any rule which shall limit their power and discretion as to the particular cases, in which such injunctions shall be granted, or withheld.” Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence §959(a), at 227. The Judiciary Act of 1789 codified equity itself, not merely a static list of remedies.
Historical analogues are no doubt instructive and provide important guidance, but requiring an exact historical match for every equitable remedy defies equity’s purpose. Equity courts understood the “wisdom” in keeping injunctive relief flexible, for it was “impossible to foresee all the exigencies of society which may require their aid and assistance to protect rights or redress wrongs.” Ibid. Of course, in assessing whether a remedy falls within federal courts’ equity jurisdiction under the Judiciary Act, this Court has asked “[w]hether the relief . . . was traditionally accorded by courts of equity.” Grupo Mexicano, 527 U. S., at 319. Grupo Mexicano, however, does not dictate the level of generality for that historical inquiry, and general principles of equity that themselves existed at the founding militate against requiring a near exact match as the majority does. Cf. United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. 680, 692 (2024) (“The law must comport with the principles underlying the Second Amendment, but it need not be a ‘dead ringer’ or a ‘historical twin’”).
Indeed, equitable relief in the United States has evolved in one respect to protect rights and redress wrongs that even the majority does not question: Plaintiffs today may obtain plaintiff-protective injunctions against Government officials that block the enforcement of unconstitutional laws, relief exemplified by Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908). That remedy, which traces back to the equity practice of mid-19th century courts, finds no analogue in the relief exercised in the English Court of Chancery, which could not enjoin the Crown or English officers. See supra, at 24, n. 4; see also Sohoni, 133 Harv. L. Rev., at 928, 1002–1006; see also R. Fallon, D. Meltzer, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 958–959 (5th ed. 2003) (noting that, in Young, “the threatened conduct of the defendant would not have been an actionable wrong at common law” and that the “principle [in Young] has been easily absorbed in suits challenging federal official action”). Under the majority’s rigid historical test, however, even plaintiff-protective injunctions against patently unlawful Government action should be impermissible.7 Such a result demonstrates the folly of treating equity as a closed system, rather than one designed to adapt to new circumstances.
The relative absence of universal injunctions against the United States before the late 20th century, moreover, reflects constitutional and procedural limitations on judicial power, not equitable ones. Brief for Legal Historians in No. 24A884 as Amici Curiae 13–16. Until the enactment of the Amendments to the Administrative Procedure Act in 1976, sovereign immunity barred most suits against the Federal Government. Id., at 14–15 (citing G. Sisk, Litigation With the Federal Government §4.10(b), p. 339 (2016)). Officer suits against Cabinet officials before that point, moreover, could be brought only in Washington, D. C., due to limits on personal jurisdiction and venue that existed at the time. Brief for Legal Historians in No. 24A884 as Amici Curiae 15–16. The later emergence of universal injunctions against the United States followed the removal of those barriers and the expansion of federal actions and laws. The rise of universal injunctions therefore represents equity’s essential adaptation to modern governance.
It is a “common expression . . . that Courts of Equity delight to do justice, and not by halves.” Story, Commentaries on Equity Pleadings §72, at 74. The majority, however, delights to do justice by piecemeal. Its decision to strip the federal courts of the authority to issue universal injunctions of even flagrantly unlawful Government action represents a grave and unsupported diminution of the judicial power of equity. Centuries ago, Chief Justice Marshall warned that “[i]f the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery.” United States v. Peters, 5 Cranch 115, 136 (1809). The Court should have heeded that warning today.
Even the majority’s view of the law cannot justify issuance of emergency relief to the Government in these cases, for the majority leaves open whether these particular injunctions may pass muster under its ruling. Indeed, the lower courts issued the challenged injunctions consistent with an equitable principle that even the majority embraces: Courts may award an equitable remedy when it is “necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs.” Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682, 702 (1979). As the majority recounts, “[t]he equitable tradition has long embraced the rule that courts generally ‘may administer complete relief between the parties.’” Ante, at 16 (quoting Kinney-Coastal Oil Co. v. Kieffer, 277 U. S. 488, 507 (1928); emphasis deleted).8
So too does the Court recognize that, in some cases, complete relief will require a broad remedy that necessarily benefits nonparties. See ante, at 17, n. 13 (“There may be other injuries for which it is all but impossible for courts to craft relief that is both complete and benefits only the named plaintiffs”); see also Gill v. Whitford, 585 U. S. 48, 66–67 (2018) (“[T]he only way to vindicate an individual plaintiff ’s right to an equally weighted vote [is] through a wholesale ‘restructuring of the geographical distribution of seats in a state legislature’”). Hence the majority’s nuisance hypothetical: If a plaintiff sues her neighbor for playing loud music at night, a court can order the neighbor to turn off the music at night, even if doing so will naturally benefit other neighbors who are not parties to the suit. See ante, at 16–17.
The majority need not resort to hypotheticals, however, because the very injunctions in these cases were necessary to give respondents complete relief. Indeed, each District Court found that a universal injunction was the only feasible option to redress fully respondents’ injuries. See 763 F. Supp. 3d, at 746 (concluding that “[o]nly a nationwide injunction will provide complete relief to the plaintiffs” because the organizational plaintiffs have “‘over 680,000 members . . . who reside in all 50 U.S. states and several U.S. territories’” and “‘[h]undreds or even thousands’” of those members “‘will give birth to children in the United States over the coming weeks and months’” (alterations in original)); 765 F. Supp. 3d, at 1153 (“[A] geographically limited injunction would be ineffective, as it would not completely relieve [the plaintiff States] of the Order’s financial burden(s)”); 766 F. Supp. 3d, at 288 (explaining that “injunctive relief limited to the State plaintiffs [would be] inadequate” because it would “fai[l] in providing complete relief to the State plaintiffs”).
Recognizing as much, the majority retreats to the view that, even if a court “can award complete relief,” it “should [not] do so” reflexively. Ante, at 18; see also ibid. (“Complete relief is not a guarantee—it is the maximum a court can provide”); ante, at 2 (opinion of Thomas, J.) (suggesting courts “err insofar as they treat complete relief as a mandate”). Even so, the Court never suggests that the District Courts in these cases should not have awarded relief to the parties that completely remedied their alleged injuries. Nor could it. The majority recognizes that “in equity, ‘the broader and deeper the remedy the plaintiff wants, the stronger the plaintiff ’s story needs to be.’” Ante, at 18–19. Here, respondents paired their respective requests for complete relief with the strongest story possible: Without such relief, an executive order that violates the Constitution, federal law, Supreme Court precedent, history, and over a century of Executive Branch practice would infringe upon their constitutional rights or cause them to incur significant financial and administrative costs.
Perhaps that is why the majority leaves open the possibility that the District Courts, in these cases, could have granted at least respondent States a nationwide injunction consistent with the notion of “complete relief.” The majority recognizes, correctly, that the Massachusetts District Court “decided that a universal injunction was necessary to provide the States themselves with complete relief.” Ante, at 18.9 And the majority does not dispute the basis for those decisions: “Children often move across state lines or are born outside their parents’ State of residence,” and “th[is] cross-border flow” would make an injunction protecting only children born in the party States “unworkable.” Ante, 18. A narrower injunction would “require [the States] to track and verify the immigration status of the parents of every child, along with the birth State of every child for whom they provide certain federally funded benefits.” Ante, at 18. Unrebutted record evidence bears this out and shows that the Citizenship Order would irreparably harm the States, even if it does not apply to children born within their boundaries. The Court does not contend otherwise. That should be the end of the matter.
Nevertheless, the majority suggests that the District Courts might consider, after this Court hands down its decision, whether some alternative narrower injunction would provide the States complete relief. See ibid. What would such an injunction look like, and would it be feasible? The Court does not say. The majority does note, but takes no position on, two narrower injunctions the Government claims would still give complete relief to the States: an order prohibiting the Government from enforcing the Citizenship Order in respondent States, including as to state residents born elsewhere; or an order directing the Government to treat children covered by the Citizenship Order as eligible for federally funded welfare benefits when those children reside in a respondent State. See ibid. (citing Application for Partial Stay of Injunction in No. 24A884, p. 23).
As an initial matter, the Government never raised those narrower injunctions to the District Courts, meaning it forfeited them. That is what the First Circuit expressly held, 131 F. 4th, at 43 (“declining to consider” those alternatives because they were “raised for [the] first time . . . in support of stay pending appeal of preliminary injunction”), and the majority does not dispute the point. It is true that plaintiffs seeking a preliminary injunction bear the burden of making “a clear showing that [they are] entitled to such relief.” Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U. S. 7, 22 (2008). The States met that burden, however: They presented what is still uncontroverted evidence that an injunction applicable only to children born within their borders would give them less than complete relief. Accordingly, it was reasonable for the District Courts to fashion the remedies that they did, for they were “not obligated to undertake the task of chiseling from the government’s across-the-board [Executive Order] a different policy the government never identified, endorsed, or defended.” J. D. v. Azar, 925 F. 3d 1291, 1336 (CADC 2019) (per curiam).
Those proffered alternatives, moreover, are unworkable on their face. Each would require creating a two-tiered scheme in which the Government’s recognition of some children’s citizenship status or eligibility for federally funded benefits would change based on whether a child resides in one of respondent States at any given moment. That scheme would have to operate, somehow, without imposing an administrative burden on respondent States or disrupting their receipt of federal funds to which they are entitled. “[T]he regular movement of the American people into and out of different States . . . would make it difficult to sensibly maintain such a scattershot system.” Ante, at 5 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.).
Such a system would also be incompatible with federal law. Some statutes, like those governing Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, require States to give benefits only to applicants with a Social Security number and to use those numbers for certain administrative purposes. See, e.g., 7 U. S. C. §2025(e); 42 U. S. C. §1320b–7(a)(1). States could not comply with those laws under the Government’s alternative injunctions because children covered by the Citizenship Order in nonparty States would still be treated as noncitizens at birth. Thus, when some of those children later move to one of respondent States, they would lack Social Security numbers. No matter how it is done, discarding the nationwide status quo of birthright citizenship would result in chaos.
What is more, the principle of complete relief does not require courts to award only the absolute narrowest injunction possible. To conclude otherwise would eviscerate the “discretion and judgment” that is integral to the crafting of injunctive relief. International Refugee Assistance Project, 582 U. S., at 579. Indeed, equitable relief “[t]raditionally . . . has been characterized by a practical flexibility in shaping its remedies and by a facility for adjusting and reconciling public and private needs.” Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 300 (1955) (footnote omitted). That is why the court in the majority’s nuisance hypothetical can “order the defendant to turn her music down,” or to turn it “off,” even though the latter is technically more burdensome on the defendant than necessary to give the plaintiff complete relief. Ante, at 16.
Accordingly, the District Courts appropriately determined that the “only one feasible option” that would give complete relief to the States was a universal injunction. See ibid. Clearly, the majority is asking the lower courts themselves to explain what is patently obvious about the Government’s proposed injunctions and any others that can be imagined.
Inexplicably, however, the Court declares that, for the associational and individual respondents, injunctions enjoining the Government from enforcing the Citizenship Order against them (and only them) would have sufficed. See ante, at 17–18. In fashioning equitable relief, however, courts must take into account “‘what is workable.’” North Carolina v. Covington, 581 U. S. 486, 488 (2017) (per curiam). Just like the injunction that the majority blesses in the context of its nuisance-suit hypothetical, which will bestow a peaceful night upon the plaintiff’s neighbors even when the plaintiff is not herself at home, the preliminary injunction for the associational and individual respondents reflects what is practicable. As the Maryland District Court found, “‘hundreds or even thousands’” of the associational respondents’ members, who reside in all 50 States, “‘will give birth to children in the United States over the coming weeks and months.’” 763 F. Supp. 3d, at 746. Theoretically, it might be possible for a court to fashion an injunction that runs to each of the thousands of expectant mothers in that group. But see ante, at 5 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.) (“Often, it is not especially workable or sustainable or desirable to have a patchwork scheme . . . in which a major new federal statute or executive action . . . applies to some people or organizations in certain States or regions, but not to others”). Yet anything less than a nationwide injunction creates a risk that the Government, inadvertently or intentionally, will enforce the Citizenship Order against some of the plaintiffs’ children before this Court rules definitively on the Order’s lawfulness.
A narrower injunction would necessarily task “[t]hose [responsible for] determining a baby’s citizenship status . . . with [correctly] confirming [biological] parentage, the citizenship or immigration status of both [biological] parents, and membership in specific organizations.” Opposition to Application for Partial Stay of Injunction in No. 24A884, p. 24. That, in turn, would “impose an enormous burden on expecting parents, membership organizations, government employees at all levels, and hospital staff,” increasing the risk of mistake. Ibid. The risk of noncompliance is also particularly stark here, where the challenged action itself reflects an utter disregard for settled precedent, and given the Government’s repeated insistence that it need not provide notice to individuals before their sudden deportations. See, e.g., A. A. R. P. v. Trump, 605 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (per curiam) (slip op., at 2); Department of Homeland Security v. D. V. D., 606 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 15). The majority does not identify a narrower alternative that is both practical and mitigates that risk.
At the very least, there is no reason to think that the District Court abused its discretion in deciding that only a nationwide injunction could protect the plaintiffs’ fundamental rights. See Ashcroft, 542 U. S., at 664 (setting forth the standard of review). “Crafting a preliminary injunction,” after all, “is an exercise of discretion and judgment, often dependent as much on the equities of a given case as the substance of the legal issues it presents.” International Refugee Assistance Project, 582 U. S., at 579. Applying deferential abuse-of-discretion review, the Fourth Circuit emphasized that the “[t]he district court . . . carefully explained why an injunction limited to the parties—including organizations with hundreds of thousands of members nationwide—would be unworkable in practice and thus fail to provide complete relie[f] to the plaintiffs.” 2025 WL 654902, *1. The majority gives no justification for deeming the District Court’s reasoned assessment an abuse of discretion.
The equities and public interest weigh decisively against the Government. For all of the reasons discussed, the Citizenship Order is patently unconstitutional. To allow the Government to enforce it against even one newborn child is an assault on our constitutional order and antithetical to equity and public interest. Cf. Salazar v. Buono, 559 U. S. 700, 714–715 (2010) (plurality opinion) (“‘[A] court must never ignore . . . circumstances underlying [equitable relief] lest the decree be turned into an “instrument of wrong”’”).
Meanwhile, newborns subject to the Citizenship Order will face the gravest harms imaginable. If the Order does in fact go into effect without further intervention by the District Courts, children will lose, at least for the time being, “a most precious right,” Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144, 159 (1963), and “cherished status” that “carries with it the privilege of full participation in the affairs of our society,” Knauer v. United States, 328 U. S. 654, 658 (1946). Affected children also risk losing the chance to participate in American society altogether, unless their parents have sufficient resources to file individual suits or successfully challenge the Citizenship Order in removal proceedings. Indeed, the Order risks the “creation of a substantial ‘shadow population’” for covered children born in the United States who remain here. Plyler, 457 U. S., at 218. Without Social Security numbers and other documentation, these children will be denied critical public services, like SNAP and Medicaid, and lose the ability to engage fully in civic life by being born in States that have not filed a lawsuit. Worse yet, the Order threatens to render American-born children stateless, a status “deplored in the international community” for causing “the total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society.” Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 101–102 (1958) (plurality opinion). That threat hangs like a guillotine over this litigation.
The Order will cause chaos for the families of all affected children too, as expecting parents scramble to understand whether the Order will apply to them and what ramifications it will have. If allowed to take effect, the Order may even wrench newborns from the arms of parents lawfully in the United States, for it purports to strip citizenship from the children of parents legally present on a temporary basis. See 90 Fed. Reg. 8449. Those newborns could face deportation, even as their parents remain lawfully in the country. In light of all these consequences, there can be no serious question over where the equities lie in these cases.
The Court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution. The Executive Branch can now enforce policies that flout settled law and violate countless individuals’ constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its actions fully. Until the day that every affected person manages to become party to a lawsuit and secures for himself injunctive relief, the Government may act lawlessly indefinitely.
Not even a decision from this Court would necessarily bind the Government to stop, completely and permanently, its commission of unquestionably unconstitutional conduct. The majority interprets the Judiciary Act, which defines the equity jurisdiction for all federal courts, this Court included, as prohibiting the issuance of universal injunctions (unless necessary for complete relief). What, besides equity, enables this Court to order the Government to cease completely the enforcement of illegal policies? The majority does not say. So even if this Court later rules that the Citizenship Order is unlawful, we may nevertheless lack the power to enjoin enforcement as to anyone not formally a party before the Court. In a case where the Government is acting in open defiance of the Constitution, federal law, and this Court’s holdings, it is naive to believe the Government will treat this Court’s opinions on those policies as “de facto” universal injunctions absent an express order directing total nonenforcement. Ante, at 6 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.).
Indeed, at oral argument, the Government refused to commit to obeying any court order issued by a Federal Court of Appeals holding the Citizenship Order unlawful (except with respect to the plaintiffs in the suit), even within the relevant Circuit. Tr. of Oral Arg. 61–63. To the extent the Government cannot commit to compliance with Court of Appeals decisions in those Circuits, it offers no principled reason why it would treat the opinions of this Court any differently nationwide. Thus, by stripping even itself of the ability to issue universal injunctions, the Court diminishes its role as “the ultimate decider of the interim [and permanent] legal status of major new federal statutes and executive actions.” Ante, at 3 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.).
There is a serious question, moreover, whether this Court will ever get the chance to rule on the constitutionality of a policy like the Citizenship Order. Contra, ante, at 6 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.) (“[T]he losing parties in the courts of appeals will regularly come to this Court in matters involving major new federal statutes and executive actions”). In the ordinary course, parties who prevail in the lower courts generally cannot seek review from this Court, likely leaving it up to the Government’s discretion whether a petition will be filed here.10 These cases prove the point: Every court to consider the Citizenship Order’s merits has found that it is unconstitutional in preliminary rulings. Because respondents prevailed on the merits and received universal injunctions, they have no reason to file an appeal. The Government has no incentive to file a petition here either, because the outcome of such an appeal would be preordained. The Government recognizes as much, which is why its emergency applications challenged only the scope of the preliminary injunctions.
Even accepting that this Court will get the opportunity to “ac[t] as the ultimate decider” of patently unlawful policies, ante, at 3 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.), and that the Executive Branch will treat this Court’s opinions as de facto universal injunctions,11 it is still necessary for the lower courts to have the equitable authority to issue universal injunctions, too. As Justice Kavanaugh notes, it can take, at a minimum, “weeks” for an application concerning a major new policy to reach this Court. Ibid. In the interim, the Government may feel free to execute illegal policies against nonparties and cause immeasurable harm that this Court may never be able to remedy. Indeed, in these cases, there is a serious risk the Government will seek to deport newborns whose parents have not filed suit if all the injunctions are narrowed on remand. That unconscionable result only underscores why it is necessary, in some cases, for lower courts to issue universal injunctions.
Fortunately, in the rubble of its assault on equity jurisdiction, the majority leaves untouched one important tool to provide broad relief to individuals subject to lawless Government conduct: Rule 23(b)(2) class actions for injunctive relief. That mechanism may provide some relief, but it is not a perfect substitute for a universal injunction. First, a named plaintiff must incur the higher cost of pursuing class relief, which will involve, at a minimum, overcoming the hurdle of class certification. “ ‘[D]emonstrating th[e] prerequisites’” of numerosity, commonality and typicality and the adequacy of the named plaintiff to represent the class “‘is difficult and time consuming and has been getting harder as a result of recent court decisions and federal legislation.’” Chicago v. Barr, 961 F. 3d 882, 917 (CA7 2020) (quoting A. Frost, In Defense of Nationwide Injunctions, 93 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 1065, 1096 (2018); alterations in original). “‘Courts have heightened the evidentiary standard for class certification’” as well, “‘requiring hearings and sometimes significant amounts of evidence on the merits of the class before certifying the class.’” 961 F. 3d, at 917. In recent years, moreover, “‘courts have started to deny class certification if they think there has been a flaw in class definition,’” sometimes “‘without first allowing the plaintiffs to amend that definition in response to the court’s concerns.’” Ibid. What is more, “‘defendants can seek interlocutory review of a court’s decision to certify a class, adding further delay and expense to the certification process.’” Ibid. Hence why some “‘describ[e] the class certification process as a “drawn-out procedural bog,” which comes with significant expense and delay for the would be class member.’” Ibid. Indeed, at oral argument, the Government refused to concede that a class could be certified to challenge the Citizenship Order and promised to invoke Rule 23’s barriers to stop it. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 31–32.
Nevertheless, the parents of children covered by the Citizenship Order would be well advised to file promptly class-action suits and to request temporary injunctive relief for the putative class pending class certification. See A. A. R. P., 605 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7); Califano, 442 U. S., at 701–703; see also ante, at 1–2 (opinion of Kavanaugh, J.) (recognizing that lower courts, in some circumstances, can “award preliminary classwide relief that may . . . be statewide, regionwide, or even nationwide”). For suits challenging policies as blatantly unlawful and harmful as the Citizenship Order, moreover, lower courts would be wise to act swiftly on such requests for relief and to adjudicate the cases as quickly as they can so as to enable this Court’s prompt review.
The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort. With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a “solemn mockery” of our Constitution. Peters, 5 Cranch, at 136. Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.
Together with No. 24A885, Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Washington et al., and No. 24A886, Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. New Jersey et al., also on applications for partial stays.
The first two exceptions “ha[d] already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law, from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, [to be] recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country.” Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S., at 682. The additional exception for certain children born to Indian tribe members reflected the country’s historical understanding that Indian tribes were “quasi foreign nations” within the physical boundaries of the United States. See Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2890 (1866). Treaties between many tribes and the Federal Government, at the time, ensured that it was the tribe, and not the United States Government, that had “prescriptive and law enforcement authority” over tribal members. M. Ramsey, Originalism and Birthright Citizenship, 109 Geo. L. J. 405, 443–444 (2020); see id., at 442–444. Congress eventually extended birthright citizenship to tribal members born in the United States in 1924. See Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, ch. 233, 43 Stat. 253, 8 U. S. C. §1401(b). These exceptions are not at issue in these cases.
Two of these women seek to represent a class of pregnant women and children residing in Washington State, who are affected by the Citizenship Order. See Complaint in No. 2:25–cv–00127 (WD Wash., Feb. 4, 2025), ECF Doc. 106. The District Court has yet to rule on the certification of that putative class.
These prudential considerations, however, have nothing to do with whether universal injunctions are consistent with historical equitable principles and practice. Contra ante, at 21, n. 16; but cf. ante, at 21 (“[T]he policy pros and cons [of universal injunctions] are beside the point”).
Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447 (1923), which addressed a taxpayer’s standing to challenge a federal appropriation, did not consider how broadly a court could enjoin Government action and is therefore not to the contrary. Id., at 488; contra, ante, at 15.
The majority asserts that taxpayer suits are an “inadequate historical analogy” for a universal injunction, ante, at 14, but cannot dispute their essential similarity: By providing relief to an entire affected community, both do more than merely redress a plaintiff ’s injuries. Instead, the majority says that single-plaintiff, nonrepresentative taxpayer suits cannot be proper “historical” analogues because they trace only back to the “mid-19th century.” See ibid. Yet the same is true of plaintiff-protective injunctions against federal and state government officials, an equitable remedy the majority embraces by reference to “a long line of cases authorizing suits against State officials in certain circumstances” that range from the cusp of the mid-19th century to the late mid-19th century. Ante, at 11, n. 9. In any event, early American courts deemed taxpayer suits “‘analogous to,’ [and] ‘within the principle of’ . . . bills [of peace],’” 1 Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence §269, at 293, which trace back to the equitable practice of the English Chancery Court, ante, at 12. Nor is it clear why it matters that individual taxpayer suits occurred in state courts, or that those courts did not always award the broad injunctions available to them. Contra, ante, at 15. The relevant question is simply whether a court of equity could award injunctive relief to nonparties. The answer to that question is, obviously, yes.
Regardless of the actual decree the Smyth court approved, see ante, at 7–8, n. 6, its analysis clearly reveals that the Court understood equity to permit broad relief intended to benefit parties and nonparties alike. That is why this Court later approved or granted universal injunctions in Lewis, Pierce, and Barnette without “address[ing] the propriety of universal relief.” Ante, at 9, n. 7. See also Lewis Publishing Co. v. Morgan, 229 U. S. 288 (1913); Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925); West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943).
The majority’s expressed support for such injunctions is thus irreconcilable with its view that equitable remedies must be very closely “‘analogous’ to the relief ‘“exercised by the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the enactment of the original Judiciary Act.”’” Ante, at 6.
That explains the majority’s bottom line, in which it declares that the Government’s applications are “granted, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.” Ante, at 27.
In the majority’s telling, the Washington District Court “acknowledged the state respondents’ complete relief argument but primarily granted a universal injunction” based on its weighing of the equities. See ante, at 18, n. 14. Not so. That court carefully explained why “a geographically limited injunction would be ineffective, as it would not completely relieve [the States] of the Order’s financial burden(s).” 765 F. Supp. 3d 1142, 1153–1154 (2025). A narrower injunction, it explained, would be “unworkable” and would itself likely impose new “recordkeeping and administrative burden[s]” on the States. Id., at 1154.
On rare occasion, this Court has permitted a party who prevailed in the lower courts nonetheless to obtain this Court’s review of a legal question. See, e.g., Camreta v. Greene, 563 U. S. 692, 698 (2011) (allowing a government official who prevailed on grounds of qualified immunity to challenge an underlying adverse constitutional ruling). Those exceptions have no relevance here, however, because there is no adverse determination for respondents to challenge.
The majority insists that the constitutionality of the Citizenship Order will come before this Court eventually and that, when it does, the Government will obey this Court’s resulting opinion with respect to all newborn children. Ante, at 25, n. 18. Why? The majority is sure that the Government will honor its oral-argument promises to “‘seek cert’” when it “‘lose[s] one of ’” its pending appeals and to “respect both the judgments and opinions of this Court.” Ibid. (quoting Tr. of Oral Arg. 50). The majority’s certainty that the Government will keep its word is nothing short of a leap of faith, given that the Government has adopted a plainly unconstitutional policy in defiance of this Court’s precedent and then gamed the system to stymie this Court’s consideration of the policy’s merits. In any event, the Government’s promise is cold comfort to the many children whose parents do not file a lawsuit and whose citizenship status remains in flux pending this Court’s review.
References are in the order they appear in the syllabus/opinion/dissent, but organized by link destination.