Speaking at a White House press conference, the president said that due to the decision, the administration “can now probably file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis.”
That includes policies on “birthright citizenship, ending sanctuary city funding, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries, and numerous other priorities of the American people,” he said.
“We have so many of them. I have a whole list.”
The Supreme Court did not issue a ruling on the underlying constitutionality of the order to suspend automatic birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. The cases on birthright citizenship will now return to lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the high court ruling
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for the 6–3 majority. Enforcement of Trump’s policy, which was signed as an executive order in January, cannot take place for another 30 days, Barrett wrote.
Regarding nationwide injunctions, Barrett wrote that the “government’s applications for partial stays of the preliminary injunctions 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.”
Alongside Trump on Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters that the Supreme Court may take up the case of whether ending automatic birthright citizenship is constitutional in October, when the Supreme Court’s next term starts.
Bondi said, however, that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday “indirectly impacts every case in this country,” and that her office is “thrilled” with the development.
“If there is a birthright citizenship case in Oregon, it will only impact the plaintiff in Oregon and not the entire country,” she added, providing an example.
Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally. The birthright citizenship right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The Trump administration has argued that it was designed for the children of slaves.
The United States is among the minority of nations worldwide where automatic birthright citizenship is applied. Only around 30 countries, including the United States, have that policy, and most are in the Americas.
Earlier this year, several federal judges ruled to block the Trump administration from implementing the order. The Justice Department had argued that individual judges lack the power to give nationwide effect to their rulings.
In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “The court’s decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the Constitution.”
This is so, Sotomayor added, because the administration may be able to enforce a policy even when it has been challenged and found to be unconstitutional by a lower court.
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson also dissented.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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