What was the vote split in the Supreme Court's ruling on nationwide injunctions in Trump v. CASA?

The Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. CASA on nationwide injunctions was decided by a 6-3 vote. This significant decision, issued on June 27, 2025, sharply curtailed the ability of federal courts to issue broad "universal" or "nationwide" injunctions that block federal policies across the country for everyone, not just the specific parties involved in a lawsuit. The majority opinion, authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, concluded that federal courts generally lack the statutory authority under the Judiciary Act of 1789 to issue such sweeping orders. The Court emphasized that traditional equitable remedies, as understood at the time of the nation's founding, were typically limited to providing "complete relief" for the plaintiffs directly before the court.

The case originated from challenges to Executive Order 14160, an action by President Donald Trump that sought to redefine the scope of birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Several district courts had issued nationwide injunctions, effectively halting the executive order's implementation across the United States. The Supreme Court, however, did not rule on the constitutionality of the executive order itself. Instead, its focus was purely on the procedural question of whether lower courts possessed the power to issue injunctions that extended beyond the immediate litigants.

The 6-3 split reflected an ideological divide on the Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett forming the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. This ruling marks a notable shift in the landscape of administrative and constitutional law, as it limits a tool that had increasingly been used to challenge and temporarily halt executive branch actions. While it reins in the use of standalone nationwide injunctions, the decision did leave open other avenues for potentially broad relief, such as through certified class-action lawsuits or challenges brought under the Administrative Procedure Act.