June 27, 2025 - Supreme Court limits ability of judges to stop Trump

Our live coverage of the Supreme Court has ended for the day. Read our takeaways from today’s news or read through the posts below.

In the final day of its term, the Supreme Court left the constitutionality of the Trump administration’s moves to effectively end birthright citizenship unclear — but it did back the president’s effort to curtail lower court orders that have hampered his agenda for months.

It was a significant win for President Donald Trump at the high court that could have lasting implications not only on the remainder of his administration but also for future presidents of both parties.

Here’s what to know:

In addition to a ruling backing President Donald Trump’s effort to curtail lower court orders that have hampered his agenda for months, the Supreme Court also decided on several other consequential cases.

Here’s what to know about them:

Immigrants’ rights groups and several of the people who sued over President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order lamented Friday’s Supreme Court’s decision limiting the power of courts to act as a check on the government.

“Today is a sad day,” said Conchita Cruz, cofounder and co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.

Liza, one of the individual plaintiffs, told reporters Friday that the ruling left her disheartened, but also more determined. The plaintiffs were introduced using pseudonyms at a press conference due to their undocumented status. “I’m sad about what happened today,” she said. “That’s why I’m staying in this fight and joining the case as part of the class action.”

Shortly after the high court’s ruling, the groups and their legal teams said they are now pursuing relief through a different path the court left intact: class-action certification. Attorneys representing advocacy groups and pregnant plaintiffs have filed an amended complaint, asking the district court to certify a nationwide class that includes all children born — or expected to be born — after February 19, 2025, when President Donald Trump issued the birthright executive order.

“This is not the country I love,” said Juana, another plaintiff in the case. CNN translated her remarks from Spanish. “But it’s the only country my son has ever known.”

William Powell, senior counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, emphasized his organization is prepared for next steps.

“This is a moment we are ready for,” added George Escobar, chief of programs and services at CASA, an immigrants’ rights groups. “Our legal strategy has always anticipated challenges, and we’re prepared to move forward.”

Ken Cuccinelli, the former deputy secretary of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump in his first term, called the Supreme Court’s ruling today a “strong opinion,” but noted “it’s not complete on the entire subject of stopping cases en route.”

While the court said district court judges’ rulings cannot block a president’s order nationwide, it did leave intact the ability of plaintiffs to get broad relief through class action lawsuits.

Cuccinelli said Trump’s moves to effectively end birthright citizenship will eventually be resolved.

“I believe it will be decided by the Supreme Court in the next year or two,” he said.

Max Rego runs out of the US Supreme Court building carrying a ruling during the last day of the court's term on June 27, in Washington, DC.

The Supreme Court’s decision to back President Donald Trump’s effort to curtail lower court orders has “fundamentally shifted the balance of powers away from the courts to the president,” CNN senior legal analyst said.

Elie Honig, a former state and federal prosecutor, said it is now “more burdensome” for plaintiffs looking to challenge the Trump administrations policies.

“The bottom line takeaway from today is, right now, the presidency — forget about Donald Trump — the presidency is far more powerful it was at 9:55 a.m. this morning,” before the ruling came down, Honig said.

In the ruling, the court focused on eliminating a tool that both conservative and liberal groups have used to pause policies from presidents of both parties: the nationwide, or universal, injunction. In short, Honig said, this largely means district court judges “cannot individually block a president’s orders across the country.”

But the court left intact the ability of plaintiffs to get broad relief through class-action lawsuits.

“This was a practice that bothered and upset and got in the way of presidential initiatives of Joe Biden, of Barack Obama, of George W. Bush, to an extent,” Honig said.

President Donald Trump celebrated what he described as a “tremendous ruling for parents” after the Supreme Court on Friday backed a group of religious parents who want to opt their elementary school children out of engaging with LGBTQ books in the classroom.

The ruling marked another major legal win for religious interests at the conservative high court and underscored Trump’s campaign-era promise to, in his words, return “common sense” and dismantle protections for LGBTQ+ individuals.

“I think it’s a great ruling for parents. It’s really a ruling for parents. They lost control of the schools, they lost control of their child, and this is a tremendous victory for parents. And I’m not surprised by it, but I am surprised that it went this far,” Trump said in remarks in the White House briefing room Friday.

Trump cast his administration’s efforts – and the court’s ruling – as “(bringing) life back to normal.”

“I kept saying, ‘We will give you back your parental rights.’ They were taken away, and this is a tremendous victory for parents,” the president said.

Shortly after the Supreme Court limited the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, some of the immigrant rights groups and individuals challenging President Donald Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship quickly pressed a federal judge who previously blocked the policy to do so again through a different legal avenue the high court left available for litigants to use.

The preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Deborah Boardman in February was one of several nationwide injunctions issued earlier this year by judges around the country that indefinitely blocked Trump’s executive order.

The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority on Friday limited the ability of plaintiffs to obtain such nationwide relief in cases like the one Boardman is handling. But the court left intact the ability of plaintiffs to get broad relief through class action lawsuits.

Lawyers for two immigrant rights groups and pregnant women who could be impacted by Trump’s order asked Boardman to certify a nationwide class that would include any children who have been born or would be born after February 19, 2025 and would be affected by Trump’s order.

They filed an updated lawsuit that would challenge Trump’s order on behalf of all of those potential class members.

“Plaintiffs seek to litigate this case for themselves, for their children and future children, and on behalf of a class of all others similarly situated,” the new lawsuit reads.

Boardman, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, has not yet responded to the new request.

The challengers also asked Boardman for an emergency court order that would temporarily block Trump’s order from applying to members of a putative class that would be impacted by the president’s policy.

“The Court should grant relief to this putative class and may do so before certifying the class,” they wrote in court papers. “Consistent with the Supreme Court’s most recent instructions, the Court can protect all members of the putative class from irreparable harm that the unlawful Executive Order threatens to inflict.”

President Donald Trump speaks on recent Supreme Court rulings in the briefing room at the White House on June 27 in Washington, DC.

President Donald Trump said Friday that a “whole list” of his administration’s policies can now move forward following the Supreme Court’s decision on injunctions.

“Thanks to this decision, we can now probably file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, including 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. We have so many of them. I have a whole list,” the president said in the briefing room on Friday.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration was “very confident” the Supreme Court would eventually rule in its favor on the merits of President Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship.

“Birthright citizenship will be decided in October, in the next session by the Supreme Court,” Bondi said at the White House.

Today’s Supreme Court decision avoided addressing the constitutional merits of the order. But Bondi nonetheless said the ruling was a “huge win.”

“We’re very confident in the Supreme Court. But again, it’s pending litigation, and that will directly be determined in October,” she said.

However, there’s no active case on birthright citizenship before the Supreme Court, and cases are rarely decided in October, which is the start of the court’s term.

President Donald Trump praised Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett following today’s Supreme Court decisions — a notable and public show of support after he privately griped about Barrett and other justices he appointed during his first term.

Barrett today wrote the majority opinion for a major ruling in Trump’s favor in a case challenging his executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.

“Justice Barrett correctly holds that the district court lacks authority to enter nationwide or universal injunctions,” Trump said during his remarks in the White House briefing room.

He continued, “I want to thank Justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion brilliantly, as well as Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas — great people.”

Some context: The show of thanks comes as CNN reported earlier this month that Trump has privately complained Barrett has not sufficiently stood behind his agenda, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversations. Some of Trump’s allies have told him that Barrett is “weak” and that her rulings have not been in line with how she presented herself in an interview before he nominated her to the bench in 2020, according to sources.

CNN’s Kristen Holmes and John Fritze contributed to this post.

The Supreme Court’s ruling today curtailing nationwide injunctions will have far-reaching consequences for President Donald Trump’s second term, even if his birthright order is never enforced.

All along, the issue of birthright citizenship was intertwined with Trump’s executive order in the court’s appeal. But the case also raised fundamental questions about the power of courts to pause the president’s agenda while they consider challenges to his policies.

The Supreme Court’s majority largely glossed over the issue of birthright citizenship, handing that off to lower courts to assess. What it focused on instead was eliminating a tool that both conservative and liberal groups have used to pause policies from presidents of both parties: the nationwide, or universal injunction. For Trump, this means his opponents will have to jump through additional hoops to try to shut down policies on a nationwide basis.

It won’t be impossible to do so, but it will prove more difficult.

The court was careful to say that parties could still seek nationwide relief to pause a policy if that was is required to address their harm. That is precisely the argument nearly two dozen Democratic states made challenging the birthright policy — and while the court didn’t directly address it, it left wide room for states to make that claim again. The states had argued they needed a nationwide block on Trump’s birthright citizenship policy because it was too easy for people to cross state borders to have a baby in, for example, New Jersey — where that child would be a citizen — rather than staying in Pennsylvania, where it might not.

And so, under the court’s opinion, states are likely to have easy time shutting down the birthright policy again.

But on other policies — from trade to other immigration enforcement issues — the Supreme Court’s decision may be beneficial to the president (and other future presidents) by making it harder for individuals to seek a temporary pause of a policy when they feel their rights have been violated.

President Donald Trump speaks to the media on June 27 in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, DC.

President Donald Trump has begun his briefing room victory lap after a major Supreme Court win.

“Big one, wasn’t it? This was a big decision,” Trump said from the White House, calling the birthright citizenship ruling an “amazing decision, one that we’re very happy about.”

The president, who is joined by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, said the ruling was a “victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law.”

He said it struck down “the excessive use of nationwide injunctions to interfere with the normal functioning of the executive branch.”

President Donald Trump is speaking now from the White House, after the Supreme Court backed his effort to curtail lower court orders that have hampered his agenda for months.

Trump earlier called it a “GIANT WIN.”

Divisions between the justices were on full display as they read aloud some of the most controversial cases of the terms, particularly in the case involving birthright citizenship.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, she pointedly called the opinion striking down the use of universal injunctions “shameful.” As she read the line aloud, several members of the court who signed on to the majority opinion looked at her directly and then quickly looked away.

As Alito read aloud another opinion that backed a group of religious parents who want to opt their elementary school children out of engaging with LGBTQ books in the classroom, Justice Elena Kagan, a senior liberal judge on the high court, shook her head.

And when Sotomayor again read her dissent, Alito in turn appeared to chuckle as she questioned whether the ruling would undermine the country’s public school system.

Justice Neil Gorsuch was not on the bench when the final opinions of the term were read aloud. The court did not immediately respond to an inquiry about his absence.

The Supreme Court punted on Friday in a major legal challenge to Louisiana’s long-litigated congressional map, taking the unusual step of holding the case over for a second term.

The decision means the sprawling district that added a second Black and Democratic lawmaker to the state’s overwhelmingly Republican delegation will remain in place, at least for the time being. The court said it will hear another set of arguments about the questions raised in the case in the term that begins this fall.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative, dissented from the decision to hold the appeal over until next term.

Louisiana filed the appeal, arguing that it was caught in an impossible position: At first, a federal court ruled that the state had likely violated the Voting Rights Act by drawing only one majority Black district out of six.

When the state sought to comply with that decision by drawing a second majority Black district, a group of self-described “non-Black voters” sued, alleging the state violated the Constitution by relying too much on race to meet the first court’s demands.

Thomas wrote that he would have held that the provision of the Voting Rights Act at issue in the case is unconstitutional.

CNN’s chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid breaks down what this Supreme Court ruling means for President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Watch here:

One of the states challenging President Donald Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship lamented the Supreme Court’s decision Friday that makes it harder to block government policies nationwide but nonetheless appeared confident that it could still prevail in stymying Trump’s effort.

New Jersey Democratic Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who was among several state attorneys general challenging Trump’s executive order, said in a statement that “we are glad the Court recognized that nationwide orders can be appropriate to protect the plaintiffs themselves from harm—which is true, and has always been true, in our case.”

“We are confident that his flagrantly unconstitutional order will remain enjoined by the courts. And in the meantime, our fight continues: we will keep challenging President Trump’s flagrantly unlawful order, which strips American babies of citizenship for the first time since the Civil War, and we look forward to a decision in the coming months that holds this disgraceful order unlawful for good,” he said.

While the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority limited the power of plaintiffs to seek nationwide orders that temporarily halt the government from enforcing a policy, it left unresolved what will happen with Trump’s birthright citizenship order, sending a set of cases over it back to lower courts for further review. Those lower courts could halt the policy on a broad basis again through other legal mechanisms, like class action lawsuits.

Vice President JD Vance in Arlington, Virginia, on May 26.

Vice President JD Vance is hailing the Supreme Court decision limiting the ability of judges to stop President Donald Trump’s policies from taking effect as a “huge ruling.”

“A huge ruling by the Supreme Court, smacking down the ridiculous process of nationwide injunctions. Under our system, everyone has to follow the law–including judges,” Vance wrote in a post on X.

The Supreme Court on Friday backed President Donald Trump’s effort to curtail lower court orders that have hampered his agenda for months. However, it also signaled that the president’s controversial plan to effectively end birthright citizenship may never be enforced.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law that requires age verification for pornographic websites in one of the most closely watched First Amendment cases to arrive at the high court in years.

The adult entertainment industry had challenged the Texas law as violating the Constitution because it restricted the ability of adults to access protected online speech.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for a 6-3 court divided along ideological grounds with the court’s three liberals dissenting.

“The statute advances the state’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content,” Thomas wrote. “And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data.”