The Supreme Court granted a partial stay Friday of President Donald Trump‘s request to block lower courts from issuing universal injunctions, handing a partial victory to the administration as it looks to execute many of its top priorities via executive order and action. 

Justices ruled 6-3 to allow the lower courts to issue injunctions in certain cases, though the ruling leaves open the question of how the ruling will apply to the birthright citizenship order in question.

“The applications do not raise — and thus we do not address — the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, writing for the majority. “The issue before us is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.”

“A universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power,” she added.

Rather, the justices considered whether lower courts should have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions at all, or whether doing so exceeds their authority, as argued by U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer. 

Lawyers for the Trump administration asked the high court to review the case earlier this year, arguing that the three lower courts, each of which blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship order from taking force nationwide, acted beyond the scope of their authority. 

 U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer stressed this point during oral arguments earlier this month, telling justices that universal  injunctions “require judges to make rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions.” 

“They operate asymmetrically, forcing the government to win everywhere,” he said, and “invert,” in the Trump administration’s view, the ordinary hierarchical hierarchy of appellate review. 

The Supreme Court decision will have sweeping implications, both in the near- and longer-term, with knock-down effects on the more than 300 federal lawsuits that have challenged White House actions since Trump’s second presidency began on Jan. 20, 2025.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the high court’s ruling on social media Friday. 

“Today, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump,” she said, adding that the ruling “would not have been possible without tireless work from our excellent lawyers” at the Justice Department and U.S. Solicitor General  John Sauer.