Crime & Law
From Planned Parenthood to Birthright Citizenship, What to Know About Recent Supreme Court Decisions
It’s a wrap on the most recent term for the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices delivered a slew of decisions on cases ranging from birthright citizenship to funding for Planned Parenthood.
But as the court breaks for the upcoming holiday, the justices could get hit with some emergency appeals and lawsuits from a variety of sources.
Some immigrant rights groups are involved in a new class action lawsuit attempting — for the second time — to block President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship to those with parents of legal status. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday didn’t make a decision on the citizenship order but instead limited federal judges’ ability to temporarily prevent laws from taking effect. Immigrant advocate groups such as CASA, the organization that brought the original lawsuit that led to the decision, are seeking other pathways to block Trump’s efforts to redefine citizenship.
The Supreme Court decision limits the power of lower courts by ending nationwide injunctions, or universal orders, to prevent a law or executive order from taking effect. Some legal scholars say injunctions are overused and should have some limits.
Carolyn Shapiro, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said this ruling is an overcorrection, and an injunction should be allowed to protect people from Trump’s citizenship order, which she said is unconstitutional. She also said the other routes some are taking to block the order are hard to accomplish.
“There’s going to be an enormous amount of litigation going forward where defendants of all types are going to come into courts and say, ‘This injunction we’ve been operating under is too broad,’ and ask the court to narrow it,” Shapiro said. “That will spur its own litigation about when is a nationwide class appropriate? How do you define a nationwide class? All of those types of questions that the Supreme Court has not recently been particularly friendly to class actions.”
David Applegate, a trial and appellate lawyer, said Trump’s order isn’t unconstitutional because birthright citizenship has never been explicitly defined in the 14th Amendment or in any past Supreme Court cases. Applegate said the Supreme Court’s ruling prompts much-needed conversations to define what citizenship means.
“It’s up to Congress to decide the meaning of ‘subject to the jurisdiction of the laws thereof,’ which is the phrase that’s in dispute from natural-born citizenship,” Applegate said. “It’s right in the 14th Amendment that Congress shall pass appropriate laws or may pass appropriate laws to enforce this amendment. I see this as essentially opening up the public policy debate that frankly should take place in the democratic republic, which is: to whom do citizens of this country, taxpayers and voters, want to grant citizenship? What should be the meaning of that?”
The Supreme Court recently reached other decisions on cases involving LGBTQ+ themes in classrooms and Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.
The court ruled that Medicaid patients cannot sue a state to enforce their right to pick a medical provider — specifically Planned Parenthood. The case came about in South Carolina, where lawmakers tried to cut Medicaid funds for reproductive care based on a 2018 executive order from the state’s governor banning services from being funded by Medicaid.
Shapiro said the ruling will have ripple effects on people’s access to a wide array of services such as Pap smears and birth control.
“Saying that Medicaid won’t cover those services, which have nothing to do with abortion, is going to make it impossible in many places for women to get those kinds of health care services,” Shapiro said. “Of course, it’s likely to put Planned Parenthood out of business, which is the idea from the South Carolina perspective. Now, all of this is in violation of the law that says that individual Medicaid recipients have to be able to choose their own health care providers. So when South Carolina says, ‘Well, we’re not going to pay for care provided by Planned Parenthood,’ that’s violating that law.”
The Supreme Court also sided with parents in Maryland who took issue with some public school lessons containing LGBTQ+ themes. In 2022, a school district in Montgomery County introduced into its curriculum some books featuring LGBTQ+ families and relationships, which some parental rights groups pushed to be removed due to religious beliefs. The court ruled in its majority opinion that children can’t be forced to sit through lessons that their parents have objected to due to religious reasons, as it would violate their freedoms.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion about concerns that parents may use this ruling as a way to insulate their children from differing viewpoints and backgrounds, a key feature of public schools.
“I think it is based on sound precedent,” Applegate said. “With the Amish, who don’t have to send their children to school past the eighth grade, with respect to the Jehovah’s Witnesses who do not have to stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag because they regard God as a higher authority.”
