Nearly all of the national media focused on the Trump angle when reporting on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision on injunctions from the federal bench.
It is true that the decision affirms the power of the executive, but once the somewhat bombastic language from the decision’s author, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is pared back, the decision’s broad language, for the most part, gives power back to the people and their representatives.
To distill it down, the high court ruled in Trump v. CASA, Inc. that it was within Trump’s authority to enforce the Nationality Act of 1940, a law enacted by Congress. In short, the court stated that if one doesn’t like a law, then seek to change the law, not nullify it’s enforcement altogether.
A good case in point for limiting the use of federal injunctions is the recent decision by Amy Totenberg, a federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia, who issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement of a 2024 Georgia law that sought to limit social media companies’ access to children.
Totenberg ruled that the bipartisan law violated the rights of minors under the Constitution despite the abundance of Supreme Court decisions and case law affirming that children may only exercise certain limited rights under the Constitution; they may not own firearms, vote, run for office, get a tattoo and only enjoy certain privacy rights.
In this case, a law meant to protect children from possible substantial harm by limiting the amount of information that may be collected (and later disseminated) by social media companies is plain common sense and with the stroke of a pen, one judge was able to nullify the will of the people to protect their children.
In 1937, Congress passed a law requiring three-judge panels for cases that challenged federal laws, and those decisions could be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. Over the past century, that law was watered down to allow for one judge to essentially overrule laws demanded by the people.
This is not judicial oversight; it is judicial overreach with federal district judges usurping the power of judicial review, a power reserved by the Supreme Court.
Thankfully, the decision cites cases such as Nken v. Holder which makes it clear that no matter the origin of a particular law, one judge may not unilaterally nullify a law and prevent its enforcement without a compelling reason, stating, “Universal injunctions were conspicuously nonexistent for most of the Nation’s history. Their absence from 18th and 19th century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority.”
Let’s hope that Governor Kemp and the Georgia General Assembly appeals Totenberg’s errant decision directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question of if the Trump v. CASA Inc. extends to state law.
