Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court on Friday opposing the concept of nationwide injunctions, those decisions that a judge makes in one case in one state that then apply to countless standing and potential cases across the United States. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a dissent, but in so doing, "is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent," Barrett noted.

Jackson's dissent appeared to be more in line with protest chants and pundits' rhetoric when she said "courts must have the power to order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law—full stop." One can almost hear her chanting "no one is above the law"—except, perhaps, the courts. She does not believe that courts need to rule on the merits of an individual case alone, but have the power to rule on cases that not only have they not heard, but cases that have not been brought.

Further, she states that the Trump administration is both "power hungry" and "lawless." In her dissent, Jackson writes that "the majority sees a power grab—but not by a presumably lawless Executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the Constitution. Instead, to the majority, the power-hungry actors are . . . (wait for it) . . . the district courts." District courts, however, have been acting with impunity under the Trump administration, both in this term and his first, by relentlessly blocking administration prerogatives across the country based on the perceived merits of just one case.

"We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary," Barrett wrote.

In this case, Trump v. CASA, CASA brought suit against Trump over his executive order restricting birthright citizenship. A lower court held that Trump's order was not constitutional, and thus applied that ruling across the nation. In her opinion, Barrett said that "district courts have been asserting the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone" and these these universal injunctions "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts."

Trump's case, argued before the Supreme Court by Solicitor General John Sauer, was that each case must stand on its own merits and that a ruling in one case cannot become de facto national law. Barrett, and the majority of the Court, were in agreement with Sauer on that. Jackson offered a dissent, saying that to remove universal injunctions would be the Court saying that the Executive branch can "continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution..." She goes on to say that the Executive is bound by the judiciary but that, essentially, the judiciary is not bound by the Executive.

Jackson claims that "If courts do not have the authority to require the Executive to adhere to law universally, a dual-track system develops in which courts are ousted as guardians in some situations and compliance with law sometimes becomes a matter of executive prerogative." She then goes on to list absurd hypotheticals, including invoking the potential view of a "Martian arriving here from another planet."

In her opinion, Barrett takes aim at Jackson's dissent, saying that Jackson's "position is difficult to pin down." Later, Barrett writes that "As best we can tell, though, her argument is more extreme still, because its logic does not depend on the entry of a universal injunction: Justice Jackson appears to believe that the reasoning behind any court order demands 'universal adherence,' at least where the Executive is concerned."

Before he even became the 46th president, Joe Biden promised that he would nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. He had a short list of black women only that he intended to choose from when the opportunity to appoint a justice arose, and when he got his chance, he nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the bench.  Jackson was the first DEI Supreme Court justice—and in this dissent, it shows.