Washington D.C. – Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) has voiced his enthusiastic support for a landmark Supreme Court decision that curtails the power of lower courts to issue broad injunctions, suggesting that a strongly worded dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is a clear indicator of the ruling’s merit.
In a recent appearance on Fox News’s “Faulkner Focus,” the Louisiana senator celebrated the 6–3 decision that nullified “universal injunctions” previously used to block executive orders from the administration of President Donald Trump. This ruling is seen as having far-reaching consequences beyond the specific case, which was related to birthright citizenship.
“The Supreme Court has turned the universal injunctions into fish food, as well it should have,” Kennedy stated emphatically. “There’s no basis in statute. There’s no basis in Supreme Court precedent. There is no basis in English common law for universal injunctions.” He asserted that the practice was an invention of judges who disagreed with the actions of a president and Congress. “And good riddance. I’m proud of the Supreme Court,” he added.
Kennedy pointed to the dissenting opinion from Justice Jackson as a key talking point. “It’s a very extensive ruling. You can tell it from Justice Jackson’s dissent,” he remarked. “She’s mad as a bag of cats, and that’s probably a good thing for the American people.”
The senator clarified that the court’s decision was not a judgment on birthright citizenship itself, but a rebuke of the “illegal” use of universal injunctions, which he described as an authority that “federal judges just made up.”
“You know, if they disagree, you know, I’m sorry. Fill out a hurt feelings report. Buy a comfort rock,” Kennedy said of the judges who had issued such orders. “But they can’t just say, I disagree and I’m putting the entire action by another branch of government on hold because I don’t like it.”
While acknowledging that the use of universal injunctions has been abused by both political parties, Kennedy insisted Democrats have used them more frequently. “Both sides have abused it… And it’s illegal. There’s no basis for it in law,” he said. “I mean, anybody who knows a law book from an L.L. Bean catalog knows that federal judges just made up this concept of universal injunctions.”
The majority opinion, penned by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, argued that federal courts are meant to resolve specific “cases and controversies” and not to exercise “general oversight of the Executive Branch.” She wrote, “When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”
Justice Barrett directly countered the arguments made by Justice Jackson in her dissent, which was co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. “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,” Barrett wrote. “We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
Barrett concluded her point with a sharp reminder, quoting Jackson’s own words back at her: “JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ That goes for judges too.”
