SCOTUS Is About to Suffer Buyers Remorse, Again

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, Politics, Government, News

4.6 • 3.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our eyes this week were trained on the arguments over birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court on Thursday. While Solicitor General John Sauer advanced wild arguments on behalf of the Trump administration, four of the justices (hint: the women) seemed extremely suspicious of his motives. The five men? Not so much. Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern joins Dahlia Lithwick to break down Trump v. CASA Inc. and the growing divide on the court between those who trust this president and those who don’t. Although Thursday’s arguments touched on fundamental rights, SCOTUS made the strange choice to largely avoid the constitutional question and focus on a different one: Whether district courts have the power to issue “universal” injunctions that apply nationwide, as multiple courts did in order to protect birthright citizenship from the president. Judges have issued an unprecedented number of these orders against the Trump administration—in response to Trump’s unprecedented barrage of lawless executive orders. Some conservative justices seem perturbed by the explosion of universal injunctions. But it became clear on Thursday that this is the worst case for the court to use to rein them in. Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm making a robot head with an Amazon box.
0:03.0	I've painted it silver and Daddy helped me make it.
0:05.0	At Amazon, we're actually using paper bags for more of our deliveries.
0:08.0	And now I'm making a paper hot air balloon
0:11.0	and I even made a little brown basket
0:13.0	and I'm making a dog that looks just like Monty.
0:16.0	Just one of the ways we've reduced the weight of our packaging by more than 40% since 2015,
0:20.0	which is still good for playtime.
0:22.6	Mom, where's the scissors? To learn more, visit aboutamason.com.com.com
0:28.3	at UK forward slash sustainability. I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and this is Amicus, Slate's
0:36.3	podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court.
0:40.4	We will hear argument this morning in case 24A884, Trump v. Kassa Incorporated and the consolidated cases.
0:49.2	General Sauer.
0:50.5	Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court.
0:53.6	On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued executive order 14160, protecting the meaning and value of American citizenship.
1:03.9	The Supreme Court heard what was doubtless the most weighty case of this term on Thursday,
1:10.2	the multi-state, multi-pl plaintiff challenge to Donald Trump's executive order, doing away with birthright citizenship, a right enshrined indelibly in the 14th Amendment.
1:20.9	Two and a half hours of argument told us close to nothing about what the various justices think of just torturing the idea that if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen.
1:32.0	Until very recently, this wasn't a closed question. Indeed, it really wasn't a question at all.
1:37.9	Just to establish the fact that it's not a close question, here is Justice Sonia Sotomayor reeling off the certainty with which the court precedent has addressed this issue.
1:50.7	We have the one arc case where we said fealty to a foreign sovereign doesn't defeat your entitlement, your parents fealty to a foreign sovereign,
2:05.3	doesn't defeat your entitlement to citizenship as a child. We have another case where we said
	...

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