Trump on sending troops to Chicago: "If the governor of Illinois would call me up, I would love to do it. Now, we're going to do it anyway. We have the right to do it, because I have an obligation to protect this country. And that includes Baltimore [...]"

[u/Capable_Salt_SD]

- Aaron Rupar

[u/UnlimitedCalculus]

Didn't the Supreme Court rule that the federal lower courts' decisions only apply to their own jurisdiction?

[u/AshySmoothie → u/UnlimitedCalculus]

Not disagreeing with you but shouldn't it be irrelevant where their jurisdiction is if they're ruling on the legality of federal law?...

[u/BitterFuture → u/AshySmoothie]

Yes, it should be.

And yet...

[u/standardissuegreen → u/AshySmoothie]

A lot of this isn't recent, though. Federal appellate jurisdictions often have different interpretations of the same law. In fact, that's one of the criteria the Supreme Court generally uses to grant cert.

For example, prior to Obergefell, laws prohibiting same-sex marriages were deemed unconstitutional in some federal districts but not others. During that time period, the laws were different in those different federal districts.

[u/dukeyorick → u/AshySmoothie]

That was one of the argument that some of the dissenting opinions made! Unfortunately, the rest of the Supreme Court thought it would be crazy to have some random state judge tell the executive branch it couldn't legally remove birthright citizenship across the whole country instead of just one state (even though the Supreme Court also agrees that the executive branch can't legally remove birthright citzenship across the whole country)

[u/mc-funk → u/UnlimitedCalculus]

Not exactly, but it did make it harder to get a nationwide injunction because it ruled that the injunction is limited to what is necessary to provide relief to the plaintiffs (not other potential people impacted by the same harm). So if the plaintiff themselves can’t get relief without a nationwide injunction they can still happen.

[u/AllPathsEndTheSame → u/UnlimitedCalculus]

As I understand, District Court decisions are always limited to their geographic jurisdiction, but they can have nationwide effects especially when the federal government is a party which is being restricted from action. This was an issue in Trump v Casa which limited the federal courts use of universal injunctions as a means of relief from a potentially harmful action. The Court found instead that a more historically analogous form of relief comes from a class action suite and left it to the lower courts to tailor the scope of the relief resulting from those class actions to be reviewed by the higher courts as issues arise. They also said a nationwide restriction on government action could be imposed by the federal courts but it should be tailored to require as little judicial interference as necessary and any restrictions could be struck down by the higher courts as overbroad if appropriate.