Jon Dawson (CC BY-ND 2.0)
A Mason-Dixon line historical marker in West Virginia.
Is the United States ready for a new Mason-Dixon Line?
The Supreme Court’s decision on June 27 to curb nationwide injunctions in birthright citizenship cases isn’t simply a shift in immigration procedure—it’s a direct echo of one of the darkest eras in U.S. legal history. It reopens the door to a time when a person’s rights didn’t follow them across state lines, as was the case with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When we let this precedent stand in the past, it led to civil war.
Before the Civil War, divisions regarding enslavement in the United States were created not just by beliefs, but by laws. Whether you were free or enslaved depended on your geography, and even if you were an enslaved person who escaped bondage and made it to a free state, the law still didn’t necessarily recognize your freedom. That was the logic behind the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed slave catchers (the precursors to modern police) to operate in so-called “free” states. In 1857, the Supreme Court declared in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that no Black person—free or enslaved—could claim U.S. citizenship or expect protection from the federal government.
The Supreme Court’s latest ruling reinscribes that same fractured logic. In this case, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump Administration’s attempt to end earlier rulings by three federal judges halting his Executive Order ending birthright citizenship. The federal judges had issued an injunction, or a temporary pause while legality is determined, on the Executive Order. Injunctions are a common practice when legality or constitutionality is unclear and is reserved for a higher court to determine. The Court did not make a determination on the constitutionality of the Executive Order, but it did say the nationwide pause on enactment of the order could not stand, leaving birthright citizenship itself hanging in the balance.
Under this ruling, injunctions would be limited to the states who were parties to the litigation, meaning that if a state that was not included in a filing that led to an injunction, it would still be subject to whichever existing law was challenged. In taking this position, the Court has established that a Constitutional violation in one federal district may not matter in another. While the decision states that nationwide injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion that the ruling “disregards basic principles of equity as well as the long history of injunctive relief granted to nonparties.”
Sotomayor’s concern is well-founded. If a court in California were to find stripping birthright citizenship unconstitutional, the win would be limited, because that protection would only apply to people in California. What happens when that same child born in California travels one state over, and needs to verify their citizenship? In this new system, it is entirely possible that a U.S.-born child of immigrants in California would be considered a citizen, while the same child, if they traveled to Texas, is not. What does that sound like if not the modern-day equivalent of “free states” and “slave states”?
Conservative attorneys and Republican attorneys general have used nationwide injunctions like a political get out of jail free card. For the past few years, every grievance—from blocking DACA and asylum policies to halting COVID workplace safety rules—could be traced to one particular courthouse: Judge Reed O’Connor’s court in the Northern District of Texas.
Similarly, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Amarillo, Texas—a Trump appointee—was handpicked by conservative plaintiffs to hear their cases in a one-judge division. Kacsmaryk has issued sweeping nationwide injunctions halting everything from the FDA’s decades-long approval of the abortion medication mifepristone, to Title X federal funding rules that allowed clinics to refer patients for abortion care, to policies protecting LGBTQ+ rights in schools and workplaces. In each case, a single district judge took it upon himself to create rules for the entire nation to follow.
Shockingly, none of these decisions were challenged despite their nationwide reach. Singular judges were used as national stamps of disapproval for anything that sought to protect people’s rights. But now, when a judge rules against the “conservative” agenda—when immigrants’ rights, or trans rights, or any other rights for Black and brown people are upheld—the rules suddenly change, and the court quickly overturns these policies.
Decisions like these injunctions are not made in service of creating clarity in the Constitution and how it is applied, but in service of white supremacy and how it is upheld. The Supreme Court helps facilitate a judicial double standard designed to preserve conservative dominance and resurrect a patchwork system of justice. Rights are no longer universal—they’re conditional.
It is important to remember why federal courts have been able to issue nationwide injunctions in the past. In the opinion, the phrase “equitable authority” was used to support this decision, alleging that while courts have the ability to go beyond traditional legal remedies, injunctions go too far, ignoring the basic principle that civil rights and Constitutional protections are supposed to belong to all of us. We don’t pick and choose who deserves basic rights based on where they live or where they were born. That was the twisted compromise that led to the Civil War—and today’s Court seems far too comfortable repeating that history.
If we don’t fight back against this state-by-state apportionment of rights, we will lose the very concept of equal protection under the law. And those who will suffer the most are the same groups often left out of equal rights in the first place—including Black people, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community.
With the growth of technology and means of communication, state and district borders are less relevant and seemingly arbitrary. What should not be arbitrary is knowing when and where your rights exist. Allowing this piecemeal policy practice does just that.