SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Yesterday was the day for blockbuster opinions at the U.S. Supreme Court. Who better to join us than NPR's legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg. Nina, thanks so much for being with us.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Always my pleasure, Scott.
SIMON: Please give us the top lines here.
TOTENBERG: Well, among the questions resolved by the justices were, can President Trump prevent federal courts from issuing nationwide court orders to block his executive orders? And do public schools have to provide an opt-out for children when material is offensive to their religious beliefs? And the answers to those questions are yes and yes.
SIMON: All right. Well, let's take up the decision about universal injunctions first. That was a case involving President Trump's executive order to limit birthright citizenship. It's a little more complicated than that, isn't it?
TOTENBERG: The subject of this case was the president's executive order limiting citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and some legal immigrants, too. Now, remember that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says that every baby born in the United States is automatically an American citizen. And so it wasn't surprising that every judge to have ruled on the Trump executive order struck it down. And the Supreme Court didn't disagree with that. It didn't even address the question at all. But bowing to the arguments put forth by the administration, the court, for the first time, barred the practice of a single district court judge applying his or her rulings to the whole country. And that's going to make challenging all of President Trump's executive orders and any future president's executive orders exponentially more difficult.
SIMON: So, Nina, what are the implications of this decision, and what's the status of birthright citizenship as we speak?
TOTENBERG: Look, you really can't find any constitutional scholar who thinks that Trump's birthright order is constitutional, and all of the lower court judges who ruled on this question said that. And even the justices who sided with Trump didn't seem likely to uphold the Trump executive order when it comes back to them. But they did grant Trump's big wish, meaning that -for now, at least - lower court decisions can only protect the individual plaintiffs or groups that brought these cases. And at that rate, this whole process could take years, except that it won't because the court did provide some outs, allowing states, for instance, to seek nationwide injunctions and allowing class action suits, which are difficult and expensive but can be used, the court said, instead of universal injunctions. In fact, yesterday, the ACLU filed a nationwide class action challenging Trump's executive order.
SIMON: And the other big case now, the court ruled that public school systems are required to provide parents with an opt-out provision that would excuse their children from class when course material conflicts with their religious beliefs. Please tell us what the implications of this are and if the children are going to be pulled in and out of classes. How would that even work?
TOTENBERG: Well, public school boards, administrators and teachers are worried about how to navigate opt-out demands of all kinds, from courses that include LGBTQ characters in books to science classes that teach Darwin's theory of evolution. During the arguments in this case, the school board had said that opt-out provisions were impractical and noted that it had initially allowed parents to opt their children out of select lesson plans, but they got rid of the opt-out program because it became too difficult and disruptive to class time. The board argued that while it's easy enough to facilitate single-class opt-outs, like school districts provide for sex education, it's much more challenging to take children from the classrooms every time that a book mentions same-sex parents or gay and lesbian kids. But the court in its 6-3 opinion, along ideological lines, disagreed and required opt-outs for religious parents but giving precious little in the way of guidance as to how to implement the ruling, which, of course, has school boards sort of freaking out.
SIMON: NPR's Nina Totenberg. Thanks so much.
TOTENBERG: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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