Trump-Appointed Justice Barrett Jumps in to Tag-Team Trump Lawyer With Kagan in Citizenship Case

Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett jumped in to press Solicitor General John Sauer on his answer to liberal Justice Elena Kagan during oral arguments in a landmark citizenship case on Thursday.

The Court is considering the arguments being made in the combined cases Trump v. CASA, Trump v. Washington, and Trump v. New Jersey, which challenge injunctions against President Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship.

CNN covered the live audio of the trial on Thursday’s edition of CNN’s The Situation Room, during which Kagan tried to pin down Sauer’s argument by asking him to “assume the executive order is dead wrong” and explain to her how the Court could arrive at that conclusion without a nationwide injunction.

Kagan openly derided one of Sauer’s responses by saying “that’s a lot of words” and Barrett eventually stepped in and asked “Are you really going to answer Justice Kagan by saying there’s no way to do this expeditiously?”:

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: You’re going to be standing up here in the next case saying that rule 23 is inapt for this circumstance with this number of people maybe with some questions that are individual, who knows. So let’s put rule 23 aside because I got to tell you that does not fill me with great confidence how else are we going to get to the right result here which is on my assumption that the EO is illegal.

TRUMP SOLICITOR GENERAL JOHN SAUER: That would be a profoundly wrong result, but I think what I would offer is that, very similar to Labrador against Poe, what the court should be engaging here is a balancing of the equitable factors as to the scope of remedial relief, not as to underlying merits.

And our contention that this exceeds the traditional scope of equity that’s reflected in the 1789 Judiciary Act, we’re overwhelmingly likely to succeed on those merits for all the reasons that are stated in our people.

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: Yes, I mean that’s a lot of words, and I don’t have an answer for if one thinks–.

And you know look, there are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions But I think that the question that this case presents is that if one things that it’s quite clear that the EO is Illegal, how does one get to that result, in what time frame on your set of rules without the possibility of a nationwide injunction?

TRUMP SOLICITOR GENERAL JOHN SAUER: On this case and on many similar cases, the appropriate way to do it is for there to be multiple lower courts considering it, the appropriate percolation that goes to the lower courts, and then ultimately this court decides the merits in a nationwide binding precedent. You have a complete inversion of that through the nationwide injunctions with a district court.

JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT: Sir. Are you really going to answer, Justice Kagan, by saying there’s no way to do this expeditiously?

TRUMP SOLICITOR GENERAL JOHN SAUER: I’ll refer to my former answers, rule 23 provides the tools to do so, multiple injunctions.

JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT: But you resisted Justice Kagan when she said, could the individual plaintiffs form a class?

TRUMP SOLICITOR GENERAL JOHN SAUER: We, that has never been briefed in the court below. I do not concede that we wouldn’t oppose class certification in this particular case. There may be arguments that this case is or is not appropriate for class certification.

JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT: And if there were a class appropriate for a class certification, you concede that that could resolve the question quickly.

TRUMP SOLICITOR GENERAL JOHN SAUER: Yes, absolutely.

JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT: You concede it could resolve a question quickly through precedent.

TRUMP SOLICITOR GENERAL JOHN SAUER: Yes. Absolutely. It could do so. I mean, we obviously dispute–.

Watch above via CNN’s The Situation Room.