Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is regaining her footing with the MAGA movement after falling from its graces.
The most junior conservative justice faced mounting criticism this spring as she broke with President Trump in emergency rulings consequential to his second-term agenda. But in the term’s most critical decisions, she proved her conservative bonafides.
Barrett authored the court’s decision along ideological lines in Trump’s birthright citizenship case that knocked federal judges down a peg, handing the president a decisive victory and issuing a full-throated takedown of one of her liberal colleagues.
Barrett’s authorship on such a significant case was notable. By tradition, Chief Justice John Roberts as the senior-most justice in the majority would’ve made the assignment — one of his most powerful responsibilities.
Barrett’s opinion on nationwide injunctions, which handed Trump perhaps his biggest court victory yet since retaking the White House, affirmed what her allies have said all along: Though the justice is carving out her own, sometimes-unpredictable path, she’s not drifting to the left.
Writing for herself and the other five justices appointed by Republican presidents, Barrett limited judges’ ability to issue rulings blocking a president’s policies against anyone, anywhere.
“Nothing like a universal injunction was available at the founding, or for that matter, for more than a century thereafter. Thus, under the Judiciary Act, federal courts lack authority to issue them,” Barrett wrote.
Trump has bemoaned nationwide injunctions for months, as his sweeping agenda has repeatedly been stopped in the courts by judges who have imposed such relief. With a narrowed ability to issue nationwide blocks on his policies, judges’ ability to rein in the executive branch has been curtailed.
The decision earned her praise from the president.
“I want to thank Justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion brilliantly,” Trump said at an impromptu White House press conference shortly after the opinion was issued.
Barrett’s incisive criticism of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion, in which she suggested the court’s decision marked an “existential threat to the rule of law,” earned just as much praise from conservatives as the ruling itself.
Jackson argued that the ruling gave the Trump administration the go-ahead to “engage in unlawful behavior,” and suggested it marked the start of a slippery slope.
“It is not difficult to predict how this all ends,” the court’s most junior justice said. “Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.”
The rhetoric amounts to a “startling line of attack,” Barrett argued, writing that the majority would not dwell on Jackson’s “extreme” argument.
“We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” Barrett wrote. “No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation—in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so.”
The smackdown brought critics back into her corner.
Rep. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has criticized Barrett for diverging from Trump, called the exchange an “epic mic drop moment” and shared a gif superimposing sunglasses on the justice.
Right-wing influencer Rogan O’Handley, known as @DC_Draino, called Barrett a “backstabber” a week before her birthright opinion was released. On Saturday, he signaled a cautious change of heart.
“Good morning to everyone, even Amy Coney Barrett who rediscovered how the Constitution works this week,” O’Handley wrote on Truth Social. “Let’s hope it’s a permanent change.”
And Mark Levin, a conservative media personality who has accused Barrett of taking an “activist approach” to the law, urged “credit where credit is due.”
As chief justice, Roberts would’ve chosen Barrett to author the opinion, a notable assignment for one of the court’s more junior justices.
It’s his latest opinion assignment that has attracted intrigue from court watchers.
A few weeks earlier, the court handed down significant opinions related to religion, guns and discrimination that favored conservative interests. With the court finding unanimity, Roberts notably gave each to one of the court’s three Democratic-appointed justices: Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Jackson.
Roberts keeps many of the court’s biggest cases for himself. But when it came to nationwide injunctions, he chose to put Barrett in the spotlight.
The assignment would’ve been made soon after the May 15 oral arguments once the justices took their vote behind closed doors.
By then, Barrett was facing rage from many of Trump’s most fervent supporters for ruling against the administration in two major emergency cases.
She joined Roberts and the three liberal justices in March to form a 5-4 majority rejecting Trump’s bid to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid.
The most intense criticism came weeks later, when Barrett sided against Trump in his bid to use the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to a Salvadoran mega prison.
Finding herself in the minority as the only Republican-appointed justice to publicly dissent, she became a prime target for the MAGA movement.
Some prominent MAGA social media figures described her as a diversity hire. Others called her communist. Mike Davis, a former Supreme Court clerk who advises Trump on judicial picks, even described Barrett as “a rattled law professor with her head up her a‑‑.”
Though the nationwide injunction ruling improved her perception among Trump’s allies, it wasn’t the only time she delighted conservative interests in this year’s decision season sprint.
When the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s youth transgender care ban, Barrett not only joined the 6-3 majority. She went further than some of her conservative colleagues.
The majority opinion ruled Tennessee’s law didn’t draw lines based on transgender status. So, the court didn’t address whether transgender Americans constitute a “suspect class” entitled to heightened protections, a theory advanced by the Biden administration and transgender rights advocates.
Barrett, however, wrote separately to shut down the idea.
“Holding that transgender people constitute a suspect class would require courts to oversee all manner of policy choices normally committed to legislative discretion,” Barrett warned, referencing battles over bathroom access and school sports.
Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court’s two leading conservatives, also explicitly rejected the argument. Neither of Trump’s other two Supreme Court nominees signed on.
Despite the rollercoaster this spring for his final Supreme Court nominee, Trump said his support for Barrett has remained steadfast.
“I just have great respect for her,” Trump said following Friday’s birthright citizenship decision. “I always have.”
