In the lawsuit that seeks to stop President Donald Trump from ending birthright citizenship, the White House has made an audacious request: It wants the Supreme Court to weaken its own branch of government to give the president the authority to carry out his agenda as though the problem this republic faces is an executive with too little power.

The question before the court is whether federal district judges went overboard in issuing nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order doing away with birthright citizenship. If the justices rule in the administration’s favor, the ramifications would extend beyond this case to shift the government’s balance of power.

The White House does have reasonable complaints about universal injunctions. In recent decades, they have proliferated, allowing hundreds of unelected federal district judges to thwart an administration’s policies. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer described the situation during oral arguments as a “bipartisan problem” in which plaintiffs are encouraged to shop around for judges who might rule in their favor nationwide. A better solution, Sauer said, would be class-action lawsuits, in which a group of people join in suing the government. This avoids having judges apply their decisions to people who are not party to the lawsuit, he argued, and thus remains within the judicial authority provided in the Constitution.

But universal injunctions have also become an essential check on presidential power. The Founders did not envision this; Alexander Hamilton once described the judiciary as the “least dangerous” branch of government. But they also didn’t envision today’s vast federal bureaucracy, which touches on virtually every aspect of American life.

And they didn’t envision a president who would presume to wave away constitutional rights by executive fiat.

Nationwide injunctions are sometimes the only practical way to remedy abuses of authority.

The birthright citizenship case illustrates this: The presidential order itself is unconstitutional, given the text of the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly interpreted this to mean any baby born in the United States is automatically a citizen.

Imagine if a federal judge could grant relief from Trump’s order only to those involved in the lawsuits or in that judge’s district. It would mean that plaintiffs across all 94 district courts would have to battle for their constitutional rights as the president aggressively seeks to deport people. In other words, Americans’ constitutional protections could vary according to where in the country they live.

Class-action lawsuits would not resolve this. As Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a critic of universal injunctions, acknowledged during oral arguments, members of a class must overcome significant procedural hurdles to be certified in such lawsuits, and this takes time.

Certainly, universal injunctions can be subject to abuse. In 2023, for instance, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued a nationwide suspension of mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug that had been approved for more than 20 years, based on flimsy claims that the Food and Drug Administration had failed to adequately consider its safety and effectiveness.

But the solution here is already built into the judicial process: Appellate courts and the Supreme Court can reverse decisions that overreach or issue temporary stays as the process moves forward. This is exactly what happened in the mifepristone case: An appellate court returned the drug to the market while still limiting its access, which prompted the Supreme Court to intervene. In the end, the justices unanimously overruled Kacsmaryk’s decision.

The purpose of the federal courts, of course, is not to set federal policy; it is to arbitrate disputes about the law. That the courts have become staging grounds for some of the country’s most contentious political battles is a symptom of deeper government dysfunction, stemming largely from Congress’s failure to address those difficult issues, and the executive branch’s increasing eagerness to bend laws to suit its own purposes.

Judges, as interpreters of the laws, must have the authority to stop the government from going too far — whether that is President Joe Biden wiping away billions of dollars in student loans or Trump invoking a centuries-old law to deport people without due process.

Justice Clarence Thomas noted during oral arguments, “We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions.” This is correct, but America also survived for decades with this tool available to the federal court system. As the presidency becomes the ever-more-dominant branch of government, it’s one the country needs to retain.