The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday found that the lower courts likely lacked the authority to impose universal injunctions and instead limited them to protect the plaintiff parties.

"The issuance of a universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power," wrote Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch joined her opinion. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas concurred.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in her opinion for the majority, issued a scathing rebuke of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, asserting she sought an "imperial judiciary" and that her views ran afoul of more than 200 years of precedent.