In a startling but unsurprising decision, the Supreme Court last Friday dramatically shrank the ability of federal judges to issue universal injunctions. In Trump v. CASA, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the six Republican appointees, concludes that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts.” For that reason, the universal injunctions that three separate district judges had entered against the Trump Administration’s Executive Order attempting to abolish birthright citizenship are no longer in force.

For many, including the Justices, the case is about the proper role of the judiciary. Should judges be entering universal injunctions against policies that the Executive Branch is trying to enforce, even if those policies are unlawful? Should nonparties be able to benefit from an injunction awarded by a district judge? Or, perhaps more pointedly, should each of the hundreds of district judges across the country be able to stymie policymaking nationwide by democratically elected officials? The dispute between Barrett’s majority opinion and the dissents purports to be on this dimension: Barrett and the Republican appointees say that courts should not be able to issue nationwide injunctions, even when judges conclude that the government is acting illegally. The dissenters, the Democratic appointees, respond that courts should be able to enjoin the government from acting illegally across the board, even if only one plaintiff gets to court.

While the case purports to be about the judiciary’s proper role, the reality is more complicated. On closer examination, the opinion raises nearly as many questions as it tries to answer. And many of the supposed disagreements are not really disagreements about the scope and meaning of judicial power, but about what procedural hurdles plaintiffs must pursue and, more directly, which judges are allowed to enjoin unlawful activity. The majority and the dissents agree that the Supreme Court ought to have enormous power over Congress and the executive. While the case removed one source of formal judicial power, it continued the long-running judicial (and Roberts Court) project of judicial aggrandizement.

To begin, it is helpful to explain what the majority did not decide. The majority did not decide that district courts can never enter universal injunctions. Given the case’s top line and its publicity, this might be a curious statement. But, because the case came to the Supreme Court as an application to stay the district court’s injunction and the Court thus at least purports to apply the stay factors from Nken v. Holder, the majority’s actual holding is that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts.” In other words, the majority concludes that the Judiciary Act of 1789 does not grant federal judges the equitable authority to grant nonparty relief unless it is necessary to grant “complete relief” to the parties. To be sure, despite the lessons the majority draws from the founding that echo originalist methodologies or the new “history and tradition” inquiry, the majority expressly disclaims making a constitutional holding.

The majority does not decide that federal judges cannot enter universal injunction in at least two (but maybe three) senses. First, the opinion leaves open the possibility that universal relief might be available when it is necessary to afford parties complete relief. Steve Vladeck observes that redistricting cases might fit that narrow bill. Second, because the question came before the Justices in a preliminary posture, the Court does not resolve conclusively that federal judges cannot award universal relief under existing statutes. The preliminary posture of the holding is wholly predicated on the theoretical (but almost certainly not realistic) possibility that the Court might hold differently after a trial on the merits and after the issue has fully percolated.

The third sense in which the majority did not determine the universal relief question is more complicated. Readers who skip the concurrences would be forgiven for missing this third sense. But the concurrences raise an odd complication. The concurrences highlight a big question: does the majority’s holding apply to the Supreme Court? Can the Supreme Court issue universal injunctions even if lower courts cannot? Barrett’s opinion explains that the universal injunction “falls outside the bounds of a federal court.” In his concurrence, Thomas writes that the “Court today holds that federal courts may not issue so-called universal injunctions.” The Supreme Court is a federal court, after all. But Kavanaugh characterizes the majority entirely differently, writing that “this case focuses only on one discrete aspect of the preliminary litigation relating to major new federal statutes and executive actions—namely, what district courts may do” with requests for interim relief. Kavanaugh stresses that the opinion does not change the “order of operations” because, in many cases, the Supreme Court, “not the district courts or courts of appeals, will often still be the ultimate decisionmaker as to the interim legal status of major new federal statues and executive actions.” The relief that the Court would issue would apply “throughout the United States.”

Is there tension between Kavanaugh’s concurrence and the majority? How can the Supreme Court issue universal relief if the Judiciary Act of 1789 does not grant it the power to do so? Why would the Supreme Court have broader equitable powers than the lower courts? To be sure, it appears that Kavanaugh envisions not equitable universal relief but rather creating binding precedent that, presumably, nonparties could avail themselves of only by suing and obtaining a party-limited injunction. But what about the courts of appeals? Kavanaugh purports to disclaim that possibility but never gives a reason. If the Supreme Court can create binding nationwide precedent for potential plaintiffs to harness through duplicative lawsuits, presumably courts of appeals can create binding circuit precedent. But either way, potential plaintiffs would need to take advantage of the binding precedent and leverage collateral estoppel for all its worth. But Kavanaugh’s concurrence nevertheless is not clear. He concludes: “Today’s decision on district court injunctions will not affect this Court’s vitally important responsibility to resolve applications for stays or injunctions with respect to major new federal statutes and executive actions.” So, can the Supreme Court enjoin the government from enforcing its unlawful policies against nonparties?

If you think the answer is still no, consider how the majority’s opinion ends: “Consistent with the Solicitor General’s representation, § 2 of the Executive Order shall not take effect until 30 days after the date of this opinion.” Is that a universal injunction against the executive branch? Or some other writ issued in aid of the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction under the All Writs Act? If it’s another writ, which writ is it, and how is it different from a universal injunction?

Nevertheless, when one door closes, another opens. As the concurrences stress, many of the same plaintiffs who would have sought universal injunctions instead will seek class-action relief. The practical effect of a certified class of all affected parties winning injunctive relief would be nearly identical to a universal injunction. The same goes for the Administrative Procedure Act’s “set-aside” provision.

The pivot from universal injunctions to class actions or APA relief raises the larger problem about judicial power and the judicial role that purportedly animates the majority. According to Barrett and the majority, the judiciary “does not have unbridled authority to enforce” the executive branch’s obligation to follow the law—and, “in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so.” The majority’s stated hope, then, is to undo the state of affairs that worries them: perpetual judicial (nationwide) supervision of executive policymaking. By cutting out (at least lower court) judges’ ability to enter those universal injunctions, the majority hopes to rein in the judiciary and keep it to its proper role.

But the majority’s hope is misplaced. The available evidence demonstrates that the majority—and indeed all the Justices—typically prefer when the Court has the final say over national policy. Kavanaugh’s concurrence breaks the fourth wall and admits this. The forces that drive the perpetual judicial supervision of democratic(ish) policymaking are complex—removing one judicial remedy will hardly make a dent. The most pressing force that shapes the judiciary’s current role is ideational—the broadly accepted ideas and norms about the judiciary’s proper role in the constitutional system. Those ideas help normalize why political actors choose litigation over legislation or robust grassroots mobilization campaigns. Those ideas continue to motivate strategic litigators to switch to filing class actions rather than asking for universal relief. Those ideas normalize treating the Supreme Court as the “ultimate decisionmaker” about federal policy, the state of affairs that Kavanaugh welcomes. The presence and reaffirmation of these ideas in the public imagination is what I and others call “judicial aggrandizement.”

Undoing judicial aggrandizement is not as simple as cutting off one remedy, especially when the justices know another will quickly replace it. Undoing judicial aggrandizement means attacking a centuries-long project of constructing a valorized vision of judicial integrity and impartiality. It means recognizing and rhetorically deconstructing the subtle judicializations of myriad aspects of American politics. The project is made all the harder when the same justices that purport to want less judicial involvement in constitutional politics turn around and happily insert themselves in big, thorny political questions when political actors ask them to.

The disagreement between the majority and the dissents in Trump v. CASA, then, is not about judicial power. Both are happy to preserve and even strengthen the Court’s role as the supervisor of American constitutional politics—this is even more true when the President demonstrates utter contempt for the law. When the practical realities demand judicial supervision, the Justices are happy to oblige. They disagree, however, as to the means or the ease and convenience with which affected parties can get the relief they seek.

For all the majority’s blustering about Justice Jackson in dissent embracing the law-declaration model of the Supreme Court, the majority barely resolves the dispute and effectively ensures that the Supreme Court will continue declaring law long into the future. Although the opinion makes lower-court universal injunctions almost extinct, the Supreme Court has taken yet another opportunity to ensure that it stays deeply involved in the process of constitutional politics. The Roberts Court’s project of judicial aggrandizement continues, but this time it leans particularly hard into Supreme Court aggrandizement. Here, it deploys ideas and norms that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of political disputes at the expense of other governing institutions, but especially lower courts. In place of the government-by-injunction practice the majority fears, we may instead move to government-by-class-action-and-administrative-stay. The practical results may be similar but only if the Supreme Court says so.

As is so often the case today, we can draw parallels with William Howard Taft’s tenure as Chief Justice. Taft was an ardent judicial supremacist who believed firmly in the judiciary’s importance in American constitutional life. The reforms that Taft helped to enact with the Judiciary Act of 1925 helped bolster the Supreme Court’s stature in the constitutional system but also its stature over the lower courts. Taft believed in both judicial hierarchy and an aggrandized judiciary (at least relative to his time). Trump v. CASA furthers that long-running project. Despite kneecapping one source of formal judicial power, it nevertheless enhances the Supreme Court’s ideational power both within the constitutional system and within the judiciary. At least in that sense, Taft would be proud of the majority.

One final point is worth stressing. Whether or not the Court is right on the law, or even whether the opinions’ practical effects on judicial intervention in major policy issues are laudable, the reality is that the Court chose to address this issue in a case where the government is pursuing an obviously unconstitutional policy. As Justice Sotomayor correctly observes in dissent, “[f]ew constitutional questions can be answered by resort to the text of the Constitution alone, but this is one. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship.” Despite repeated attempts to ask the Court to weigh in on universal injunctions, the Justices waited for this case.

Even if the Court is right about everything in the case, that the Court picked this case to address the universal injunction issue harms the very thing the Justices value: their own legitimacy. While the Justices hope that their careful reasoning and reasoned judgment will persuade the public that they are neutral and dispassionate decisionmakers applying the law as written, the overwhelming majority of the public does not read Supreme Court decisions. Nor can even the most engaged members of the public rely on the best press coverage of Supreme Court decisions to convey the particulars that the Justice so often claim make a difference in their decisionmaking. Although we can get lost in the legal weeds, the upshot is that the public sees this case as little more than the Supreme Court telling all other judges to step aside when Donald Trump wants to strip core constitutional rights from American citizens.

Allen Sumrall is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law. He holds a JD and a PhD in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. Thanks to Beau Baumann for comments. Allen will be on the tenure-track job market this coming cycle. If you’d like to be sure you see his job application materials, please email him.