The headline case that was before the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday concerns President Donald Trump’s executive order eliminating the application of birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to noncitizens. Trump has famously challenged the widely accepted — but totally constitutionally incorrect — application of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which the amendment’s framers never dreamed would apply to babies born to illegal aliens.

Still, the question of who the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship applies to is not ultimately what the U.S. Supreme Court is considering. Rather, the question before the justices is the constitutionality of nationwide injunctions increasingly being issued by a single district judge blocking an executive action or directive. Even a Supreme Court justice can’t do that alone.

During the first few months of Trump’s second term, his administration has faced a litany of judicial activism via nationwide injunctions that are stymying his ability to move forward in implementing his agenda — even running agencies in the executive branch. Thus far, depending on how one defines a nationwide injunction (i.e., including temporary restraining orders), Trump has seen 39 nationwide injunctions imposed against his administration, with 35 of them arising from the same five district courts. Unsurprisingly, all of those courts are located in solid blue regions of the country: Massachusetts, Maryland, Northern California, Western Washington, and Washington, DC.

Representing the Trump administration was Solicitor General John Sauer. His argument was that the three lower courts’ nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order violated Article III of the Constitution, which he contends limits a judge’s ruling to the plaintiffs in front of them. “It is a feature, not a bug, of Article III that the courts grant relief to the people that are in front of them,” Sauer stated.

However, as the proceeding went on, it became apparent that the majority of the Court did not favor Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. Indeed, several of the justices wondered about the administration’s rationale for using this case to argue against nationwide injunctions. “There are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions,” Justice Elena Kagan mused, “but I think that the question that this case presents is that if one thinks it’s quite clear that the executive order is illegal, how does one get to that result and what time frame, on your set of rules, without the possibility of a nationwide injunction?”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed Sauer on the apparent practical implications of limiting judicial rulings to the plaintiffs. “Your argument seems to turn our justice system into a catch-me-if-you-can kind of regime from the standpoint of the executive, where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights,” she asserted.

Yet Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas seemed unmoved by the argument against limiting nationwide injunctions. “The practical problem is there are 680 district court judges,” Alito observed. “Sometimes they’re wrong, and all Article III judges are vulnerable to an occupational disease, which is the disease of thinking, ‘I am right.’”

Justice Thomas rarely speaks during arguments, but when he does, it’s worth listening. He pointedly noted, “We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions.”

Few presidents have faced as many nationwide injunctions as Trump. During his first term, judges handed down 64 injunctions. As noted above, just four months into his second term, Trump has already been hit with nearly 40 injunctions. That is certainly not because he is uniquely law-breaking, though the rise in nationwide injunctions did begin with a more expansive use of executive power by Trump’s predecessors.

Given this reality, it was apparent that the majority of the justices were interested in finding some kind of middle ground. However, what that middle ground would be is not clear. Justice Sonia Sotomayor repeatedly raised the citizenship issue, insisting, “The president is violating … not just one but, by my count, four established Supreme Court precedents.”

The justices also appeared concerned over the practical implications of a partial injunction against Trump’s order in one state while it was allowed to go into effect in other states. Would children born to illegal aliens in New Jersey continue to receive U.S. citizenship while those in Alabama do not?

It can be a fool’s errand to predict how the Court may rule. That said, it appears that the justices were not persuaded by the administration’s (correct) argument regarding birthright citizenship. However, knowing the Roberts Court, they will likely punt on that issue, since the more immediate question they are dealing with is the constitutionality of nationwide injunctions. Expect a decision that attempts to limit nationwide injunctions without eliminating them entirely.