Over the past few decades, federal district court judges have increasingly adopted the dubious use of "universal" or nationwide injunctions to permanently block or temporarily delay the implementation and enforcement of new executive actions or legislation from Congress.

That practice was essentially ended on Friday with a hugely consequential ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that President Donald Trump heralded as a "monumental victory" for the Constitution and the country, according to Fox News.

The issue is of great importance to Trump, as he, more than any other president in the nation's history, frequently found himself and his policy agenda blocked or delayed by politically motivated partisan judges who exceeded their statutory authority and jurisdiction.

The growing problem of nationwide injunctions

On Trump's first day of his second term, he issued an executive order to significantly reform birthright citizenship and limit it only to children born of at least one legal resident alien parent, rather than let it continue to be broadly applied to any child born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents' nationality and legal status.

That order was immediately challenged on 14th Amendment grounds by a variety of plaintiffs, including activist groups, individuals, and states, and three separate district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington state all issued nationwide injunctions to block Trump's order from taking effect or being enforced.

Those three injunctions were quickly appealed by the Trump administration and ultimately consolidated into one case by the Supreme Court, which on Friday declined to address the questions surrounding the birthright citizenship issue but instead focused on the growing problem of "universal" injunctions.

High court trim's lower courts' authority

In a 6-3 majority opinion authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, it was decided that district court judges lacked the statutory authority to issue "universal" injunctions that applied nationwide, and instead were constrained by law to only order remedies that affected the specific parties before them in any given case.

SCOTUSblog reported that Barrett acknowledged that "the universal injunction 'give[s] the Judiciary a powerful tool to check the Executive Branch.' But federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them."

"When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too," she added.

Trump: Ruling a "monumental victory"

Shortly after the decision was released, President Trump addressed reporters at the White House and said, "This morning, the Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law," in striking down the practice of nationwide injunctions from district court judges.

"I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we've seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers," he continued. "It was a grave threat to democracy, frankly, and instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation."

"In practice, this meant that if any one of the nearly 700 federal judges disagreed with a policy of the duly-elected president of the United States, he or she could block that policy from going into effect, or at least delay it for many years, tied up in the court system," Trump explained.

"This was a colossal abuse of power which never occurred in American history prior to recent decades, and we've been hit with more nationwide injunctions than were issued in the entire 20th Century together," he stated. "Think of it -- more than the entire 20th Century -- me."

Trump ended his remarks by thanking the Supreme Court for addressing this "big and complex problem," and went on to express his particular gratitude toward Justice Barrett, whom he appointed at the end of his first term, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas.