>Why would a lower court have more authority than an appeals court? That makes no sense.
An appellate court considers the decisions of the courts below it, so it makes sense its actions would be restricted to those courts. What makes no sense is the newly possible situation in which an action violates the U.S. Constitution in one district but not another.
>That's not new. It's called a circuit split, and generally results in the cases being combined when SCOTUS hears them to sort out the difference.
Absolutely. As it should be.
The problem here is that the SCOTUS decision under discussion here makes it less likely (perhaps quite unlikely) that the SCOTUS will even be asked to "sort out the difference."
That's because their ruling today made it clear that if you're not a named plaintiff in a suit against the government, you are not subject to/protected by any ruling on that case, unless and until, a SCOTUS ruling sorts it out.
And since the prevailing party has no standing to appeal (only the "losing" party -- party as in plaintiff/defendant, not political party), if the Executive Branch doesn't appeal, SCOTUS will never see such cases -- thus leaving the Executive branch to do literally anything with impunity outside the realm of the circuit court involved.
Distinctly no, this is in the dissent. That requires an appeal from the government and for SCOTUS to pick up the case in a reasonable time.
Now the government can choose to "lose" in some places and let the injunction stand. Then, in all other locations in the country, the constitution of the United States is quite literally different in perpetuity.
And it's not even by-locality, sans cases brought by a state government. SCOTUS has defined injunctions as by-litigant. So now two babies born next to each other in the same hospital to visa parents can have different naturalization statuses based on if those parents had sued in the right district court or not.
This makes US law effectively intractable. The only natural resolution then is to visit Obergfell - the gay marriage case that the current SCOTUS majority has harped against for years in their rulings - and resolve the conflict by appealing to the federal nature of the law & enforcement, revoking citizenship of even those with an injunction.
In another comment I've gone into detail on exactly how the federal government can force that case to the SCOTUS.
An appellate court considers the decisions of the courts below it, so it makes sense its actions would be restricted to those courts. What makes no sense is the newly possible situation in which an action violates the U.S. Constitution in one district but not another.