Supreme Court Blocks Slew of Nationwide Injunctions against Trump
In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court is siding with President Donald Trump and significantly curbing the authority of federal districts to issue sweeping universal injunctions. On Friday, the justices issued their opinion in Trump v. CASA, a case nominally centered on the president’s actions to eliminate “birthright citizenship.” However, the Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court instead to address the unprecedented number of universal injunctions that district courts have used to halt his agenda. In what administration officials and legal scholars have hailed as a clear restoration of the separation of powers, the Supreme Court declared universal injunctions unconstitutional.
“Traditionally, courts issued injunctions prohibiting executive officials from enforcing a challenged law or policy only against the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The injunctions before us today reflect a more recent development: district courts asserting the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone,” wrote Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the majority’s opinion. She added, “These injunctions — known as ‘universal injunctions’ — likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federaleme court
Joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, Barrett observed that the Supreme Court is not addressing the matter of whether the president’s executive order on “birthright citizenship” is lawful, but on whether universal injunctions are constitutional. “The issue before us is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions,” Barrett wrote.
The Trump-appointed justice noted that universal injunctions and their increasing use by district courts have become a persistent legal problem in recent years. “By the end of the Biden administration, we had reached ‘a state of affairs where almost every major presidential act [was] immediately frozen by a federal district court,’” Barrett observed. She continued, “The trend has continued: During the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions. … As the number of universal injunctions has increased, so too has the importance of the issue.”
Barrett observed that Supreme Court precedent stipulates that the equitable relief granted by federal courts must be rooted in or analogous to equitable relief as it was understood and afforded at the nation’s founding. “A universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power,” she said, citing again the Judiciary Act of 1789. Combing through English and early American history, Barrett found no measure resembling nationwide injunctions. “In fact, universal injunctions were not a feature of federal-court litigation until sometime in the 20th century,” she observed. The first universal injunction issued is credited to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1963. Barrett wrote, “Yet such injunctions remained rare until the turn of the 21st century, when their use gradually accelerated.” She emphasized, “Nothing like a universal injunction was available at the founding, or for that matter, for more than a century thereafter. Thus, under the Judiciary Act, federal courts lack authority to issue them.”
Turning to arguments advanced by the Trump administration, Barrett and the majority agreed that “universal injunctions incentivize forum shopping, since a successful challenge in one jurisdiction entails relief nationwide.” She added, “In a similar vein, the Government observes that universal injunctions operate asymmetrically: A plaintiff must win just one suit to secure sweeping relief. But to fend off such an injunction, the Government must win everywhere.”
Barrett also agreed with the Trump administration that “the practice of universal injunctions means that highly consequential cases are often decided in a ‘fast and furious’ process of ‘rushed, high-stakes, [and] low-information’ decision-making.” She explained, “When a district court issues a universal injunction, thereby halting the enforcement of federal policy, the Government says that it has little recourse but to proceed to the court of appeals for an emergency stay. The loser in the court of appeals will then seek a stay from this Court.” Barrett noted, “This process forces courts to resolve significant and difficult questions of law on a highly expedited basis and without full briefing.”
“Some say that the universal injunction ‘give[s] the Judiciary a powerful tool to check the Executive Branch,’” Barrett wrote in her conclusion. She continued, “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.”
Thomas was joined by Gorsuch in a concurring opinion, warning lower courts that the Friday ruling means that they must “cabin their grants of injunctive relief in light of historical equitable limits. If they cannot do so, this Court will continue to be ‘dutybound’ to intervene.” Alito also wrote a concurring opinion, in which Thomas joined, to point out that the matters of third-party standing and broad class-certification, which were not addressed in the majority’s opinion, would likely become problematic in the wake of an end to universal injunctions. “Today’s decision only underscores the need for rigorous and evenhanded enforcement of third-party-standing limitations,” he wrote, adding, “Today’s decision will have very little value if district courts award relief to broadly defined classes without following” rules and procedures for class certification. Alito warned that “district courts should not view today’s decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors of Rule 23. Otherwise, the universal injunction will return from the grave under the guise of ‘nationwide class relief,’ and today’s decision will be of little more than minor academic interest.”
Democrat-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented. “The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival,” Sotomayor wrote, concluding a lengthy dissent in which she was joined by Kagan and Jackson. She continued, “Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort. With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution. … Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.”
Throughout the majority’s opinion, Barrett carefully refuted key arguments proffered in Sotomayor’s dissent. Jackson also penned her own dissent, which did not fare quite as well in the estimation of the majority. “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” Barrett wrote. “No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation — in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so,” Barrett wrote, countering Jackson’s wordy dissent. She continued, “Observing the limits on judicial authority — including, as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789 — is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law. Justice Jackson skips over that part.” Barrett summarized Jackson’s argument, “In other words, it is unnecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ … That goes for judges too.”
The Trump administration praised the Supreme Court’s decision as a “monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.” In a Friday morning press conference, Trump said, “Well, this was a big one, wasn’t it? Big decision, amazing decision, one that we’re very happy about.” He recounted, “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.” Trump continued, “It was a great threat to democracy, frankly. And instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation.”
Referring to universal injunctions as “a colossal abuse of power,” the president shared, “I’m grateful to the Supreme Court for stepping in and solving this very, very big and complex problem. They made it very simple.” He thanked Barrett by name, saying that she “wrote the opinion brilliantly…” Trump continued, “Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis.”
Vice President J.D. Vance wrote in a social media post, “A huge ruling by the Supreme Court, smacking down the ridiculous process of nationwide injunctions. Under our system, everyone has to follow the law — including judges!” Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “Today, the Supreme Court instructed district courts to STOP the endless barrage of nationwide injunctions against President Trump.” She added, “This Department of Justice will continue to zealously defend [Trump’s] policies and his authority to implement them.”
Samuel Bray, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School specializing in remedies and equities, said in comments shared with The Washington Stand that the Supreme Court’s decision “has fundamentally reset the relationship between the federal courts and the executive branch.” Bray observed that the administrations of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Trump have all faced being “frozen” by universal injunctions. “After today, the universal injunction will no longer be the default remedy in challenges to executive action,” he said.
Bray predicted that states involved in cases against the Trump administration — particularly those targeting his executive order terminating “birthright citizenship” — will seek broad relief from courts, and that Trump policies will likely, as Alito warned, be besieged by a host of broad class-action lawsuits. Regardless, Bray concluded, “Today’s decision is a vindication and reassertion of the proper role of the federal courts in our constitutional system.”
Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies Andrew Arthur told TWS, “Nationwide injunctions, particularly in immigration cases, aren’t supported by law and are no more.” But like Alito and Bray, he anticipated that “lower courts might try to sneak around the court’s opinion in CASA by expanding third-party standing or bypassing limits on class-action relief.”
Article III Project senior counsel Josh Hammer told The Washington Stand, “CASA is a tremendous, much-overdue rebuke of the lower-court judicial insurrection that has hamstrung President Trump since January.” He added, “Even better, it is a salutary recalibration of our separation of powers back toward what the Founders intended.”
In a statement shared with The Washington Stand, Hans Von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow in judicial studies at the Heritage Foundation, said, “The Supreme Court’s rebuke of nationwide or universal injunctions is an important step toward restoring the judiciary to its proper constitutional role.” He explained, “Judges have the power to guard the rights of the people who come before them, but they don’t have the power to set or derail nationwide policy. They’re judges, not presidents or legislators, and today’s decision reminds them of that.”
S. A. McCarthy
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
