Supreme Court Rejects District Courts’ Use of Universal Injunctions

District courts have increasingly asserted the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone during the litigation, even those not a party to a lawsuit, through a procedural tool called universal injunctions. A federal judge in Texas, for example, issued a preliminary injunction nine years ago to block the 2016 overtime rule nationwide.

Such injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts,” the Supreme Court ruled on June 27 in a 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. In Trump v. CASA Inc., the court granted the federal government’s applications to partially stay injunctions entered by lower courts in birthright citizenship cases.

The court stated that “partial stays will cause no harm to respondents because they will remain protected by the preliminary injunctions to the extent necessary and appropriate to afford them complete relief.” In addition, the court has lifted the prohibition on the executive agencies from “developing and issuing public guidance about the executive’s plans to implement the executive order.”

However, the court said, “Nothing we say today resolves the distinct question whether the Administrative Procedure Act authorizes federal courts to vacate federal agency action.”

Executive Order 14160

The plaintiffs — who are individuals, associations, and states — sought to enjoin the implementation of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order (EO) 14160. The EO identifies circumstances when a person born in the U.S. is not subject to the U.S.’ jurisdiction and is not recognized as a U.S. citizen, such as if a person’s mother was unlawfully present in the U.S. and the person’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the individual’s birth. Another instance would be when a person’s mother’s presence was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the person’s birth. The EO also provides for a 30-day ramp-up period.

EO Impact Zone

Plaintiffs sued, alleging the EO violated the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. That amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” (The amendment was adopted in 1868, and the Supreme Court has upheld birthright citizenship multiple times since then.)

District courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington state issued universal injunctions — also called nationwide injunctions — prohibiting the Trump administration from enforcing the EO, said Jim Plunkett, an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in Washington, D.C.

Increased Use of Universal Injunctions 

The government filed three applications to partially stay the universal preliminary injunctions and limit them to the parties in the cases. The applications did not raise — and thus the court did not address — whether the EO was unconstitutional. Instead, the issue before the court was whether federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.

“On multiple occasions, and across administrations, the solicitor general has asked us to consider the propriety of this expansive remedy,” the Supreme Court wrote. “It is easy to see why. 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. The trend has continued: During the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions.”

Universal Injunctions ‘Rebuffed’

The Supreme Court concluded the government was likely to succeed on the merits of its argument regarding the scope of relief. “A universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power.” 

The Supreme Court has, it said, “consistently rebuffed requests for relief extending beyond the parties.”  

Universal injunctions remained rare until the turn of the 21st century, when they became more common, the Supreme Court said. “Because the universal injunction lacks a historical pedigree, it falls outside the bounds of a federal court’s equitable authority under the Judiciary Act.”

By forging a shortcut to relief that benefits parties and nonparties, universal injunctions circumvent procedural protection on class actions and let courts create “de facto class actions at will,” the Supreme Court said.  

The government had argued for narrower relief. For example, the district court could forbid the government from applying the EO within the states challenging the EO. Or the district court could direct the government to treat covered children as eligible for purpose of federally funded welfare benefits.

For now, the Supreme Court declined to take up these arguments, saying, “The lower courts should determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate; we therefore leave it to them to consider these and any related arguments.”

The EO shall not take effect until 30 days after the date of the opinion.

Concurrences

In a concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote, “For good reason, the court today puts an end to the increasingly common practice of federal courts issuing universal injunctions.”

In a separate concurrence, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Thomas, cautioned 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 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.  

Dissent

In a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor wrote, “The government does not ask for complete stays of the injunctions, as it ordinarily does before this court. Why? The answer is obvious: To get such relief, the government would have to show that the order is likely constitutional, an impossible task in light of the Constitution’s text, history, this court’s precedents, federal law, and executive branch practice.  

“So the government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the executive to stop enforcing it against anyone. Instead, the government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit. The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this court plays along.”

However, the Supreme Court majority said, “The principal dissent’s analysis of the executive order is premature because the birthright citizenship issue is not before us.”