Sen. Grassley: Rein in nationwide injunctions. Readers: No thanks.

Washington Post

18-06-2025

Regarding the May 29 editorial, 'In defense of nationwide injunctions':
The Post's Editorial Board argued that, in spite of the lack of historical precedent and constitutional basis for universal injunctions, this judicial maneuver is ostensibly a necessary 'check on presidential power.'
But allowing district judges to exert bloated authority beyond the cases and controversies before them only creates further imbalance among the branches of government. The Post should have taken into serious consideration Article III of the Constitution, which limits courts to deciding 'cases' or 'controversies' — as well as the first 150 years of American history, during which time, as the board acknowledged, scholars have found no documented use of a universal injunction.
It's not the judiciary's responsibility to set policy; that power is vested in the people through their elected leaders. For decades, Congress has failed to write specific legislation, leaving the door open for a variety of interpretations. Congress can and must pass clearer laws, but the legislative branch's past mistakes aren't a free pass for district judges to overstep constitutional guardrails and play policymaker.
The continued use of universal injunctions does far more harm than good to our nation's system of checks and balances. What's more, injunctions place severe pressure on the Supreme Court by frequently forcing it to respond to emergency appeals.
The bill I introduced to eliminate universal injunctions would instead encourage appropriate appellate action by making temporary restraining orders immediately appealable. In those cases where widespread judicial relief is appropriate, Congress has already provided a mechanism: class-action lawsuits. Courts should no longer be permitted to avoid the class certification process by opting instead for universal injunctions.
I hope the Supreme Court steps in quickly to address injunctions. In the meantime, I'll keep moving my legislative fixes toward the finish line, including through reconciliation.
I continue to encourage my Democratic colleagues to join me in this effort. Many Democrats have sharply criticized the practice in the past — including in the case of the mifepristone ban The Post's editorial referenced — but have shelved their opposition to universal injunctions since President Donald Trump returned to office. The Post itself argued for limiting injunctions in a separate editorial last June.
The constitutional dangers posed by universal injunctions haven't changed over the past year; the only thing that has is the White House's current occupant. We shouldn't let politics overcome principle by failing to address this bipartisan problem now.
Chuck Grassley, Washington
The writer, a Republican, represents Iowa in the U.S. Senate and is chair of the Judiciary Committee.
Not only does President Donald Trump's 'big beautiful bill,' now under consideration by the Senate, threaten to balloon the deficit, but its passage also heightens the risk that the United States could succumb to autocratic rule.
Buried in this bill are provisions that make it easier for the administration to ignore court orders by limiting the courts' powers to hold the president and Congress in contempt for failing to abide by an order unless a plaintiff in a case posted a financial bond. This provision would apply for court cases not only going forward but also retroactively. Additionally, the bill would limit the judiciary's ability to implement nationwide injunctions for Trump's executive orders.
Thus far, the courts have been the only branch of government that is effectively preventing Trump and his team from carrying out blatantly unconstitutional executive orders. In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), several Democratic lawmakers correctly noted that provisions limiting the judiciary's power to enforce its orders 'would neutralize valid injunctions and leave courts powerless to act in the face of open defiance.'
The drafters of the Constitution created three independent branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. This Republican Congress has abdicated its role of providing a check on the executive branch. The executive branch cannot be permitted to evade its obligations to follow the judiciary's orders. To permit such defiance would strike at the heart of the separation of powers that defines our Constitution and system of government. This bill should not pass for many other reasons, but lawmakers must not ignore these dangerous provisions.
Jill Leiner, Baltimore
As The Post noted in its editorial, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to decide the question of 'whether federal district judges went overboard in issuing nationwide injunctions against Trump's executive order doing away with birthright citizenship.'
It appears to me that the answer to the question should depend on the nature of the administration action being challenged in the cases before the district judges. In the cases the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to consider, the district judges reviewed a challenge to the administration's nationwide declaration and order that birthright citizenship will no longer be available to all babies born in the country. Three district court judges have held that this nationwide order is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. The Trump administration can appeal these rulings and can ask for a stay of the rulings during appeals.
But in the absence of a stay pending appeal, it seems that when district courts rule a nationwide executive order invalid, that necessarily means it is unconstitutional to enforce that order anywhere in the nation. Stated differently, all three courts have held that the defendant in the three cases — the U.S. government — has no authority at all to enforce its nationwide order. The courts' rulings, by the nature of both the executive order and the ruling against it, bar the government from enforcing its order anywhere in the nation. There is, therefore, no appropriate way to issue a localized injunction against nationwide orders such as the ones in the birthright citizenship cases.
The Supreme Court established in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison that it is the role of the courts to say what the law is. Once the courts have done so, all parties to cases before the courts must abide by the courts' rulings unless and until the rulings are stayed or overturned. That is how the rule of law works under our Constitution, and the Trump administration should be held accountable to it.
Walter Smith, Washington
The writer is a lawyer who has argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court recently considered whether to put restrictions on the ability of lower-level judges to issue nationwide injunctions. This is an issue that has raised bipartisan concerns. On one hand, it doesn't seem right that a single district judge should have the power to dictate policy for the whole country while an issue works its way through the court system. On the other hand, there should be some safeguard so the government can't violate people's rights while the legal process is pending.
Is there a principled solution to this problem? Here's a suggestion: The Supreme Court should allow a single judge to issue a nationwide injunction when doing so would uphold the status quo, but not when doing so would overturn the status quo.
For instance, the status quo is that all children born in the United States have citizenship. The Trump administration is trying to change the status quo by declaring that children born in the U.S. to noncitizens should not be given citizenship. In this case, a single judge should be able to issue a nationwide injunction to preserve the status quo until the courts definitively determine whether President Donald Trump's executive order regarding birthright citizenship is constitutional.
As another example, the Biden administration tried to cancel student loan debt for millions of borrowers by reinterpreting existing law. The status quo was that these loans needed to be repaid. Given that, under the standard I am proposing, it was proper that a single judge could declare an injunction on this policy while the case was working its way through the courts.
On the other hand, the plaintiffs in the Texas mifepristone case were trying to force the Food and Drug Administration to remove that drug from the market. The status quo was that the drug had been sold legally for many years. In this case, therefore, a judge should not have been allowed to issue a nationwide injunction, since that would have immediately overturned the status quo before the case had made its way through the legal system.
Creating a bias in favor of the status quo appears to be the right way to balance the need to protect rules and rights that people have long relied on while still allowing challenges to the status quo to succeed in the long run if they have constitutional merit.
John Shea, Ellicott City
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