Latest news with #universalinjunctions
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
A Return to Judicial Sanity
This column has been making the case that a single federal judge should not be able to dictate policy nationwide. Thank goodness the Supreme Court, in a majority opinion from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, took an important step on Friday to limit the use of universal injunctions. Some liberals are howling, but not all of them. Nicholas Bagley is a law professor at the University of Michigan and former chief legal counsel to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D., Mich.). He writes in the Atlantic that the Court's ruling 'is not, as the dissenting Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have it, 'an existential threat to the rule of law.'' Mr. Bagley notes:
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - The Supreme Court's injunctions decision returns America to the constitutional horrors of Dred Scott
In ordinary times, someone could read the Supreme Court's decision on the legality of so-called 'universal injunctions' as just the latest example of an old dispute: the proper way to interpret the Constitution and the jurisdiction of federal courts. Justice Amy Coney Barrett's majority opinion saying the federal district courts do not have the authority to issue such injunctions is a classic in the genre of 'originalism.' In contrast, the dissenting opinions by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson read the law through the lens not just of its origins but with an eye to how an interpretation would affect the world beyond the courtroom. They understand that these are not ordinary times and do not want to disable the judiciary from responding when fundamental rights are at stake, in the face of an ongoing assault on the rule of law itself. To put it simply, with its decision in Trump v. Casa, the court has become an accomplice in President Trump's ongoing assault on our constitutional republic. The decision has effectively removed the federal courts as a check on the Trump administration. But it also does grave damage to the court itself — Trump v. Casa now takes its place among the high court's most infamous rulings. As Stephen Lubet says, it returns us to the world of its discredited Dred Scott decision, which found that the rights of Black people depended on where they lived. Just like Blacks in the antebellum world who had one status in free states and another in slave states, immigrants and others may now find themselves in a legal nether land. To thoroughly appreciate the impact of Trump v. Casa, it is important to remember that 'universal injunctions' allow courts to grant immediate relief that benefits not only the party who requests them but also anyone harmed by an action of the government. Individuals or organizations can go to court seeking such orders while they pursue further legal action. Even before last week's ruling, they had to get over a high bar to persuade the courts to step in, including showing that in the absence of such an order, they would suffer 'irreparable harm.' One commentator rightly notes that, 'In many situations, there is no other way to stop widespread illegality, especially that perpetrated by the federal government. Nationwide wrongs require a nationwide remedy.' None of that seemed to matter to Barrett and her conservative colleagues, though. They insisted that because nationwide injunctions were not issued by English courts, federal district and appellate courts should not be able to use them today. They are living in the past rather than dealing with the realities of the present. As Barrett put it, 'because the universal injunction lacks a historical pedigree, it falls outside the bounds of a federal court's equitable authority.' But there is nothing new about the practice of granting such relief. More than a century ago, in a case involving an alleged infringement of freedom of the press by a postal regulation, the Supreme Court issued a nationwide injunction to stop such infringement until it could hear and decide the merits of the case. They have been used frequently in federal court rulings against presidents for many years. And there is nothing new about the current conservative justices' criticisms of them. Eight years ago, in another case involving Trump, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, 'I am skeptical that district courts have the authority to enter universal injunctions. … If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.' Thomas got his wish. While you would never know from reading the majority opinion that Trump has been claiming authority to ignore the law whenever it suits him, including the right to curtail the constitutionally protected right to birthright citizenship, in their dissents Sotomayor and Jackson went to great lengths to ensure that his actions would not be ignored. As Sotomayor argues, the majority now holds that 'No matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the executive to stop enforcing it against anyone.' Sotomayor condemns her colleagues' attachment to a 'rigid historical test' that allows 'a grave and unsupported diminution of the judicial power of equity,' and chastises the majority for its 'complicity' in the president's ''mockery' of our constitution.' Her opinion conjured the jurisprudence of the Dred Scott era when it warned that the court's new decision creates a 'two-tiered scheme' in which someone's citizenship status depends on whether they live in a state where an injunction has been issued or a state where no court ruling has been made. Jackson echoed Sotomayor in her worry that the court is acquiescing in the administration's desire 'to operate in two different zones moving forward: one in which it is required to follow the law (because a particular plaintiff has secured a personal injunction prohibiting its unlawful conduct) and another in which you can choose to violate the law with respect to certain people (those who have yet to sue).' The creation of law-free zones reminds Jackson of 'history's horrors,' and she notes what the majority has authorized will disproportionately impact the poor, uneducated, and the unpopular.' We can only hope that someday soon the Supreme Court will come to its senses and repudiate Trump v. Casa. In the meantime, it is left to the American people to resist the administration's effort to hollow out the Constitution and preserve what it promised, a century and a half ago, to anyone born in this country. Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. Steve Kramer is a lawyer and former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Wall Street Journal
3 days ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
When Liberals Hated National Injunctions
Liberals are fuming over the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA, which curtails universal injunctions. 'With Supreme Court Ruling, Another Check on President Trump's Power Fades,' declared a New York Times headline. Au contraire. The ruling merely means a single judge can't block a government policy nationwide. Democratic administrations could benefit as much as Republican ones. It wasn't all that long ago that liberals were raging against overreaching orders by Republican-appointed judges.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
The Supreme Court Is Watching Out for the Courts, Not for Trump
On Friday, the Supreme Court decided the birthright citizenship cases — except they aren't really about birthright citizenship. In an executive order issued in January, President Trump wanted to redefine citizenship in the United States. The court's decision in Trump v. CASA does not address that effort; it is rather about the scope of remedies given by the federal courts. In the decision, a 6-3 majority of the court held that the federal courts have no authority to issue universal injunctions, which are court orders that control how the government acts toward everyone in the country, not just the parties in the case. The high court's decision has the potential to reshape the relationship between the federal judiciary and the executive branch — and the court got it right. In rejecting the practice of universal injunctions, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the proper role of the federal courts within our constitutional system. What the justices got right was a shift in thinking about what Americans want our courts to do, and especially how they should operate in a democracy under pressure. There has been a shift toward a new model of judicial interaction with the executive branch. This new model has been marked by broader remedies, faster timelines, fewer trials and less factual development — which is to say, less time devoted to discovery and oral argument in lower courts. It has also meant more extreme forum-shopping for favorable judges — when plaintiffs seek out a specific judge whom they wish to hear their case, presumably because of how they expect that judge to rule. Removing universal injunctions does not change all of that — it is not like the last Jenga block that makes the tower fall. But the universal injunction has supported and intensified all those other developments. Removing it gives the courts a chance to reset, and to shift toward the more deliberative mode in which they do their best work. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
