On Friday, June 27, the Supreme Court held that so-called universal injunctions (sometimes called nationwide injunctions) likely exceed federal courts’ equitable authority as granted by the Judiciary Act of 1789. The Court reserved the question of whether Article III of the Constitution prohibits universal relief. It specified that its decision does not address whether the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) authorizes federal courts to vacate federal agency action. Litigants seeking broad relief still have options. A class action is the clearest route. An action pursuant to the APA may also allow for broadly applicable relief, although open questions remain.
Federal courts have the power to grant injunctive relief, a form of equitable remedy that controls the conduct of a party. Typically, an injunction prohibits a defendant from taking a particular action. Within the last twenty years, courts have increasingly granted injunctions that prohibited a defendant—usually an officer or arm of the federal government—from taking a particular action with respect to anyone, not only the parties in the litigation. Those injunctions can be preliminary—governing the defendant’s behavior while the litigation is ongoing—or permanent. To obtain preliminary relief, a party must show that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim, among other elements. Universal injunctions, both preliminary and permanent, have garnered significant controversy.
The Court’s Opinion
In Trump v. CASA, Inc., Case No. 24A884 (consolidated with Case Nos. 24A885 and 24A886), President Trump and various federal officials filed an emergency application challenging the scope of a federal court’s authority to enjoin federal officials from enforcing a challenged law or policy against non-parties. The plaintiffs in the consolidated cases, which included immigrant-rights organizations, individuals, and states, had filed lawsuits challenging an executive order that restricted the circumstances in which someone born in the United States to non-citizen parents would be recognized as a U.S. citizen. In each case, the district court concluded that the executive order likely violated the Fourteenth Amendment and entered a universal preliminary injunction prohibiting the defendants from applying the policy to anyone in the country while the court considered the merits. The government asked the appellate court in each case to stay the injunction, and each appellate court refused.
The government asked the Supreme Court to restrict the scope of each injunction to only the parties before each court. Because the government sought a stay of the district courts’ orders, it had to show that it was likely to succeed on the merits of its argument that the injunctions exceeded the courts’ authority. It did not have to prove that the executive order was lawful, and the Supreme Court did not reach that issue.
The government argued that universal injunctions exceed federal courts’ authority under both the Constitution and the Judiciary Act of 1789, which created the system of federal courts and granted federal courts jurisdiction over “all suits … at common law or in equity.” The Supreme Court has previously held that this grant of statutory authority over suits in equity allows courts to grant only the types of equitable relief that were traditionally accorded by courts of equity at the time of the Founding. The government also argued that universal injunctions are undesirable as a matter of policy because, among other reasons, they promote forum-shopping and lack the procedural protections that apply to class actions.
The plaintiffs argued that universal injunctions are an appropriate exercise of courts’ equitable power to provide relief that is both complete and workable. They argued that universal injunctions are analogous to equitable remedies that existed at the time of the Founding and that the increasing frequency of universal injunctions accords with the increasing size and power of the federal government. The plaintiffs contended that universal relief was necessary to ensure uniformity regarding birthright citizenship.
The Supreme Court held that universal injunctions likely exceed federal courts’ statutory authority under the Judiciary Act of 1789 because no equitable remedy available at the time of the Founding extended relief to parties and nonparties alike. The majority acknowledged that some equitable remedies will incidentally benefit non-parties. For example, if a plaintiff sues his neighbor over a noise nuisance and the court orders the defendant to turn down her music, all of the defendants’ neighbors will benefit, not just the plaintiff. But only the plaintiff will have the legal right to enforce the judgment against the defendant. The Court found that because the government was likely to prevail on the merits of its argument that the injunctions were too broad, the government was entitled to stays of the injunctions “only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
Justice Barrett authored the opinion of the Court and was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented.
The Limits of the Court’s Opinion
The majority opinion is carefully circumscribed.
First, the majority specified that its decision did not address “the distinct question whether the Administrative Procedure Act authorizes federal courts to vacate federal agency action.” The majority view is that 5 U.S.C. § 706, which states that a court reviewing agency action “shall … hold unlawful and set aside agency action” that is found to violate the APA, authorizes or requires the court to revoke agency action such that the agency cannot apply the challenged action to anyone. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion supporting this view. Some legal scholars and judges, including justices of the Supreme Court—and, in recent years, the government—contend that universal relief is not required or is even not permitted by the APA.
Second, the majority also declined to reach the government’s argument that Article III of the Constitution, which defines the judicial power, does not allow courts to grant relief to non-parties. Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Gorsuch, in which he stated that universal injunctions raised “serious constitutional questions.”
Third, the majority declined to decide whether, in cases in which an organization has standing to sue based on its members, a court can grant relief to members of the organization who are not named in the complaint.
Potential Implications
CASA limits the ability of plaintiffs to obtain wide-ranging relief, whether preliminary or permanent. However, avenues to broad relief remain open. In the next several years, parties and courts will likely explore the questions that the opinion left unresolved.
The most fundamental open question is whether the Constitution limits courts’ authority to issue relief that extends beyond the parties to the litigation. Whether relief awarded to an organization can extend to members of that organization who would not be able to sue in their own right is a related issue.
Another critical question is the scope of relief available under the APA. The APA authorizes preliminary relief as well as permanent relief. Whether either or both of those forms of relief is limited to the parties is unsettled. Litigants should be mindful of circuit-court precedent regarding the availability and nature of APA relief.
A class action for injunctive relief is the clearest route for obtaining broad relief. Indeed, within hours of the Court’s opinion, the plaintiffs in several of the underlying lawsuits had already filed amended complaints on behalf of putative nationwide classes and had moved for preliminary relief on behalf of everyone who would be affected by the executive order.
In litigation by an organization based on injuries suffered by its members, naming the affected members may help to ensure that they enjoy the benefits of any relief obtained.
