Judges in courtrooms from Rhode Island to Seattle have issued rulings against President Trump that have not only angered the president but also focused the attention of scholars of all ideologies on one of the judiciary’s most fearsome powers, the nationwide injunction.
Less than two months into Mr. Trump’s second term, district judges have issued nationwide decrees blocking the firings of civil servants, the freezing of congressionally appropriated federal funding, the end of nearly automatic citizenship for babies born on American soil and the relocation of transgender women in federal prisons to men’s housing. And that only names a few.
The debate over nationwide injunctions has simmered for years, but with more than 100 lawsuits pending against the Trump administration, it is now roaring. Last week, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. criticized “the unchecked power” of a district court judge who ordered the State Department to release roughly $2 billion to contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh joined in Justice Alito’s dissent.
House Republicans are targeting nationwide injunctions with a bill that its sponsor, Representative Darrell Issa of California, said was needed to fix “a major malfunction” in the federal judiciary. Under the legislation, undocumented immigrant parents, for instance, would have to file lawsuits as individuals, or as part of a class action, to preserve citizenship rights for their children. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, has said he is working on a similar measure that would restrict nationwide judicial orders to three-judge panels, with appeals going directly to the Supreme Court.
Democrats, in turn, have accused Republicans of going after the last check on Mr. Trump’s power, the judiciary.
Without doubt, nationwide injunctions have given the contemporary judiciary a quick and consequential cadence, since any one of the more than 600 trial court judges can make headlines with an emergency ruling that orders the White House to stop in its tracks. The growth of such rulings, experts say, has been driven by presidents of both parties who have used unilateral agency action and aggressive readings of existing laws to circumvent Congress.
Six such injunctions were issued over President George W. Bush’s two terms, according to a 2024 survey by the Harvard Law Review. Sixty-four came during Mr. Trump’s first administration.
During President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s term, judges used nationwide injunctions to block a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors; a federal mask mandate for airplane passengers; a pause on new oil and gas leases; and protection from deportation for some undocumented spouses and stepchildren. In 2023, Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas tried to ban the abortion pill mifepristone from his courtroom in Amarillo. His ruling was eventually reversed by the Supreme Court.
“Today a single federal district judge in Texas ruled that a prescription medication that has been available for more than 22 years, approved by the F.D.A. and used safely and effectively by millions of women here and around the world, should no longer be approved in the United States,” Mr. Biden said after Judge Kacsmaryk ruled against the Food and Drug Administration.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of the Democrats’ most prominent voices, also weighed in, condemning “egregious overreaches by members of the judiciary appointed by a right-wing Republican Party.”
As such, the debate over the probity of such injunctions isn’t necessarily partisan. It has simply changed sides along with the party of the president.
Nationwide injunctions are “an essential remedy to keep up with sweeping executive orders,” said Amanda Frost, a professor at University of Virginia Law School. “That was as true during the Obama and Biden presidencies as it is today.”
With the judiciary serving as the only real constraint on Mr. Trump’s power in this term, the debate over nationwide injunctions has taken on urgent and partisan tones. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, took to YouTube last week to accuse Republicans of “trying to dismantle the power of the courts” in order to enable Mr. Trump’s “terribly lawless and irresponsible violations of people’s rights.”
The week before, Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s close ally, was on his social media platform, X, with the alternative view, writing, “If ANY judge ANYWHERE can block EVERY Presidential order EVERYWHERE, we do NOT have democracy, we have TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY.”
In the legal world, the debate is more restrained. Defenders of nationwide injunctions point to scenarios where thousands, if not millions, of people would need access to the courts without them.
Even then, “there are all kinds of contexts in which suing the federal government could be dangerous,” said Mila Sohoni, a professor at Stanford Law School.
For example, she said, if an undocumented pregnant woman were to sue under the pseudonym Jane Doe and win a court ruling granting citizenship to her unborn child, then want to get a passport for her newborn baby, she would have to inform the federal government that she was the Jane Doe from the lawsuit, give her address and phone number, and plead not to be deported.
“Is that practical?” Ms. Sohoni asked.
Critics say the broad scope and rapid pace of nationwide injunctions contribute to the politicization of the courts as judges issue emergency rulings before cases have been fully considered on their merits.
The judiciary is “an institution that does its best work slow,” said Samuel L. Bray, a Notre Dame law professor. Even when White House actions are “blatantly illegal,” judges are “undermining their legitimacy to act as judges in deciding other cases” by issuing emergency nationwide injunctions.
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former assistant attorney general, wrote in 2017 that during Mr. Trump’s first term, judges “were in a tough spot because they were reviewing extraordinary executive-branch actions in a highly charged context.”
“But,” he said, “they reacted with hasty and, in some ways, sloppy judicial opinions,” and at times “neglected principles of restraint, prudence, and precedent.”
The partisanship of such rulings in recent years has been hard to miss. Most nationwide injunctions have been issued by judges nominated by presidents from the party opposed to the sitting president. Many are the results of lawsuits filed by coalitions of state attorneys general, also from the opposition, in those districts and circuits where they are most likely to get a friendly hearing.
The Supreme Court has never issued a definitive ruling on the constitutionality of nationwide injunctions, but conservative justices may be itching to weigh in. In 2020, Justice Neil Gorsuch criticized injunctions of “‘nationwide,’ ‘universal’ or ‘cosmic’ scope,” saying such “patently unworkable” rulings were “sowing chaos.” Justice Alito has now joined the fray.
Regardless of whether the justices intervene, the Supreme Court’s current makeup still puts a ceiling on the long-term effect of nationwide injunctions, noted Michael Fragoso, the former chief counsel to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky.
“The victories” that Democrats are “winning now are limited in time,” he said. “Eventually, they’re going to reach the Supreme Court.”
