Trump Says He Will Move Aggressively to Undo Nationwide Blocks on His Agenda
An emboldened Trump administration plans to aggressively challenge blocks on the president's top priorities, from immigration to education, following a major Supreme Court ruling that limits the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions.
Government attorneys will press judges to pare back the dozens of sweeping rulings thwarting the president's agenda 'as soon as possible,' said a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
Priorities for the administration include injunctions related to the Education Department and the U.S. DOGE Service, as well as an order halting the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the official said, detailing efforts to implement plans President Donald Trump announced Friday.
'Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,' Trump said at a news conference, during which he thanked by name members of the conservative high court majority he helped build.
Trump on Friday cast the narrowing of judicial power as a consequential, needed correction in his battle with a court system that has restrained his authority.
Scholars and plaintiffs in the lawsuits over Trump's orders agreed that the high court ruling could profoundly reshape legal battles over executive power that have defined Trump's second term – even as other legal experts said the effects would be more muted. Some predicted it would embolden Trump to push his expansive view of presidential power.
'The Supreme Court has fundamentally reset the relationship between the federal courts and the executive branch,' Notre Dame Law School professor Samuel Bray, who has studied nationwide injunctions, said in a statement. 'Since the Obama administration, almost every major presidential initiative has been frozen by federal district courts issuing 'universal injunctions.''
Nationwide injunctions put a freeze on an action until a court can make a decision on its legality. They have became a go-to tool for critics of presidential actions in recent times, sometimes delaying for years the implementation of an executive order the court ultimately approves.
Experts said the Supreme Court's ruling could make it more difficult and cumbersome to challenge executive actions. It could result in courts issuing a patchwork of rulings on presidential orders in different parts of the country.
In the short term, the ruling is a setback for liberals who have gone to court to thwart Trump. But the decision could also ultimately constrain conservatives seeking broad rulings to rein in a future Democratic president.
Trump undertook a flurry of executive actions in the opening month of his term that ranged from dismantling government agencies to seeking the end of birthright citizenship. There have been more than 300 lawsuits seeking to block his executive actions.
Federal district judges have issued roughly 50 rulings to date, temporarily holding up the administration's moves to cut foreign aid, conduct mass layoffs and fire probationary employees, terminate legal representation for young migrants, ban birthright citizenship, and more nationwide. Some of those rulings have been stayed by higher courts.
The Supreme Court found Friday that federal district courts must limit their injunctions to the parties bringing the case, which could be individuals, organizations or states. They had previously been able to issue injunctions that applied to people not directly involved in cases.
The ruling came as part of a case challenging Trump's ban on birthright citizenship. The court did not rule on the constitutionality of that executive order.
The justices left it to lower courts to determine whether a nationwide injunction might be a proper form of relief for states in some cases, like the ban on birthright citizenship, where the harm could be widespread. The court also did not forestall plaintiffs from seeking nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits.
Smita Ghosh, a senior appellate counsel with the Constitutional Accountability Center, a progressive public interest law firm, said the ruling could be a blow to plaintiffs seeking to stymie Trump's executive orders. The CAC has filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of plaintiffs challenging the birthright citizenship ban.
'This approach will make it more difficult and more time-consuming to challenge unconstitutional executive practices, limiting courts' abilities to constrain unlawful presidential action at a time when many believe that they need it most,' Ghosh said.
Many groups will pivot to filing class-action lawsuits to sidestep the ruling, she predicted, as some plaintiffs in the birthright citizenship lawsuit sought to do Friday. Such lawsuits allow individuals or groups to sue on behalf of a larger class of individuals who have suffered a similar harm from a government policy.
It's likely courts will see more and more class- or mass-action lawsuits from cities, counties and states that realize they can no longer rely on litigation brought by others to advocate for their interests, said Jonathan Miller, chief program officer for the Public Rights Project, which is challenging several Trump policies.
'I think this decision will be perceived by this administration as a green light to more aggressively pursue its agenda, be bolder when it comes to compliance with injunction and its willingness to test the limits of the judiciary,' Miller said.
Not everyone expected the ruling to have broad impacts.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which has filed numerous challenges against Trump's agenda, called it a 'limited ruling' and said the court left open a number of routes for challenges against executive actions that could result in broad blocks on Trump's policies.
Ed Whelan, a conservative attorney, was likewise skeptical. He wrote in a newsletter that 'the ruling is probably going to accomplish much less than many people celebrating it realize,' in part because plaintiffs would instead pursue more class-action lawsuits that would ultimately produce similar results as nationwide injunctions.
The administration on Friday trumpeted the decision at the White House as a victory in its broader fight against the judiciary. Officials frequently deride judges who rule against the administration as activists and obstructionists.
Dozens of judges appointed by presidents of both parties have temporarily paused many of Trump's efforts, and data shows threats against the judiciary have risen since he took office.
'Americans are getting what they voted for, no longer will we have rogue judges striking down President Trump's policies across the entire nation,' Attorney General Pam Bondi said, standing beside Trump at the news conference. She added, 'These lawless injunctions … turned district courts into the imperial judiciary.'
Both Democratic and Republican presidents have complained about the blocks, said Jesse Panuccio, a partner at the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm and a Justice Department official in the first Trump administration.
'I think the ruling is seismic for how the federal district courts have been doing business in the last 20 years or so because the universal injunction has become a fairly standard and – in my view – unlawful remedy in cases,' Panuccio said.
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