Preliminary relief awarded by federal district courts continues to be controversial in the second Trump administration.
Earlier this year, I wrote about the extreme variability in the award of preliminary injunctions in separation of powers cases. Federal courts have gone to extraordinary lengths to preliminarily enjoin actions of the Trump administration while simultaneously tightening the standard for everyone else, especially individuals and small businesses, leading to extreme and unfair disparities in the award of preliminary injunctions.
The US Supreme Court hasn’t squarely taken up that problem yet. But it has now addressed another controversial aspect of preliminary injunctions—the proliferation of those issued with universal scope. In Trump v. CASA, the court reviewed the decisions of three district courts to preliminarily enjoin for everyone—not just for the plaintiffs—the administration’s restrictions on birthright citizenship.
The court rejected the universal scope of these injunctions. After CASA, district courts can do no more than provide the prevailing party or parties with complete relief—either at the preliminary or final judgment stages—unless there is some statutory authorization allowing the court to do more.
CASA is a step in the right direction for preliminary injunctions because it restores the primacy of the law in how they are awarded. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s majority opinion is laser-focused on whether Congress authorized the lower federal courts to issue universal injunctions.
Under Article III of the Constitution, Congress has the power to create and define the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts. And from the founding, Congress, through the Judiciary Act of 1789, granted these courts broad jurisdiction over “all suits . . . in equity.”
But the critical question is what this authority permits the lower courts to do. In other words, what did the term “equity” mean when Congress used it in 1789?
The answer requires understanding the remedial authority of English courts of equity in the late 1700s. Per the court’s historical analysis, English courts of equity went so far as to issue injunctions that applied to groups with commonalities through bills of peace, similar to today’s class actions, and injunctions that had incidental effects beyond the parties.
But they didn’t issue universal injunctions, which appear to be a 20th-century invention. Thus, the court concluded, the “equity” authority granted to lower federal courts doesn’t include the authority to grant universal injunctions.
Why worry about unearthing the 1789 meaning of the word “equity”? Because adherence to the law—in this case in the form of statutory limits placed on lower federal courts—is the only way to award preliminary injunctions fairly.
In cases involving extraordinary or novel government actions, the temptation is great to immediately halt any potential abuse of power and thereby prevent harm to private parties. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent laments that we’ve lost a tool to ensure the executive branch complies with the law—a compelling point.
I am often frustrated that my clients must clear an extremely high bar to stay government action against them during their litigation, instead of the government having the burden to justify why its actions are lawful. Moreover, if a court has already found that the government has likely violated a statute or the Constitution, it is only natural to think that the government shouldn’t be able to take that same action against anyone else.
But in the rush to correct the wrong in front of us, we can end up subordinating a higher principle—the integrity of the law itself.
The willingness of all three branches of the federal government to adhere to the law—whether a statute, a federal court judgment, or the Constitution—is critical to ensuring that the government wrongs we want to see immediately halted are ultimately addressed in a meaningful way. And it preserves our collective faith that both we and the government will receive a fair hearing in federal court. Otherwise, the outcome of each case is left to the personal whims of the judge to which it is assigned, satisfying no one.
Perhaps lower federal courts should be able to issue universal preliminary injunctions for the reasons Jackson articulated. Congress has provided for vacatur of final agency action in the Administrative Procedure Act, which can have universal effects. Congress could reevaluate its policy and allow for broader use of injunctions, In that case, the lower federal courts would be bound to Congress’s decision, just like the courts must follow the Judiciary Act of 1789.
For these reasons, Trump v. CASA is a welcome corrective to the recent approach of lower federal courts to preliminary injunctions, forcing them to adhere to congressionally approved limits on an injunction’s scope. Hopefully, the Supreme Court’s work in this area will continue and bring a similar level of discipline to the circumstances in which preliminary injunctions are awarded.
The case is Trump v. CASA, U.S., No. 24a884, decided 6/27/25.
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.
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Josh Robbins is an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm that defends US citizens against government overreach.
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