(The Center Square) – In response to multiple federal district judges temporarily halting President Donald Trump’s executive actions, Republicans are taking legislative steps to curtail or even eliminate the use of universal injunctions.
Multiple district judges have recently slapped preliminary injunctions on Trump’s rapid-fire government reforms in response to lawsuits filed in district courts. The nationwide injunctions have raised questions on whether judges should be able to grant relief to parties not included in a case.
During a Wednesday hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and other Republicans maintained that federal district judges are overstepping their judicial authority when issuing nationwide edicts against legal executive actions.
Some experts called before the committee to testify agreed with Grassley, including Jesse Panuccio, a lawyer who urged lawmakers to pass legislation clarifying that nationwide, non-party injunctions are acts of policy and therefore reserved to the legislative and executive branches only.
“The nationwide, non-party injunction is fundamentally altering our legal and political system,” Panuccio, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner law firm, said. “This lone district judge…overrides the judgment of the elected branches and creates a new rule to govern us all, achieving what even a single Supreme Court justice could not on his or her own.”
Panuccio added that universal injunctions, besides undermining existing legal rules, sidestep the class-action system’s safeguards. Rather than limiting how and when nationwide injunctions can be issued, Congress should pass legislation ending the practice of non-party injunctions altogether.
“I caution against one potential legislative solution that has been proposed in recent years, [that of] assigning three-judge panels to cases seeking nationwide relief,” Panuccio said. “Creating a procedure for nationwide relief at the trial level would normalize and encourage a practice that has no historical foundation and is generally deleterious to our system of divided powers.”
Grassley recently introduced the Judicial Relief Clarification Act, which would require parties seeking universal relief against the government to use the class action process, as well as forbid federal district courts from issuing nationwide injunctions.
Another expert, Samuel L. Bray, professor of law of Notre Dame Law School, agreed with Panuccio that universal injunctions go beyond the proper exercise of judicial power and should end.
“A universal injunction gives the remedy a class action might produce, but without the plaintiff having to meet any of the requirements of a class action,” Bray said. “There is no constitutional authority for the judge to go on and decide the cases of other people not before the court, or to give remedies to other people not before the court.”
Critics of Trump’s actions, however, have argued that his executive orders have exceeded his authority and that the judges have the power to stop him.
One expert, Stephen Vladeck from Georgetown University Law Center, agreed with Democratic lawmakers that Trump’s actions have necessitated universal injunctions, and that “there’s no serious argument that it’s beyond the federal courts’ powers.”
Rather than limit the judiciary’s power to hold the executive branch accountable, Vladeck argued, lawmakers should instead “focus on reducing the ability of individual parties to manipulate the judicial system” if they want reforms.
Bray, while acknowledging concerns from both sides about the ramifications of ending the practice of universal injunctions, called on lawmakers to consider the long-term ramifications of inaction.
“Democrats will be understandably concerned about taking away a roadblock to action by the current administration. Republicans will be understandably concerned about taking away a roadblock to future administrations,” Bray said. “My plea is that you would see this for the bipartisan problem that it is, and for the constitutional problem that it is, and not just see it through the lens of short-term advantage.”
