The Left’s Declining Options: Why ‘Universal Injunctions’ No Longer Protect Political Agendas

The news media treated Trump v. Casa (2025) as an immigration case. Even though such concerns underlaid this important Supreme Court ruling, it would be a mistake to characterize the case in that way.

The central issue in Trump v. Casa was of another nature. The Supreme Court did not convene to decide what the nation’s immigration laws were, or even what they should be. The Court had another pressing concern, less well known, but just as important—universal injunctions, also called national injunctions. The Court determined both terms to be identical in meaning. This article will continue to use the term universal.

Understanding Injunctions

Any injunction prohibits some action, even if it is otherwise legal. Such legal gambits are usually temporary, a kind of legal “stopgap” until a specific situation can be thoroughly investigated and the legislators or courts have had time to find a permanent solution.

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Perhaps an example is in order. Assume that a home borders a public park where children regularly play baseball, frequently breaking the home’s windows. The homeowner can ask the local courts for an injunction forbidding the children from playing their games there. Indeed, it is legal to play games in a public park. At the same time, it is illegal to break someone’s window nearby. Ultimately, the decision about park use lies with the local government. The injunction only forbids the games until the appropriate authority makes a final decision.

A universal injunction goes much further. To extend this scenario, it would be like the judge forbidding children from playing baseball in any of the nation’s many public parks based on the single case of the broken windows at the one park. Such an action would take overreach to an absurd level. No local court judge has the jurisdiction to force a decision upon the whole nation.

A Shallow, Ill-Defined Hierarchy

At the federal level, the Supreme Court is the peak of a broad, but shallow, hierarchy. Everyone acknowledges the power of the nine justices over the entire nation. Directly under them are 179 judges who comprise the thirteen circuit courts of appeal. The bottom of the hierarchy consists of 677 active judgeships serving ninety-four district courts. However, the differences in the various courts’ jurisdictions remained vague and undefined. Individual district court judges who tried to impose their wills on the entire country issued the universal injunctions in question.

The very first example of this doubtful practice dates from 1963, and they were exceedingly rare for decades. However, their frequency and scope have increased as the nation’s politics became more viciously polarized. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett explained in her official opinion in the case, “By the end of the Biden administration, we had reached ‘a state of affairs where almost every major presidential act [was] immediately frozen by a federal district court….’ The trend has continued: During the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions…. As the number of universal injunctions has increased, so too has the importance of the issue.”

Why America Must Reject Isolationism and Its Dangers

In the Trump v. Casa decision, the Supreme Court needed to draw some jurisdictional lines. They did, rejecting the universal injunction completely. No longer will single district court judges in Anniston, Santa Ana or South Bend be able to impose their political whims on the rest of the nation independently and without precedent. The lines of jurisdiction could still stand further clarification, but this gambit will no longer carry the day.

The Supposedly “Living Constitution”

Even drawing such lines can be controversial. In the opinion, Justice Barrett refutes an idea promoted by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, called “dynamic equity jurisprudence,” which would replace the “governing historical approach” applied in this case.

Justice Ginsburg’s legal notion was a descendant of the idea of “a living Constitution.” This school of thought holds that the meaning of key elements of the Constitution change over time, even if there is no formal amendment to implement such changes. It is such a formulation that permitted the Court to find “rights” to contraception, abortion and homosexual “marriage,” even though there was a complete lack of verbiage in the document to justify them.

This form of legal legerdemain has a long history. In 1908, President-to-be Woodrow Wilson wrote, “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.” When campaigning for President four years later, he embellished on his earlier statement.

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“Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when “development,” “evolution,” is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”

Repudiation—At Least for Now

Justice Barrett’s opinion, which reflected the majority of the Court, happily refutes such thinking. It forms the cornerstone of the Court’s fortunate rejection of the universal injunction. She discusses the rejection of the Ginsburg line at some length, but a single sentence will be sufficient to convey the flavor of the whole.

“Because the universal injunction lacks a historical pedigree, it falls outside the bounds of a federal court’s equitable authority under the Judiciary Act.”

No one can say that either the “living Constitution,” the idea of “dynamic equity jurisprudence” or the universal injunction are dead. Indeed, the decision could have reached an altogether different conclusion. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking for herself and two other justices, chided the six-member majority for their adherence to the law, which she seems to see as a sort of contest.

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“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along. A majority of this Court decides that these applications, of all cases, provide the appropriate occasion to resolve the question of universal injunctions and end the centuries-old practice once and for all. In its rush to do so the Court disregards basic principles of equity as well as the long history of injunctive relief granted to nonparties.”

Two justices with a more progressive point of view could easily have swayed this critical decision. For too many years, a frightening number of people on the right ignored the courts. That changed mainly because of 1973’s disastrous Roe v. Wade decision. While that miscarriage of justice has been set aside, many more issues, less exciting but just as important, like the universal injunction, require close attention.

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