Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a controversy erupted between the administration and the federal judiciary revolving around the use of universal injunctions issued by federal judges to halt presidential policies and practices nationwide.
Universal, or nationwide, injunctions allow a single federal judge to block the implementation of federal policies throughout the entire nation. For instance, even though President Trump campaigned on a promise to end the open borders policy of the Biden administration and deport dangerous aliens, a federal judge nonetheless stopped the president from deporting members of a Venezuelan gang engaged in drug trade and human trafficking. This universal injunction applied not just to the individual gang members suing in court but to all members anywhere in the country, even those who were not parties to the lawsuit. In another case, a federal judge enjoined the Trump administration from suspending certain funding of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The use of nationwide injunctions has increased in recent years, and especially in the weeks since the start of the Trump presidency. Normally, injunctions apply only against the named parties in a lawsuit, but nationwide injunctions apply to everyone, regardless of whether they were a party to the lawsuit. Nationwide injunctions shut down a federal policy across the entire country; hence, they are not limited in geographic scope.
Such injunctions are relatively new. Not once did they occur during the first century and a half of the nation’s existence, and their first use appears to have been in 1963. (There exists no rule requiring such injunctions, but neither is there a rule prohibiting them.) Courts employed these injunctions sporadically up until the 1990s, when their use began to increase. The 12 nationwide injunctions issued during the two terms of the Obama administration doubled the number occurring during the Bush presidency. Fourteen such injunctions occurred during the four-year term of President Biden. However, the first term of President Trump saw 64 injunctions issued. Indeed, of the total number of nationwide injunctions issued by federal courts from 1963 to 2023, more than half occurred in President Trump’s first term.
During his first nine weeks in office in 2025, President Trump faced more nationwide injunctions than President Biden encountered during his entire four years in office. Fifteen nationwide injunctions halted various Trump policies during those nine weeks, compared with 12 nationwide injunctions occurring during President Obama’s entire eight years as president.
Critics of nationwide injunctions claim that the increasing use of such injunctions risks delegitimizing courts by involving them in partisan combat. According to a study published in the Harvard Law Review, 92% of the 64 nationwide injunctions issued during President Trump’s first term came from judges appointed by Democratic presidents, and 100% of the 14 injunctions issued during the Biden administration came from Republican-appointed judges.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris petitioned the Supreme Court to review nationwide injunctions imposed against Trump policies, arguing that “universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration.” Justice Alito, in a previous case, seems to agree, asking in his dissent in that case: “Does a single district court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Similarly, Justice Kagan, an Obama appointee, argued against nationwide injunctions used during the Biden presidency: “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal [appellate] process.”
President Trump has criticized the nationwide injunctions imposed against his policies, but he is not the first president to do so. In 2023, in response to an injunction against the FDA’s approval of an abortion pill, President Biden called the judge’s injunction order “the next big step toward the national ban on abortion that Republican elected officials have vowed to make law.” In 2024, when the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to invalidate a nationwide injunction against the Department of Education, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that “universal remedies are inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts and impose a severe toll on the federal court system.” Prelogar argued that nationwide injunctions “empower a single district court to pretermit meaningful litigation on the same issues in other courts…, [with] plaintiffs [able to] derail a federal program nationwide with just a single lower-court victory.”
The proponents of nationwide injunctions offer several justifications for their use: as a means of providing complete relief to the plaintiff, and protection of individuals who cannot quickly bring their own legal challenges and who would therefore suffer irreparable harm from a particular government action. Defenders also argue that nationwide injunctions promote uniformity on several levels—uniformity across geographic regions and to both plaintiffs and non-plaintiffs alike. For instance, without a nationwide injunction, a federal action, even if enjoined against a particular plaintiff in a particular jurisdiction, could still be applied to other people in other locales. If an injunction protects only the plaintiff, the federal government may continue to apply the policy or regulation against other people and in other jurisdictions.
Nationwide injunctions purport to offer cost-effective methods of resolving national disputes, since the first court to issue such an injunction essentially settles the legal issue, thus avoiding the cost of numerous lawsuits throughout the country. Consequently, nationwide injunctions allegedly supply an efficient means of enforcing rights, since the longer it takes to reach a judicial resolution on a harmful policy, the more people may be harmed by that policy.
Nationwide injunctions, however, undermine the democratic process and disrupt the constitutional separation of powers, since they reflect a judicial blocking of the policies of the democratically elected executive and legislative branches. Nationwide injunctions act as a kind of minority veto to the workings of the majoritarian democratic process, essentially elevating the judiciary as the superior branch of government. These injunctions also contradict the Article III mandate that limits judicial power to cases and controversies—for example, to disputes involving the parties actually before the court. In their application to nonparties, injunctions drift into abstract questions for all possible parties.
Even though nationwide injunctions may promise uniformity, they achieve this uniformity at a high cost. In the American judicial system, complicated legal issues are best resolved through a kind of percolation-up process. As those issues percolate up through the district and then circuit courts, the issues and arguments are tested and refined. Nationwide injunctions, however, bypass that system: One judge issues the injunction with an order that is usually fast-tracked directly to the Supreme Court. Moreover, since a nationwide injunction reaches beyond the jurisdiction of the issuing court, extending to the whole nation, it erodes the power of other circuits to decide how to apply the law in their jurisdictions, especially if those other jurisdictions have previously upheld the very same policy now being enjoined by the universal injunction.
Because nationwide injunctions confer great power on the first court to issue such an injunction, opponents of government policies engage in forum-shopping, searching for a sympathetic court likely to grant such an injunction. This forum-shopping practice weakens the credibility of the judicial system, since it promotes an impression that judicial decisions are preordained political events. Indeed, overwhelming evidence suggests that nationwide injunctions incentivize forum shopping.
Nationwide injunctions consequently serve to politicize the federal courts. The injunctions often involve hot-button political issues—issues that one side has lost the power to control as a result of having lost a political election. The losing side then resorts to nationwide injunctions to thwart the political will of the winning side by appealing to judges who appear aligned with their positions. As Ronald Cass notes in the George Mason Law Review, confirming the Harvard Law Review study, nationwide injunctions are undoubtedly politically motivated, with the overwhelming majority of judges granting injunctions having been appointed by the opposite political party. This politicization further erodes the public respect for the independence and objectivity of the courts.
Many legal scholars call for the reform of nationwide injunctions. In response to the recent surge in their number, members of Congress have introduced bills to halt or restrain the use of such judicial orders. However, any legislative effort will almost certainly die a filibuster death in the U.S. Senate. Even though each party condemns nationwide injunctions when that party is in control of government, they cannot seem to give them up when they lose that control.
Regardless of whether Congress acts to rein in nationwide injunctions, the Supreme Court will undoubtedly have to rule on this matter. The constitutional stakes are high. With one plaintiff on one federal district court able to block a federal law or policy nationwide, the system of separation of powers, in which the legislative and executive branches create and enforce the country’s laws and policies, cannot function as envisioned by the constitutional framers.
