District courts have increasingly asserted the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone during the litigation, even those not a party to a lawsuit, through a procedural tool called universal injunctions. A federal judge in Texas, for example, issued a preliminary injunction nine years ago to block the 2016 overtime rule nationwide.
Such injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts,” the Supreme Court ruled on June 27 in a 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. In Trump v. CASA Inc., the court granted the federal government’s applications to partially stay injunctions entered by lower courts in birthright citizenship cases.
The court stated that “partial stays will cause no harm to respondents because they will remain protected by the preliminary injunctions to the extent necessary and appropriate to afford them complete relief.” In addition, the court has lifted the prohibition on the executive agencies from “developing and issuing public guidance about the executive’s plans to implement the executive order.”
However, the court said, “Nothing we say today resolves the distinct question whether the Administrative Procedure Act authorizes federal courts to vacate federal agency action.”
The plaintiffs — who are individuals, associations, and states — sought to enjoin the implementation of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order (EO) 14160. The EO identifies...
Case examines whether the delegation of verification tasks absolves senior employees from exercising due diligence before payment approvals The Industrial Court of Malaysia recently dealt with a ca...