6-3 scotus says fed dist ct enjoining executive orders on nationwide basis exceeds judicial power

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053461)

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_8n59.pdf

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053488)

state respondents, because the relevant injunction does not

purport to directly benefit nonparties. Instead, the District Court for the District of Massachusetts decided that a uni versal injunction was necessary to provide the States them selves with complete relief. See 766 F. Supp. 3d, at 288.14

The States maintain that the District Court made the right

call. See Opposition to Application in No. 24A886 (New Jer-

sey), at 31–39.

As the States see it, their harms—financial injuries and

the administrative burdens flowing from citizen-dependent

benefits programs—cannot be remedied without a blanket

ban on the enforcement of the Executive Order. See, e.g.,

id., at 9–11. Children often move across state lines or are

born outside their parents’ State of residence. Id., at 31, 35.

Given the cross-border flow, the States say, a “patchwork

injunction” would prove unworkable, because it would re-

quire them to track and verify the immigration status of the

parents of every child, along with the birth State of every

child for whom they provide certain federally funded bene-

fits. Ibid.

The Government—unsurprisingly—sees matters differ-

ently. It retorts that even if the injunction is designed to

benefit only the States, it is “more burdensome than neces-

sary to redress” their asserted harms. Califano, 442 U. S.,

at 702. After all, to say that a court can award complete

relief is not to say that it should do so. Complete relief is

not a guarantee—it is the maximum a court can provide.

And in equity, “the broader and deeper the remedy the

plaintiff wants, the stronger the plaintiff ’s story needs to

be.” S. Bray & P. Miller, Getting into Equity, 97 Notre

Dame L. Rev. 1763, 1797 (2022). In short, “[t]he essence of

equity jurisdiction has been the power of the Chancellor to

do equity and to mould each decree to the necessities of the

particular case.” Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 321, 329 19Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025)

Opinion of the Court

(1944).

Leaning on these principles, the Government contends

that narrower relief is appropriate. For instance, the Dis-

trict Court could forbid the Government to apply the Exec-

utive Order within the respondent States, including to chil-

dren born elsewhere but living in those States. Application

in No. 24A884, at 23. Or, the Government says, the District

Court could direct the Government to “treat covered chil-

dren as eligible for purposes of federally funded welfare

benefits.” Ibid. It asks us to stay the injunction insofar as

it sweeps too broadly.

We decline to take up these arguments in the first in-

stance. The lower courts should determine whether a nar-

rower injunction is appropriate; we therefore leave it to

them to consider these and any related arguments.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053534)

“The court has made it clear that it is not deciding whether the executive order is constitutional and instructed the district courts to "move expeditiously to ensure that, with respect to each plaintiff, the injunctions comport with this rule and otherwise comply with principles of equity."

https://x.com/scotusblog/status/1938600052621971665?s=46

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053492)

So two big end-arounds to the ruling- getting states to file them and filing class actions.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053526)

We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053523)

does HLA HART get cited here?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053533)

The principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain, like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases on equity.

JUSTICE JACKSON, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly,

to any doctrine whatsoever. Waving away attention to the

limits on judicial power as a “mind-numbingly technical

query,” post, at 3 (dissenting opinion), she offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush. In her telling, the fundamental role of courts is to “order everyone (including the

Executive) to follow the law—full stop.” Post, at 2; see also

post, at 10 (“[T]he function of the courts—both in theory and

in practice—necessarily includes announcing what the law

requires in . . . suits for the benefit of all who are protected

by the Constitution, not merely doling out relief to injured

private parties”); see also post, at 11, n. 3, 15. And, she

warns, if courts lack the power to “require the Executive to

adhere to law universally,” post, at 15, courts will leave a

“gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could

turn out to be a mortal wound,” post, at 12.

Rhetoric aside, JUSTICE JACKSON’s position is difficult to

pin down. She might be arguing that universal injunctions

are appropriate—even required—whenever the defendant

is part of the Executive Branch. See, e.g., post, at 3, 10–12,

16–18. If so, her position goes far beyond the mainstream

defense of universal injunctions. See, e.g., Frost, 93

N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 1069 (“Nationwide injunctions come

with significant costs and should never be the default remedy in cases challenging federal executive action”). As best

we can tell, though, her argument is more extreme still, because its logic does not depend on the entry of a universal

injunction: JUSTICE JACKSON appears to believe that the

reasoning behind any court order demands “universal adherence,” at least where the Executive is concerned. Post,

at 2 (dissenting opinion). In her law-declaring vision of the

judicial function, a district court’s opinion is not just persuasive, but has the legal force of a judgment. But see Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U. S. 255, 294 (2023) (“It is a federal

court’s judgment, not its opinion, that remedies an injury”).

Once a single district court deems executive conduct unlawful, it has stated what the law requires. And the Executive

must conform to that view, ceasing its enforcement of thelaw against anyone, anywhere.17

We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which

is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent,

not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this:

JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.

No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow

the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation—in fact, sometimes the law

prohibits the Judiciary from doing so. See, e.g., Marbury v.

Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803) (concluding that James Madison had violated the law but holding that the Court lacked

jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus ordering him to

follow it). But see post, at 15 (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (“If

courts do not have the authority to require the Executive to

adhere to law universally, . . . compliance with law sometimes becomes a matter of Executive prerogative”). Observing the limits on judicial authority—including, as relevant

here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789—is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law.

JUSTICE JACKSON skips over that part. Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring “legalese,” post, at

3, she seeks to answer “a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the

law?” Ibid. In other words, it is unecessary to consider

whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive.

JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by

law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053565)

JUSTICE JACKSON skips over that part. Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring “legalese,”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053779)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXtJUOlZAmU

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053783)

Observing the limits on judicial authority—including, as relevant

here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789—is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law.

JUSTICE JACKSON skips over that part. Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring “legalese,” post, at

3, she seeks to answer “a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the

law?” Ibid. In other words, it is unecessary to consider

whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive.

JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by

law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49054286)

she must be so arrogant

made me think of her clerks. about her first four

The hires include Claire Madill, who has been working in Florida as a public defender, a role Jackson once served in, and who co-founded Law Clerks for Workplace Accountability, a group of current and former law clerks that argued for the judiciary to make changes to prevent workplace misconduct.

In an email, the University of Michigan Law School graduate said she was "incredibly honored and privileged to have been given this opportunity."

Two other hires clerked for Jackson previously: Kerrel Murray, in district court, and Natalie Salmanowitz, in the D.C. Circuit.

Murray is a Stanford Law School graduate and an associate professor at Columbia Law School who writes on constitutional law, election law and race and the law. Salmanowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is a law clerk at Hogan Lovells.

Jackson also is hiring Michael Qian, a Stanford law graduate and associate at Morrison & Foerster who earlier clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49056169)

Held: Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that

Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants the Govern-

ment’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below,

but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary

to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue. Pp. 4–

26.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053550)

junction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet

Congress has granted federal courts no such power.

(These are from the syllabus)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053556)

Such injunctions are sometimes called “nationwide injunctions,” re-

flecting their use by a single district court to bar the enforcement of a

law anywhere in the Nation. But the term “universal” better captures

how these injunctions work.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053564)

“they have made their decision; now let them enforce it. molon lube”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053651)

I expect plaintiffs will just use the twin loopholes of class actions and having states file these actions and things will continue pretty much as before.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5743734&forum_id=2:#49053656)