Stephen Dinan | April 7, 2025
(The Washington Times) — The Justice Department on Monday begged the Supreme Court to step in and curtail the wall of resistance President Trump is facing from judges, saying federal courts are overstepping their powers in a rush to block the administration.
At issue are what’s known as nationwide injunctions, where a federal judge operating in one part of the country can halt the president’s policies throughout the land.
New Solicitor General John Sauer said federal district courts issued 28 nationwide injunctions against the administration in February and March, which is 36 times the rate President Biden saw in his first three years.
“This situation is intolerable,” Mr. Sauer told the justices.
He made his argument in three cases involving Mr. Trump’s executive order attempting to limit birthright citizenship, blocking the government from recognizing children of illegal immigrant parents or temporary visitors as automatic citizens from birth.
In all three cases, district judges issued injunctions finding Mr. Trump’s moves likely defied the Constitution.
Mr. Sauer said those rulings should have been confined to specific individual plaintiffs that sued. But each of the judges went beyond that, erecting national blockades to Mr. Trump’s policy.
Mr. Sauer defended that policy, but also said the specific issue before the courts right now is the nationwide injunction itself.
He said they force the Justice Department “to play jurisdictional whack-a-mole.” Essentially, the president must win every case at every level, while challengers just have to find a single judge who decides the other way — and is willing to issue a national blockade.
He said that’s already happened this year.
One judge in the District of Columbia ruled against Mr. Trump’s new policy for transgender troops, but the appeals court put a hold on it. Less than an hour later, though, another court thousands of miles away in Seattle issued a nationwide injunction on the same policy.
“Perhaps worst of all, these injunctions cannot avoid the regrettable appearance of politicization,” Mr. Sauer said.
He said nationwide injunctions are relatively new in the legal world. He said none were issued for the first 170 years of the country, and after that were only issued sparingly.
But they’ve become common in recent decades, in part because of presidents’ more aggressive unilateral actions.
President Obama, for example, faced a nationwide injunction on his attempt to expand a deportation amnesty to millions of illegal immigrant parents in 2014. Mr. Trump faced nationwide injunctions on immigration and environmental policies in his first term, as did Mr. Biden during his term.
The pace during Mr. Trump’s early months of his second term far outstrips all of his predecessors.
The president’s critics say that’s a reflection of Mr. Trump’s aggressive agenda. The president issued new executive actions on a daily basis and his attempts to fire people, eliminate agencies and change long-standing policies such as birthright citizenship are testing the bounds of presidential powers.
