By issuing a ‘nationwide injunction,’ a lone jurist can dictate federal policy far beyond his jurisdiction.
When a federal district court in Texas issued a nationwide injunction in 2015 that halted the implementation of President Obama’s amnesty program for illegal-alien parents of U.S. citizens, many on the political right cheered. Two years later, when a federal district court in Maryland issued a nationwide injunction that blocked President Trump’s efforts to place restrictions on transgender people serving in the military, it was the left’s turn to celebrate.
In recent years national injunctions have somehow become all the rage, even though it’s not clear they are constitutional. Traditionally, an injunction requires the parties in a case—and only those individuals—to continue or cease particular actions. What makes national injunctions distinct and controversial is that they apply to people who are not parties in the case. And state attorneys general now regularly use them as political cudgels to thwart the implementation of federal policy not just in their respective states, but everywhere.
The Trump administration, for example, has tried to withhold funding from “sanctuary” cities that refuse to assist the federal government with immigration enforcement. After Chicago sued, a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois not only issued an injunction but said it applied to other cities all over the country, which are not parties in the case.
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal