The Lawletter Vol. 51 No. 2
Charlene Hicks—Senior Attorney
“During the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, district courts issued approximately 25 universal injunctions.” Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831, 840, 145 S. Ct. 2540, 2550 (2025). A universal injunction refers to the controversial practice wherein a single federal district court judge enters an injunction that takes effect throughout the nation. Not surprisingly, this practice induced chaos. “By the end of the Biden administration, we had reached ‘a state of affairs where almost every major presidential act [was] immediately frozen by a federal district court.’” Id.
In what seemed to be a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court in CASA ruled that universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress granted to federal courts under the Judiciary Act of 1789. CASA precludes lower federal courts from issuing injunctions that prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone, anywhere in the country. Id. at 837, 145 S. Ct. at 2548.
Even so, CASA did not fully address how the Supreme Court’s decision impacts the long-standing principle that courts of equity have the inherent authority to “fashion a remedy that awards complete relief.” Id. at 850, 145 S. Ct. at 2556. Although the CASA Court emphasized that equitable relief must be limited to providing complete relief to the plaintiffs in the case before it, the Court declined to address what should be done in situations where a nonparty injunction may be necessary for complete relief to be granted. Id. Instead, the Supreme Court left it to the lower courts to determine “whether a narrower injunction is appropriate” in such situations. Id. at 854, 145 S. Ct. at 2558.
Through this means, CASA left the door open for federal district courts to effectively bypass the prohibition against nationwide injunctions (or nonparty relief) through a specific finding that broad nonparty relief is “necessary” under the circumstances of the case. See Shaw v. Smith, 166 F.4th 61, 79 n.11 (10th Cir. 2026) (stating that in CASA, the Supreme Court “left open for lower courts to determine the scope of ‘complete relief’ when granting injunctions”). The district court may find nonparty relief to be “necessary” when the broad nature of the right violated requires the issuance of injunctive relief to persons other than the plaintiff before the court.
Adopting this reasoning, district courts have, for example, issued broad, statewide injunctions in cases involving aggregate group rights, such as voting rights/malapportionment or gerrymandering cases and civil rights cases affecting entire groups of similarly situated persons within a State. See, e.g., Etienne v. Ferguson, 791 F. Supp. 3d 1226, 1249 (W.D. Wash. 2025). In effect, where the district court finds that the injuries to the individual plaintiffs are inextricably connected with the mistreatment of a larger group, the court may reason that CASA does not preclude the issuance of a statewide, nonparty injunction. Moreover, it is not inconceivable that this reasoning could in some cases be extended beyond a single state’s borders.
In this regard, some district courts have noted that CASA does not reference prior Supreme Court precedent holding that when a law is unconstitutionally overbroad, "all enforcement of that law" may be enjoined. Welty v. Dunaway, 791 F. Supp. 3d 818, 843 (M.D. Tenn. 2025). Hence, some lower courts have issued broad—even nationwide—injunctions in the First Amendment context. Id.
Lower courts have also cited the existence of policy arguments that may favor the issuance of broad injunctions. See Shaw, 166 F.4th at 79 n.11. These policies may include the avoidance of piecemeal litigation or aiming for uniformity in a national policy such as immigration law. See generally CASA, 606 U.S. at 837, 145 S. Ct. at 2548.
Although it is clear that CASA largely precludes the former practice of a single district judge from prohibiting enforcement of a law throughout the entire nation, the exact scope of the decision remains uncertain. District judges still have the discretionary authority to fashion equitable remedies to afford complete relief in the case in front of them. This deeply rooted equitable principle could be employed to bypass CASA in ways that remain unseen and unanticipated as yet.
