Following its opinion last year in which the Supreme Court majority opined that the President is ordinarily immune from liability for criminal conduct and other legal violations, the majority in Trump v. Casa, Inc. decided that nation-wide injunctions are not likely allowed. The important context for this case involves the numerous universal injunctions issued by courts across the country against the current Federal administration’s illegal policies and actions. In short, the Supreme Court majority speculated that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts” because such injunctions are not “sufficiently analogous” to the kinds of relief historically available when the nation came into existence approximately 250 years ago.

The Supreme Court majority acknowledged in CASA that its ruling still enables courts to decide whether broader, even nation-wide, injunctions are necessary to provide “complete relief” for adversely affected parties – especially when the parties include a State plaintiff. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who the current President appointed, issued a concurrence in CASA to reiterate that existing law permits courts to “preliminarily ‘set aside’ a new agency rule” under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) and, moreover, to award “class-wide relief that may, for example, be state-wide, region-wide, or even nation-wide.” In fact, a coalition of cities, unions, and other nonprofit organizations recently secured a broad preliminary injunction in AFGE v. Trump based in part on the APA. Similarly, a nonprofit trade association consisting of business, labor, academic, and community organizations obtained a system-wide preliminary injunction in National Job Corps Association v. Department of Labor. Under the circumstances, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and other progressive State Attorneys General will continue to serve a pivotal role in securing the rule of law through systemic injunctions and other principled legal action.

Millions of regular people in the United States also continue to mobilize against Presidential overreach in their communities as hundreds of organizations and many State Attorneys General successfully litigate against the illegal policies and actions by the current Federal regime. For example, and on the same day as the current President held a poorly attended military parade on his birthday that cost approximately $50 million, over 5 million people in hundreds of marches and rallies in small towns and large cities in every State protested the current Federal administration on “No Kings Day.” This was the largest political protest in the country’s history. The tremendous outpouring of support for the rule of law by people everywhere is especially significant given the intimidation tactics used by the current President – including deploying active-duty United States Marines and other military personnel in Los Angeles over the objections of California’s Governor and Los Angeles’s Mayor, threatening to do the same around the nation, and using masked Federal agents to act as paramilitary forces while abducting, secretly detaining, and even deporting United States citizens.