On June 27, the US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump what he called a “GIANT WIN” – a ruling that, at least on paper, curbed the power of lower courts to issue broad “universal injunctions” blocking presidential policies. In Trump v. CASA, the Court’s 6-3 decision found that lower courts had “likely” overstepped by issuing orders halting many of the president’s initiatives nationwide, often based on the claims of just a handful of plaintiffs.

While this appeared to be a decisive blow against Trump’s legal adversaries, the victory was far from absolute. Opponents of the president quickly began exploring alternative legal strategies to achieve the same effect as the now-curtailed universal injunctions. Chief among these tactics: the use of class-action lawsuits, which allow a small number of named plaintiffs to seek relief on behalf of large, similarly situated groups – potentially nationwide.

Norm Eisen, a key strategist behind what he has described as a “rule of law and shock and awe” approach to challenging Trump policies, moved rapidly. Within days of the CASA ruling, Eisen and his Democracy Defenders Fund helped bring a case in the District of New Hampshire challenging the president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship. The suit named five plaintiffs but sought to represent “a nationwide class of all other persons similarly situated.”

On July 3, the district court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor, rejecting the Trump administration’s objections and effectively halting the policy’s implementation nationwide. Around the same time, plaintiffs in the District of Columbia also succeeded in blocking the president’s restrictions on asylum claims at the southern border.

These developments suggested that while the Supreme Court had narrowed one legal tool, it had left others – like nationwide class actions – largely untouched. This, many scholars argued, meant that the real legal battle between the executive and judiciary was only beginning.

Before CASA, universal injunctions

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