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The justices must at long last deal with 'chronic injunctivitis'

6 36
24.05.2025

This week, the Supreme Court continued to deliberate over what to do with the growing number of national or universal injunctions issued by federal district courts against the Trump Administration.

The court has long failed to address the problem, and so-called "chronic injunctivitis" is now raging across the court system. Justices have only worsened the condition with conflicting and at times incomprehensible opinions.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents have long argued that federal judges are out of control in issuing national injunctions that freeze the entire executive branch for years on a given policy. For presidents, you have to effectively sweep the district courts 677-to-0 if you want to be able to carry out controversial measures. Any one judge can halt the entire government.

Under President Barack Obama, Justice Elena Kagan expressed outrage over the injunctions in public comments at Northwestern University School of Law. Kagan lashed out at the obvious “forum shopping” by then conservative advocates to get before favorable courts, insisting “It just cannot be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal [appellate] process.”

In his first term, Trump faced a more than 450 percent increase in the number of such injunctions over the number issued under Obama — a rise from 12 to 64. The number then went down to just 14 under former President Joe Biden. With Trump back in office, district courts have now outstripped that record and may surpass the total from the first term in the first year.

However, when the current case........

© The Hill