In a ruling yesterday in Arizona v. Biden, Sixth Circuit chief judge Jeffrey Sutton penned a unanimous opinion that granted a stay of a district court’s nationwide preliminary injunction that would have barred the Department of Homeland Security from implementing enforcement priorities and policies that the HHS Secretary set forth in a memorandum. Sutton also issued a concurring opinion that expressed his “considerable skepticism” about so-called “nationwide” or “universal” injunctions. Some excerpts (citations omitted):
I do not take issue with the court’s decision to extend the remedy beyond the Southern District of Ohio as to the three state claimants. When “exercising its equity powers,” a district court “may command persons properly before it to cease or perform acts outside its territorial jurisdiction.” But it is one thing to honor a federal court judgment issued in favor of, say, Arizona by the Southern District of Ohio anywhere in the country. It is quite another to do so for the 47 States that did not participate in the lawsuit….
A valid Article III remedy “operate[s] with respect to specific parties,” not with respect to a law “in the abstract.” That is why courts generally grant relief in a party-specific and injury-focused manner. In this same way, we do not remove—“erase”—from legislative codes unconstitutional provisions. Jonathan Mitchell, The Writ–of–Erasure Fallacy, 104 Va. L. Rev. 933, 1016–17 (2018). We merely refuse to enforce them in a case, thereby exercising “the negative power to disregard an unconstitutional enactment.” After a court has remedied a claimant’s injury, it is fair to ask what controversy remains for a court to adjudicate or remedy.
Call them what you will—nationwide injunctions or universal remedies—they seem to take the judicial power beyond its traditionally understood uses, permitting district courts to order the government to act or refrain from acting toward nonparties in the case. The law already has a mechanism for applying a judgment to third parties. That is the role of class actions, and Civil Rule 23 carefully lays out the procedures for permitting a district court to bind nonparties to an action. Nationwide injunctions sometimes give States victories they did not earn and sometimes give States victories they do not want. They always sidestep Rule 23’s requirements.
Such injunctions create practical problems too. The effect of them is to prevent the National Government from enforcing a rule or executive order without (potentially) having to prevail in all 94 district courts and all 12 regional courts of appeals. They incentivize forum shopping. They short-circuit the decisionmaking benefits of having different courts weigh in on vexing questions of law and allowing the best ideas to percolate to the top. They lead to rushes to judgment. And all of this loads more and more carriage on the emergency dockets of the federal courts, a necessary feature of any hierarchical court system but one designed for occasional, not incessant, demands for relief.