WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) joined America’s Newsroom on Fox News to preview his plans to address the bipartisan issue of nationwide injunctions.
Video and excerpts of Grassley’s remarks follow.
On the Growing Crisis of National Injunctions:
“Over the last 20 years, there's been massive abuse of these national injunctions, whether we have a Republican president or Democrat president. For the first 150 years, we never had any use of this. And then, maybe for the next 50 years, [they were] sparingly used. But it's really jacked up.
“You can't have a situation where 600 plus different district court judges can make a judgment to apply something nationwide. So, [my upcoming] legislation would...try to limit [district judges’ orders] to the parties to the suit and then [make temporary restraining orders] immediately appealable, so we don't turn district judges into policy makers.
“They're supposed to interpret law, not make law.”
On Bipartisan Calls for Reform:
“This is an opportunity where we have a real problem, not just in the Trump administration, but in the Biden administration. So, we've had Democrats speak out about this in the past, and Republicans speak out about it.
“So, I would hope we would get a bipartisan agreement to a piece of legislation. And...even Justice Kagan said that this [use of nationwide injunctions] is abuse.
“So, I don't know how much better you can get from both sides of the aisle that we got a problem we have to deal with, and it's really exploded since Trump has become President of the United States.”
On Calls to Impeach Judges:
“You can't impeach a judge just because you disagree with their opinion, but we want to overcome some of that problem by [addressing] these cases that hang around for a long time, and they may have a national injunction after the money's already been spent or some appeal goes on and the person has been wrong. That's why we want to have legislation that would appeal these decisions very quickly.”
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