WASHINGTON – District judges have levied more universal injunctions against the second Trump administration than any other administration in recorded history, despite lacking the constitutional authority to set nationwide policy. Democrats now claim these universal injunctions are a necessary tool to defend the “rule of law” – yet Democrats in the past have aggressively condemned universal injunctions when used to obstruct their own partisan objectives.
The Senate Parliamentarian has approved several provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill authored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to address the bipartisan problem of universal injunctions. They include hiring additional federal attorneys to challenge universal injunctions, requiring courts to track and publish metrics on universal injunctions and establishing judicial training programs regarding the questionable legal basis of universal injunctions.
Here’s what Democrats have said about judicial overreach and universal injunctions, in their own words.
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats:
“In the coming days, the Supreme Court is expected to decide if one activist judge can single-handedly disregard decades of medical consensus,” Senate Judiciary Democrats said on April 18, 2023.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.):
“[R]ight-wing activists are exploiting the current makeup of the judicial system to circumvent the legislation process and overturn the will of the American people... We can’t let unelected judges thrash our democracy,” Schumer said on April 10, 2024.
Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.):
“This weekend, a single federal judge in Texas issued a decision that seeks to deny millions of women across the country access to an FDA-approved medication...” Durbin said on April 9, 2023, going on to call the district judge's injunction a “draconian ruling.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.):
“...Appellate courts can make sweeping decisions endangering the American principle that policymaking belongs in elected branches and not with judges,” Whitehouse said on May 15, 2024.
“The Constitution’s ‘case or controversy’ requirement protects against free-range judicial policy-making…” Whitehouse said on May 15, 2024.
“The Constitution limits courts to deciding individual cases or controversies, not writing ‘decisions for the ages,’ to keep unaccountable judicial power in check” Whitehouse said on July 2, 2024.
Senate Judiciary Committee Member Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii):
“Activist plaintiffs should not be able to hand-pick individual judges to set nationwide policy,” Hirono said on April 12, 2024.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan:
“It just can’t 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 process,” Kagan said on September 14, 2022.
Nearly every Democrat in the Senate and House of Representatives:
Over 250 Democrat lawmakers – including Schumer and Durbin, as well as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and current and former House Judiciary Ranking Members Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) – submitted a friend-of-the-court brief warning of the “perilous consequences” resulting from a district judge’s move to block the nationwide sale of the abortion pill mifepristone via a universal injunction.
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