Reining in Relief: Trump v. CASA and the Judicial Retreat from Nationwide Injunctions

Introduction

In the last decade, nationwide injunctions have emerged as essential judicial tools for preventing constitutional violations from taking effect on a national scale. District courts halted challenged executive orders and laws before they could inflict broad harm. But in Trump v. CASA, Inc. (2025), the Supreme Court sharply curtailed that authority, holding that district courts may issue relief only to the specific plaintiffs before them. [1] By restricting nationwide injunctions, the Court in Trump v. CASA effectively limits the judiciary’s capacity to serve as a structural check on executive overreach, reframing the role of district courts from protectors of nationwide constitutional rights to narrowly constrained arbiters of local disputes. This article argues that the shift away from nationwide injunctions threatens both judicial coherence and equal protection under the law. The argument analyzes how the majority’s formalism narrows equitable power and how the decision fragments constitutional enforcement.

I. The Majority’s Formalism and the Narrowing of Equitable Power

The majority in CASA grounds its holding in a historical reading of the Judiciary Act of 1789, asserting that Congress never authorized “universal” injunctions and that traditional equity limited relief to the plaintiff’s injury. [2] The U.S. Supreme Court emphasizes that federal courts “are not roving commissions to restructure national policy” but must confine themselves to individualized remedies. [3]

To justify this reading, the U.S. Supreme Court relies heavily on eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. (2006). The majority imports eBay’s framework—designed for private intellectual-property disputes—into constitutional litigation, insisting that equitable remedies must remain “narrow, precise, and plaintiff-specific.” [4] The opinion also echoes Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council (2008), which asserted that courts must weigh the balance of equities and the public interest before issuing injunctive relief (particularly where nationwide consequences are at stake). [5] Like Winter, CASA frames sweeping injunctions as judicial overreach into executive policymaking; on this account, nationwide injunctions are treated as overextensions of judicial power, rather than tools of equity.

But this reasoning siphons public-law equity into private-law categories. eBay arose from a private patent dispute between two corporate parties and Winter from a challenge to military training exercises, both markedly removed from Constitutional violations that operate uniformly. In cases involving ongoing constitutional violations, the Supreme Court has long recognized that equitable remedies may extend beyond individual plaintiffs. In Ex parte Young (1908), the Court empowered federal courts to issue forward-looking injunctions to prevent state officials from enforcing unconstitutional laws—not merely against the named plaintiff, but in general. [6] That foundational principle reflects the reality that when the government acts unconstitutionally, the injury is structural, not merely personal.

By ignoring this tradition, the CASA majority revives a cramped vision of judicial power that cannot adequately address nationwide injuries inflicted through nationwide executive action.

II. Fragmented Constitutional Protection and the Loss of Judicial Coherence

The dissent in CASA warns that restricting injunctions to the parties before the court fragments the enforcement of federal civil rights. [7] If a district court finds an executive order unconstitutional, but may enjoin it only as to the plaintiffs, individuals across the country remain vulnerable to identical unlawful conduct. This creates an untenable scenario in which every affected person must file for injunctive relief or be left vulnerable to constitutional harm.

The dangers are immediate and concrete. Under CASA, a district court may conclude that an asylum regulation likely violates the INA or Fifth Amendment—but that finding provides no protection to others who face deportation or detention under the same defective rule. The executive may continue enforcing the policy in forty-nine states even after one federal court finds it unlawful. [8] [9]

Prior to CASA, nationwide injunctions helped avoid this outcome. They served as a means of preserving judicial coherence by preventing the government from enforcing an unlawful policy in most jurisdictions while litigation unfolded in others. Now, a litigant’s protections will now depend entirely on geographic happenstance. An immigrant in Maryland may be shielded by an injunction; an immigrant in Texas may face the full force of a policy already deemed unlawful elsewhere. [10] The U.S. Supreme Court claims that its rule promotes uniformity, but the result is the opposite: constitutional meaning becomes locally contingent.

This fragmentation undermines equal protection in practice, even if formally the Equal Protection Clause remains unchanged. [11] Civil rights cease to operate nationally; they shrink to the boundaries of individual judicial districts.

III. Executive Power Expanded: The Legacy of Trump v. Hawaii

The consequences of CASA are especially pronounced in immigration and national security—domains in which executive discretion traditionally receives heightened judicial deference because of their urgency. In Trump v. Hawaii (2018), the Court upheld President Trump’s travel ban despite substantial evidence of religious animus. [12] But the importance of Hawaii lies not only in its outcome, but in how it reconceptualized executive power. The majority adopted a form of “facially legitimate and bona fide” review so deferential that it insulated nearly any policy touching foreign affairs from rigorous judicial scrutiny. [13] The Court stressed that national-security judgments “are rarely proper subjects for second-guessing,” effectively signaling that immigration policy—because it intersects with foreign relations—falls at the outer edge of judicial reviewability.

This doctrinal posture matters for CASA: by collapsing judicial scrutiny in immigration cases into extreme deference, Hawaii created the conditions under which limiting remedies has outsized consequences. When courts already defer heavily to the executive, the remedial power to halt unlawful policies nationwide becomes one of the few meaningful checks left.

By removing that tool, CASA magnifies Hawaii’s implications. Even when courts find an immigration policy unlawful, such as public-charge rules, asylum bans, parole restrictions, they may halt it only in isolated pockets. [14] The government may implement contested policies nationwide while plaintiffs race to obtain localized injunctions that neither bind nor meaningfully constrain the executive elsewhere.

This dynamic confers an inherent advantage on the executive. National policies operate at full scale unless and until multiple courts independently intervene, and the executive benefits from inertia: by the time litigation spreads, thousands may have already been detained, deported, or denied benefits under a rule courts have found likely unlawful.

Historically, equitable power existed to prevent exactly this form of unchecked harm. But by recasting equity as plaintiff-specific, the Court further hollows out the judiciary’s checking function—now double-limited by Hawaii’s deferential review and CASA’s remedial contraction. Judicial review becomes reactive, slower, and territorially constrained—even when the underlying constitutional violations are nationwide and systemic.

Conclusion

Trump v. CASA, Inc. marks a decisive shift in the balance of constitutional power. By prohibiting nationwide injunctions, the Court strips federal courts of the ability to halt systemic constitutional violations on a national scale. [15] What the Court frames as judicial modesty is, in effect, a reallocation of structural authority toward the executive.The result is a fractured constitutional order in which the enforcement of federal rights turns to geography rather than principle. District courts, once capable of halting unlawful executive action nationwide, are reduced to providing incomplete, localized remedies. Executive policies of national reach may remain operative even after courts deem them likely unlawful.

In curtailing nationwide injunctions, CASA weakens the judiciary’s capacity to serve as a meaningful check on executive overreach and threatens the uniformity of constitutional protections. Unless Congress restores clear equitable authority, equal protection under law risks becoming a matter not of fundamental right, but rather of location.

Edited by Jaci Walker and Cara Wreen

[1] Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831 (2025)

[2] Judiciary Act of 1789. Ch. 20, 1 Stat. 73 (1789)

[3] Trump v. CASA, Inc. 

[4] eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006).

[5] Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7 (2008).

[6] Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908).

[7] Trump v. CASA, Inc.

[8] Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq.

[9] U.S. Constitution, amend. V.

[10] Trump v. CASA, Inc.

[11] U.S. Constitution, amend. XIV, § 1.

[12] Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. 13 (2018/).

[13] Trump v. Hawaii.

[14] Trump v. CASA, Inc.

[15] Trump v. CASA, Inc.