WASHINGTON, D.C. (FEDweek) — Both the short-term and long-term impacts on pending lawsuits against Trump administration actions involving the federal workplace are being assessed, in light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the powers of federal district courts to issue nationwide injunctions.
The high court’s 6-3 majority decision in essence limited the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions to only those parties who brought the lawsuit—such as the members of a class action suit. It lifted lower court orders in three related suits involving an executive order on citizenship “to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief with respect to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
The case did not directly involve any of President Trump’s workplace orders or suits against them, but it did involve the common issue of challenges to executive orders and the discretion of courts to block all enforcement of those orders while the court considers the merits of a challenge.
That sequence has played out regarding numerous policies in the federal workplace this year. The two most prominent current cases are a challenge to an executive order stripping most federal employees of union representation rights, and a suit challenging an executive order and later guidance telling agencies to prepare to undertake widescale RIFs and reorganizations.
Trial courts have issued nationwide injunctions in both of those cases. In the union rights case, such orders have come from two separate courts, one of which has been since stayed by an appeals court. In the RIFs/reorganization case, an appeals court allowed the injunction to remain in place, an action the Justice Department has appealed to the Supreme Court.
“Essentially the decision narrowed the authority of the federal judges to only granting relief to the parties before the court and not broadly to the entire country,” said Ryan Nerney, managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC.
However, in a footnote, the majority opinion said “Nothing we say today resolves the distinct question whether the Administrative Procedure Act authorizes federal courts to vacate federal agency action.” Under the APA, courts may block an agency action that is “arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law”; “in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right”; or “without observance of procedure required by law.”
The judge who issued the injunction against the RIF/reorganization executive order based that decision in part on a finding that the implementing guidance from OPM and OMB, and actions by individual agencies, had violated the APA.
