• Despite the Supreme Court's recent decision narrowing the scope of nationwide injunctions, judges across the country continue to issue sweeping rulings blocking Trump administration policies. From citizenship rights to healthcare data and deportation protections, courts are finding legal pathways to counter federal overreach.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (TDR) — The Supreme Court may have delivered a decisive blow against universal injunctions last month, but a string of recent lower court rulings suggest the judiciary is far from finished restraining the Trump administration’s most aggressive policies.

While the Court’s 6–3 decision in United States v. Texas sought to limit federal judges from issuing injunctions beyond what is necessary to protect the plaintiffs in a given case, litigants and jurists alike are forging new paths—through class actions, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and state-led coalitions—to maintain broad judicial oversight of executive action.

Broad Rulings Continue Post-Ruling

Since the June opinion, at least nine federal judges have issued rulings that apply nationwide. Among them are injunctions blocking President Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict birthright citizenship to children born to citizens or legal residents, a move critics argue is plainly unconstitutional.

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In Boston, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin said on Friday that limiting the injunction geographically would create bureaucratic chaos. “A patchwork or bifurcated approach to citizenship would generate understandable confusion,” Sorokin wrote, emphasizing the transient nature of American families and the national implications of birthright policies.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reached a similar conclusion in a parallel case out of San Francisco, reinforcing the trend. Judges in those cases found the Supreme Court’s guidance does not preclude broad relief when the alleged harm has national consequences.

“There are a number of highly significant court orders that are protecting people as we speak,” said Skye Perryman, CEO of liberal advocacy group Democracy Forward. “We’re continuing to get that relief.”

Even conservative groups, such as the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, say they’ll still pursue nationwide injunctions when appropriate. “We’re still going to ask for them,” said attorney Dan Lennington, especially when narrower remedies are insufficient.

Administrative Procedure Act Still Potent

Much of the success in securing national remedies stems from use of the Administrative Procedure Act, a statute that permits courts to strike down agency actions deemed “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion.”

In recent weeks, judges have used the APA to block Trump administration efforts ranging from mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services to the termination of legal-aid programs for mentally ill migrants.

In one such case, District Judge John Bates of Washington, D.C., ordered the restoration of gender-related healthcare information that had been stripped from federal websites in accordance with Trump’s executive order on gender ideology. Bates criticized the administration for removing entire pages rather than isolated content, calling it a rash move unsupported by reason.

“This case involves government officials acting first and thinking later,” Bates wrote. He emphasized that nothing in the Supreme Court’s June decision prevented him from ordering the restoration of the information.

Zach Shelley, a lawyer with Public Citizen, said the APA was always the most effective tool: “The act was the obvious choice to address a nationwide policy from the get-go.”

Class Actions and State Litigation Strategies

Another pathway left open by the high court is class-action litigation. In New Hampshire, a judge blocked Trump’s birthright order in a case spearheaded by the American Civil Liberties Union, using a nationwide plaintiff class to justify sweeping relief.

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The ruling adds to a growing playbook among state attorneys general who have emerged as powerful litigants in challenging federal overreach. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, acknowledged the innovation coming from state legal teams: “You’re gonna figure out a way to continue to be one of the most active participants in the judicial system.”

The Department of Justice, for its part, is only beginning to leverage the Supreme Court’s guidance in narrowing relief. In a recent New York case, Judge Andrew Carter reduced the scope of an injunction blocking the administration’s termination of Job Corps contracts for low-income youth. Yet even he conceded that, had the case been filed as a class action, “the result may very well be different.”

“You’ve got these elite litigation shops in the states,” Skrmetti said. “They’re not going anywhere.”

Whether the Supreme Court’s limits on nationwide injunctions will endure or be gradually bypassed through creative litigation remains to be seen. But for now, the floodgates remain cracked open.

Will creative legal tactics continue to thwart federal executive overreach despite Supreme Court constraints?

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