[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 87 (Thursday, May 22, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3138-S3139]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about two separate 
issues that seem to be confusing in our current climate at this point.
  The first of those is something called nationwide injunctions. Now, 
for folks that don't track this issue of nationwide injunctions, they 
have no idea what this means. I would tell you it is a fairly recent 
thing.
  We have three branches of government. Any civics student in middle 
school knows that. We have the legislative branch, we have the 
executive branch, and we have the judicial branch. All three have 
unique roles. The legislative branch that we are in right now--we write 
the law. The executive branch executes the law. The judicial branch 
interprets the law.
  Now, we know there is a difference between the House and the Senate. 
The Senate has a responsibility and the House has a responsibility, and 
they are different, but they are both in the legislative branch.
  The judicial branch also has different pieces as well, just like the 
legislative branch. There is the Supreme Court. We know that. It is 
right across the street. There are nine Justices that sit there, and 
they are the final decision makers on what the law says. But there are 
also daughter courts. There are circuit courts below the Supreme Court, 
and below the Supreme Court, there are district courts. District courts 
are scattered all over the country, and those individual, small 
district courts that are scattered all around the country--those 
individual courts make a decision on the person that is in front of 
them.
  Now, again, this is fairly simple civics. When you have a Federal 
case in front of you, you go to the district court, and you file, and 
you get time in front of a judge. It may take time to be able to get 
there, but they make a decision on what is in front of them. That is 
what district courts do. They don't make decisions on something that is 
in a different State. The fine judges that are in Oklahoma make 
decisions about the case that is in front of them in Oklahoma. They 
don't decide a case in Indiana because they are not in Indiana and it 
is not a case filed in front of them; it is only the case filed in 
front of them in Oklahoma.
  Now, if there is a dispute about that, it can be appealed, and it 
goes up to a circuit court, and it takes in a region. If there is a 
dispute even there, they take it on to the Supreme Court.
  It is pretty simple--until the last several decades. You see, prior 
to 1960, there was no such thing as a nationwide injunction. No one 
even considered that. But we started seeing this beginning point where 
a district judge in a court in a single State would hear a case and 
say: This is so big, I am not going to let this go to the circuit court 
or to the Supreme Court. In my lower--in fact, lowest--court in the 
Federal structure, I am going to decide for the entire country, not 
just the person in front of me.
  There were just a few that happened at that time, and the Supreme 
Court kind of looked away because they seemed like big cases. But then 
it started to rise.
  During the George W. Bush administration, there were six nationwide 
injunctions that were done in these local district courts. Under 
President Obama, there were 12 nationwide injunctions that were issued. 
Then under President Trump, the first term, there were 64 nationwide 
injunctions.

[[Page S3139]]

  More and more individual district courts decided: I have an opinion, 
and I am not going to decide about the case in front of me; I am going 
to decide about the entire country.
  Under President Biden, there were 14 nationwide injunctions that 
happened. In fact, President Biden's Solicitor General--the one who 
actually argues to the Supreme Court--warned that nationwide 
injunctions halt legal government actions and policies.
  See, this is not a Republican-Democrat thing; this is a 
constitutional thing. This is the U.S. Constitutional structure to say: 
What is the role of lower courts? What is the role of a circuit court? 
What is the role of the Supreme Court?
  We as people in our Nation honor the constitutional construct. For 
me, it is exceptionally important that the courts are blind to these 
issues and that they take action on the case in front of them and not a 
case that is not in front of them.
  Senator Grassley has introduced a bill to rein in the use of 
nationwide injunctions. His legislation is called the Judicial Relief 
Clarification Act. It makes it very simple. It is an important piece of 
legislation to decide how we are going to handle cases like this. It is 
very simple: Courts decide the cases in front of them. That had been 
the practice up until the early 1960s. We need to get it to be back to 
that practice again.
  It is not a Republican issue and not a Democrat issue. It is a 
constitutional issue.
  Nationwide injunctions are a backdoor way for judges to actually 
write legislation and to bring the decision of the executive branch to 
a halt.
  The executive branch does have checks and balances, as does the 
legislative branch, as does the judicial branch. Those checks and 
balances are clear. If the executive branch does something inconsistent 
with the Constitution, it goes to our Federal courts and quickly works 
its way up through the district court, circuit court, to the Supreme 
Court. The Supreme Court is the one who checks the executive branch, 
not each district court around the country. It is the Supreme Court. We 
need to be able get back to that process in the days ahead. That needs 
to be done.
  So I am looking forward to seeing Senator Grassley's legislation 
actually move.

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