Sponsors (30)
Official title: Amend title 28, United States Code, to prohibit the issuance of national injunctions, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 31, 2025 by Charles Ernest Grassley · Last progress March 31, 2025
The bill trades greater predictability and narrower judicial remedies — benefiting government actors and reducing risk of nationwide injunctions — for reduced availability and slower delivery of broad equitable relief to individuals and entities harmed by unlawful government action.
Federal, state, and local governments (and the agencies they operate) will face fewer nationwide injunctions and broad preliminary orders that pause or reshape enforcement, reducing enforcement interruptions and legal uncertainty for government action.
Courts will have clearer limits on available remedies and be barred from inferring new remedies beyond what Congress wrote, producing clearer statutory standards and more predictable judicial outcomes for agencies and regulated parties.
Federal, state, and local governments can obtain faster appellate review of temporary restraining orders that block or compel government action, providing a quicker path to resolve urgent disputes over government programs and enforcement.
People and entities harmed by unlawful federal action (including people with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, and other vulnerable groups) may be unable to obtain timely nationwide relief if they are not formal parties, delaying remedies for widespread rights violations.
States, small businesses, and private parties may face higher litigation costs and practical barriers because they must join suits, find representative parties, or pursue additional appeals and statutory-interpretation disputes to obtain relief.
Restricting vacatur and broad equitable relief could allow agency rules later found unlawful to remain in effect while appeals proceed, prolonging harms to patients, people with chronic conditions, and low-income individuals.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Limits federal courts from issuing orders that would restrain or compel government action with respect to non-parties unless the non-party is represented in a recognized representative capacity.
The bill prevents federal courts from issuing orders (like injunctions, stays, TROs, vacatur, declaratory relief, or other equitable relief) that would restrain enforcement against or compel action in favor of a non-party, unless the non-party is represented by a party acting in a recognized representative capacity. It also expands the appellate treatment of certain TROs, makes small textual edits to administrative-law review provisions, and includes a rule clarifying that courts cannot infer additional remedial authority beyond what the Act allows.