Injunction Junction
Tracking the federal courts’ flurry of rulings, including the latest nationwide injunctions halting key Trump administration policies
This is a new column I’ll run on federal district court decisions with a focus on nationwide injunctions. Since much of the current news in this area focuses on injunctions against several of the Trump Administration’s policies, this expanded edition looks at pending issues in this area as well.
Just yesterday, Judge McConnell in the case New York v. Trump (D. Rhode Island), which challenges the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) January 27, 2025, directive that mandates a temporary pause on all federal financial assistance, including grants and loans, as an unlawful overreach under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), released an order including in part:
“The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds… The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country. These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO…The Defendants must resume the funding of institutes and other agencies of the Defendants (for example the National Institute for Health) that are included in the scope of the Court’s TRO…The Defendants must immediately restore frozen funding during the pendency of the TRO until the Court hears and decides the Preliminary Injunction request.”
This isn’t the only injunction or temporary restraining order levied by judges recently. Not nearly. In fact, since November 1, 2024, judges in federal district courts have ruled in over 1,000 cases where the plaintiffs sought an injunction or temporary restraining order and that is only in decisions that produced searchable opinions and orders. The rest of this article will help map the landscape of the most consequential decisions relating to injunctions and then look at all of the pending cases involving Trump’s policies.