Supreme Court Issues Nationwide Injunction Ruling – Just How Much Will It Change the Litigation Landscape for Schools, Their Students, and Their Employees?

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The Supreme Court issued its landmark decision limiting the use of universal injunctions last month, with the majority relying largely on originalist principles to support its decision. Trump v. CASA, Inc., et al., No. 24A884 at *6, 21 (labeling policy pros and cons “beside the point” because “under our well-established precedent, the equitable relief available in federal courts is that ‘traditionally accorded by courts of equity’ at the time of our founding”). The case, which arose on emergency appeal from three separate District Courts, considered the use of nationwide injunctions to prohibit enforcement of the Trump Administration’s Executive Order No. 14160, which effectively ended birthright citizenship (importantly, the Court was not asked to, and did not rule on, the constitutionality of the EO itself). Two of the parties that challenged the EO were states, and the third was an organization. The Court’s ruling implicates challenges to many other Trump EOs and agency actions that litigants have successfully fought, or were seeking to fight, by way of nationwide injunction. See, e.g., National Council of Nonprofits v. Office of Management and Budget, Case No. 1:25-cv-00239 (D. D.C., Feb. 25, 2025) (granting nationwide preliminary injunction of the OMB’s freeze on federal grant disbursements); State of Washington v. U.S. Department of Transportation, Case No. 2:25-cv-00848 (W.D. Wash., June 24, 2025) (seeking nationwide injunction to stop DOT from withholding Congressionally-approved funds for electric vehicle charging infrastructure).

In its decision, the majority sharply critiqued the dissent for taking the position that nationwide injunctions are an appropriate means for District Courts to ensure broad adherence to their orders. It posited that, under the dissent’s logic, at least with respect to the orders of the Executive, the traditional system of “divided judicial authority,” pursuant to which District Courts and Circuit Courts of Appeal can disagree and issue conflicting precedent resolvable only by the Supreme Court, could cease to exist.

Importantly, the majority tailored its ruling – somewhat – by remanding the cases back to the lower courts to consider whether the injunctions issued were “broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.” It endorsed the notion that courts must provide “complete” equitable relief to a party (which may, in some circumstances, benefit non-parties) while rejecting the premise that, pursuant to the “complete” relief principle, courts can automatically provide “universal” relief affecting non-parties. This universal-relief-as-complete-relief argument was made by the state challengers to the EO, who argued that universal relief was necessary because of the financial injuries and administrative burdens that will flow from a system in which citizen-dependent benefits programs must verify the immigration status and birthplace, of recipient children, which could depend upon the state of their birth under a patchwork system. It remains to be seen how the lower courts will handle the task of considering what “complete” equitable relief for the parties in the birthright-citizenship matter requires. 

The question now is how individuals, states, and organizations can fight administrative and agency actions without the universal injunction tool. The majority suggested that class certification pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 is the right method, and some litigants pursued this route even before the CASA decision. See Kingdom v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-00691-RCL (D. D.C. June 3, 2025) (granting Motion to Certify a putative class of Bureau of Prisons inmates challenging EO that froze funding for gender-affirming care for federal inmates). Fights about class certification are, therefore, sure to be forthcoming. 

However, there is no shortage of precedent showing that, for those organizations with the right litigation strategy, an order providing “complete” but not “universal” relief can still have a big impact.

Take two recent examples in education – one a challenge to actions by the Trump administration and another to actions by the Biden administration.

Challenges to the “Dear Colleague” Letter 

In National Education Association, et al. v. U.S. Department of Education, No. 1:25-cv-91-TSM (D. N.H., April 24, 2025), the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire considered a challenge lodged by the National Education Association (NEA), its New Hampshire Affiliate, and the Center for Black Educator Development to the Dear Colleague Letter issued by the Department in February 2025. The Dear Colleague Letter indicated that DEI programs essentially constitute unlawful discrimination and directed schools to cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race. The NEA is a union with 3 million members across the country who work in both secondary and higher education, which has affiliates in every state. The CBED is a nonprofit focused on achieving educational equity by increasing the number of Black teachers nationwide. 

These organizations challenged the Dear Colleague Letter and an accompanying Frequently Asked Questions document issued by the Department on First Amendment and other grounds and won a preliminary injunction. Though Plaintiffs sought a universal injunction, a prescient District Court noted the possibility that granting this request could press the limits of its authority and instead engaged in precisely the sort of analysis that would (theoretically) satisfy the majority in CASA. It held that applying the injunction to only the members of the plaintiff-organizations would fail to provide them complete relief, because it would do nothing to stop the harms that flow to them from attempting to follow the dictates of the Letter and FAQs if their employers were still bound by it. The Court therefore held that, “it is necessary to enjoin the defendants from enforcing the 2025 letter and its implementation measures against one category of non-parties to the case: entities receiving federal funding that employ or contract with plaintiffs or plaintiffs’ members.” Though not a “nationwide” injunction, the Court’s ruling will have far-reaching implications given the size of the NEA.

A District Court in Maryland took a different approach, issuing a nationwide stay, which it called “a form of preliminary injunctive relief,” in a different case challenging the Dear Colleague Letter. See American Federation of Teachers, et al. v. Department of Education, 1:25-cv-00628 (D. Md. April 24, 2025). In that case, the parties included the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), an AFL-CIO Affiliate with 1.8 million members in both K-12 and higher education (see here), a Maryland affiliate, the American Sociological Association, and an Oregon school district. While the relief granted is unlikely to stand under the CASA ruling, the NEA injunction provides a blueprint for narrowing the scope of relief in the AFT matter that could still have a big impact given the size of the AFT’s membership. Namely, the Court could find that, pursuant to CASA, it is appropriate to limit the scope of its stay but still apply it to all entities receiving federal funds that employ AFT-members.

Challenges to the 2024 Title IX Regulations

In a decision nearly a year ago (which we covered here), the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas considered a challenge to the ill-fated 2024 Title IX regulations issued by the Biden-era Department of Education and ultimately found that the plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits warranted issuance of a preliminary injunction. The Kansas court was also asked to issue a nationwide injunction, and it, too, declined to do so. It did, however, apply its injunction not only to the four state-plaintiffs in the matter, but also to all schools attended by members of organization-plaintiffs Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United, and all minor children of the members of plaintiff-organization Moms for Liberty, both present and future. Though a District Court in Kentucky later issued a nationwide injunction for the 2024 regulations (which is also now inconsistent with CASA), the Kansas decision unleashed chaos, as schools rushed to consult the list of affected school districts and institutions of higher education, which grew over time. 

The upshot? Again, the Court’s awarding of “complete relief” in a manner at least facially consistent with CASA, and similar to AFT, still had a sizable impact, even without the use of class certification.

What, then, should we expect in the months and years to come, as questions regarding the constitutionality of agency and administrative decisions come before courts now prohibited from issuing nationwide injunctions? Certainly, the majority’s suggestion that class actions are the appropriate method for pursuing wide-ranging relief will result in increased use of this (costly and time-consuming) method, but we can also expect more litigation from well-resourced states and national organizations, more decisions that put schools in the crosshairs as their employees seek to challenge executive and agency actions, more questions about associational standing, and an ever-difficult patchwork of decisions that schools will have to navigate.

If you have any questions regarding how this Supreme Court decision will impact legal challenges in education, please contact Carrie Evans Wilson of Montgomery McCracken’s Higher Education Group.