Concurrence
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 24A884
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DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, et al. v. CASA, INC., et al.
on application for partial stay
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No. 24A885
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DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, et al. v. WASHINGTON, et al.
on application for partial stay
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No. 24A886
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DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, et al. v. NEW JERSEY, et al.
on application for partial stay
[June 27, 2025]
Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Gorsuch joins, concurring.
The Court today holds that federal courts may not issue so-called universal injunctions. I agree and join in full. As the Court explains, the Judiciary Act of 1789—the statute that “ ‘authorizes the federal courts to issue equitable remedies’ ”—does not permit universal injunctions. Ante, at 5. It authorizes only those remedies traditionally available in equity, and there is no historical tradition allowing courts to provide “relief that extend[s] beyond the parties.” Ante, at 5–11. That conclusion is dispositive: As I have previously explained, “[i]f district courts have any authority to issue universal injunctions,” it must come from some specific statutory or constitutional grant. Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U. S. 667, 713–714 (2018) (concurring opinion). But, the Judiciary Act is the only real possibility, and serious constitutional questions would arise even if Congress purported to one day allow universal injunctions. See id., at 714, n. 2; see also United States v. Texas, 599 U. S. 670, 693–694 (2023) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in judgment).
I write separately to emphasize the majority’s guidance regarding how courts should tailor remedies specific to the parties. Courts must not distort “the rule that injunctive relief should be no more burdensome to the defendant than necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs.” Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682, 702 (1979). Otherwise, they risk replicating the problems of universal injunctions under the guise of granting complete relief.
As the Court recognizes, the complete-relief principle operates as a ceiling: In no circumstance can a court award relief beyond that necessary to redress the plaintiffs’ injuries. See ante, at 18 (“Complete relief is not a guarantee—it is the maximum a court can provide”). This limitation follows from both Article III and traditional equitable practice. Because Article III limits courts to resolving specific “Cases” and “Controversies,” see U. S. Const., Art. III, §2, it requires that any remedy “be tailored to redress the plaintiff ’s particular injury.” Gill v. Whitford, 585 U. S. 48, 73 (2018). And, equitable remedies historically operated on a plaintiff-specific basis. Ante, at 6–9. Accordingly, any “remedy must of course be limited to the inadequacy that produced the injury in fact that the plaintiff has established.” Lewis v. Casey, 518 U. S. 343, 357 (1996).
Courts therefore err insofar as they treat complete relief as a mandate. Some judges have read our precedents to suggest that courts should provide plaintiffs whatever remedy is necessary to give them complete relief. See, e.g., Mock v. Garland, 75 F. 4th 563, 587 (CA5 2023) (“[I]njunctions should be crafted to ‘provide complete relief to the plaintiffs’ ”); Z. Siddique, Nationwide Injunctions, 117 Colum. L. Rev. 2095, 2106 (2017) (“[C]ourts . . . tailor their injunctions to provide complete relief to the parties—no less and no more”). But, that reading misunderstands the complete-relief principle.
This principle reflects the equitable “rule that courts generally ‘may administer complete relief between the parties.’ ” Ante, at 16 (emphasis deleted). It is an important “aim of the law of remedies . . . to put the plaintiff in her rightful position.” S. Bray, Multiple Chancellors: Reforming the National Injunction, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 417, 466 (2017) (Bray). But, “to say that a court can award complete relief is not to say that it should do so.” Ante, at 18. And, in some circumstances, a court cannot award complete relief.
As the Court today affirms, any relief must fall within traditional limits on a court’s equitable powers. See ante, at 5–6 (citing Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo, S. A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc., 527 U. S. 308, 319 (1999); Payne v. Hook, 7 Wall. 425, 430 (1869)). Courts must ask whether the relief plaintiffs seek “was traditionally accorded by courts of equity.” Grupo Mexicano, 527 U. S., at 319. And, they must ensure that any injunctions comport with both the complete-relief principle and other “principles of equity.” Ante, at 26. For example, courts may need to weigh considerations such as equity’s concern “with justice . . . also for the defendant.” Bray 468; see H. McClintock, Handbook of the Principles of Equity 78 (2d ed. 1948). In some cases, traditional equitable limits will require courts and plaintiffs to make do with less than complete relief.
This Court’s decision in Frothingham v. Mellon, decided with Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447 (1923), exemplifies this constraint. Appellant Frothingham sought to “enjoin the execution of a federal appropriation act” on the grounds that the Act exceeded the Government’s authority and that its execution would improperly increase her tax burden. Id., at 479, 486. On a maximalist view of the complete-relief principle, Frothingham would have been entitled to a national injunction had her claim been meritorious. After all, “a prohibition on using her tax money for the [statute] would have been wholly ineffectual” in remedying the injury caused by unlawful federal spending, given “the fungibility of money”: The Government would still have been free to execute the statute, so long as it labeled the underlying funds as coming from other taxpayers. Bray 431. A court thus would have needed to enjoin all spending under the statute to provide effective relief. But, this Court rejected Frothingham’s request for such an injunction as beyond “the preventive powers of a court of equity.” 262 U. S., at 487. Among other reasons, it emphasized that an individual taxpayer’s “interest in the moneys of the Treasury” was “comparatively minute and indeterminable,” and that the petitioner had not suffered any “direct injury” but rather was “suffer[ing] in some indefinite way in common with people generally.” Id., at 487–488.1
To be sure, “[w]hat counts as complete relief ” can be a difficult question. Bray 467. Many plaintiffs argue that only sweeping relief can redress their injuries. And, I do not dispute that there will be cases requiring an “indivisible remedy” that incidentally benefits third parties, Tr. of Oral Arg., 14–15, such as “[i]njunctions barring public nuisances,” Hawaii, 585 U. S., at 717 (Thomas, J., concurring). But, such cases are by far the exception.
An indivisible remedy is appropriate only when it would be “all but impossible” to devise relief that reaches only the plaintiffs. Ante, at 16–17, n. 12. Such impossibility is a high bar. For example, the Court today readily dispatches with the individual and associational respondents’ position that they require a universal injunction, notwithstanding their argument that a “plaintiff-specific injunction” would be difficult to administer and would subject the associations’ members to the burden of having “to identify and disclose to the government” their membership. Tr. of Oral Arg. 141–142. As the Court recognizes, “prohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order against the child of an individual pregnant plaintiff ” is all that is required to “give that plaintiff complete relief.” Ante, at 17. Courts may not use the complete-relief principle to revive the universal injunction.
* * *
For good reason, the Court today puts an end to the “increasingly common” practice of federal courts issuing universal injunctions. Hawaii, 585 U. S., at 713 (Thomas, J., concurring). The Court also makes clear that the complete-relief principle provides a ceiling on federal courts’ authority, which must be applied alongside other “principles of equity” and our holding that universal injunctions are impermissible. Ante, at 26. Lower courts should carefully heed this Court’s guidance and cabin their grants of injunctive relief in light of historical equitable limits. If they cannot do so, this Court will continue to be “dutybound” to intervene. Hawaii, 585 U. S., at 721 (Thomas, J., concurring).
Notes
1 Although courts now treat Frothingham primarily as a case about taxpayer standing, its analysis in fact “intertwine[d] concepts of equity, remedies, and the judicial power.” Bray 430–433; see ante, at 8.
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