“It just can't be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks,” Justice Elena Kagan declared when Democrat Joe Biden was president, three years before she voted in favor of district judges being able to issue nationwide injunctions to stop Republican President Donald Trump’s policies.
On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision that "puts an end to the 'increasingly common' practice of federal courts issuing universal injunctions," Justice Clarence Thomas explained in a concurring opinion.
Justice Kagan was one of the three justices to vote against the decision, which lifts a district court’s national injunction that stopped Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship in its tracks.
But, speaking at Northwestern University back in September of 2022, Justice Kagan voiced objection to the practice of district courts using injunctions to undo national policy:
“[S]ome district courts have, you know, very quickly issued nationwide injunctions to stop a policy in its tracks that, something, the President and/or Congress has determined to be the national policy.”
The practice of plaintiffs “forum shopping” for ideologically-likeminded district courts inclined to oppose a president’s national policies makes matter even worse, Justice Kagan noted in 2022:
“[A]nd if just one district court stops it – and then you combine that with the ability of people to forum shop to go to a particular district court where they think that that will be the result – and you look at something like that and you think that can't be right that one district court, whether it's in you know in the Trump years people used to go to the Northern District of California and in the Biden years they go to Texas”
“And it just can't be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through normal [appeals] process,” Justice Kagan said at the time.