When a federal district judge issued a nationwide injunction preventing the Trump administration from blocking funds for sanctuary cities, conservatives protested and liberals cheered.
Liberals were similarly thrilled by a district court ruling that halted the president’s order blocking travel to the U.S. from certain Middle Eastern nations.
Yet when several red states sued to block Obamacare, law
professors writing in The Atlantic asked, “Can one judge really impose his
ruling from one coast to the other?”
District courts—whose reach should be limited to the area
within their geographic jurisdictions except in certain narrowly-defined
circumstances—have inappropriately claimed authority to block presidential and
congressional actions throughout the entire nation.
In particular, these courts issuing nationwide injunctions against several constitutional border security solutions has greatly worsened the ongoing humanitarian disaster.
It’s time for Congress and the higher courts to push back on
these illegitimate overreaches. Doing so would move the nation closer to a
lasting solution on the border and restore a proper understanding of the role of
district courts.
Nationwide injunctions are a fairly new development. Activists
who cannot accomplish their goals through legislation have increasingly turned
to a court system composed of a small group of unelected judges.
But in the same way that the Texas state legislature cannot make laws for Oklahoma, district courts only have authority over a single district—a limited area. By issuing a nationwide injunction, these courts are inappropriately claiming authority over other courts’ districts.
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This leads activists and interest groups to go “forum
shopping,” gaming the system to make sure their case is heard by a court (or
even a specific judge) whom they expect will rule favorably. If they can find
the right court, they can hijack the legal process to, in essence, create laws
that bind the entire country.
This is not only a threat to our republican form of
government, but a threat to the legitimacy of the judicial branch. When the
public perceives that a small group of judges, chosen specifically for their
partisan viewpoints, are shaping national policy, they lose confidence in the
objectivity of the entire legal system.
For example, this year, anti-border security activists pushed for catch-and-release requirements for illegal immigrants at a notoriously liberal California-based court. A single Obama-appointed judge obliged, reinterpreting a decades-old legal agreement known as the Flores settlement to require the release of detained migrant children—and their parents—within 20 days of their detention.
This ruling set the stage for the current border crisis, as migrants began to realize that our border agencies’ hands were tied when it came to detaining migrants who cross illegally with children.
Migrants discovered that simply arriving with a child would
swiftly secure their release, incentivizing them to bring children along for
the dangerous journey across Mexico, during which one in three females is
sexually assaulted.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants have arrived already this year, stretching our Border Patrol’s resources to the breaking point and enriching the criminal cartels that traffic migrants into the United States.
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So the president’s announcement in August that he would be
terminating the Flores settlement came as welcome news. The president should
not be bound by a court that lacks nationwide jurisdiction.
In another recent example, a U.S. district judge in Manhattan
struck down a Trump administration rule that would protect the consciences of
health care workers. The rule would have ensured doctors and nurses who do not
want to actively participate in abortion procedures, assisted suicide, or
sterilizations don’t have to. It bolstered laws already in place that protect religious
freedom.
There are countless other examples of federal judges
overreaching their proper bounds. Congress should exercise its constitutional
authority to set limits on “such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to
time ordain and establish” in order to prevent federal courts—besides the
Supreme Court—from blocking policies outside that particular court’s geographic
area of authority.
As long as activists can find sympathetic district courts to block the other side’s policies across the entire nation, our constitutional form of government is at risk. This is not how our government was meant to function, and Congress should end this illegitimate exercise of judicial power.
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