President Donald Trump's administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to cut back another power judges use to block its policies, in a new appeal that could further insulate his agenda from broad legal challenges.
The Justice Department's appeal, now pending before the court, urges the justices to curtail the longstanding ability of judges to halt the actions of federal agencies nationwide under the Administrative Procedure Act, the 1946 law that governs how agencies operate.
According to the administration, courts should not be able to shut down an agency's regulation entirely, and should instead limit any relief to the specific plaintiffs in a given case.
Aditya Bamzai, a University of Virginia expert in administrative law, said a win for Trump could let the government continue to enforce rules broadly against everyone except the plaintiffs in a case, potentially for years while litigation plays out, even after judges have deemed the rules unlawful.
Siding with Trump "would give more flexibility to the executive branch," Bamzai said. "Whether you like or dislike that flexibility can perhaps depend on whether you like or dislike a particular administration's policies."
The move follows the Supreme Court's June 2025 ruling, sought by the Trump administration, that clamped down on nationwide — or "universal" — injunctions, orders that can block the government from enforcing a policy against anyone, not just the challengers who sued. That ruling came in litigation over Trump's bid to limit birthright citizenship, and addressed judicial power rather than the legality of the policy itself. The justices issued a separate 6-3 ruling last June rejecting the birthright citizenship policy as unconstitutional.
The new appeal arises from a challenge by Texas medical providers to federal rules implementing a statute Trump signed during his first term to limit unexpected medical bills. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voided parts of the rule nationwide in August on the grounds that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Trump administration is not challenging the 5th Circuit's decision about the regulation's legality. Instead it seeks to prevent judges from using the act to stop a policy nationwide. "The Supreme Court should return the lower courts to their proper role under the APA," the Justice Department said in its filing.
Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, his administration has faced hundreds of lawsuits challenging moves to limit immigration, pursue mass deportation, end diversity initiatives and curtail transgender rights. Plaintiffs have invoked the act in numerous cases, including fights over the termination of humanitarian legal status for hundreds of thousands of migrants, major cuts to research grants related to racial minorities or LGBT people, and a mass voter-verification system used for sweeping citizenship checks.
Supporters of the judicial power, including numerous state governments that regularly sue the federal government, say it is an essential bulwark against executive overreach. "When an agency adopts a rule that has been held to be unlawful, sometimes the only sensible solution is to wipe it off the books," said law professor Ronald Levin of Washington University in St. Louis. "You can't have a food-safety rule that applies only to some. You can't have an auto-safety manufacturing rule that applies only to some manufacturers."
If the Supreme Court agrees with the administration, Levin said, "it would take longer for challengers to get unlawful regulations removed from the books."
Trump's administration may face pushback from a broad array of opponents. Texas, Florida and some other mostly Republican-led states urged the 5th Circuit not to "neuter" the act's effectiveness, calling it important for maintaining the balance of power between states and the federal government. "The APA is a critical tool ... to curb federal overreach and incursions into state sovereignty by executive-branch agencies," the states said.
The Supreme Court is expected to consider whether to take up the case early next year. Democratic President Joe Biden's administration also asked the court in 2023 to limit this judicial power in a case in which Republican attorneys general from Texas and Louisiana challenged an immigration policy; the justices did not take up the invitation and backed Biden on other grounds. The Biden administration had likewise sought limits on universal injunctions as lower courts hindered many of its key initiatives.
