'When Were The 1st Universal Injunctions Used?': Clarence Thomas Asks Questions In Citizenship Case

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Judge Clarence Thomas asks Solicitor General D. John Sauer during oral arguments in a key case involving birthright citizenship.

Transcript

00:00So, three years, four years, we've been able to move much more expeditiously.

00:08I think we did the TikTok case in a month.

00:12Presuming, I gather an important part of your answer is that people can litigate differently,

00:18and one will go to Massachusetts, the other one will go to Houston,

00:22and you'll get conflicting decisions fairly quickly.

00:25Is there any reason why this court, and I gather that's your safety net,

00:31is that at the end of the day, after how long the day is,

00:35this court can issue a decision and it will bind everything else.

00:38Is there any reason in this particular litigation that we would be unable to act expeditiously?

00:45Absolutely not, Mr. Chief Justice.

00:47Okay, thank you. Justice Thomas?

00:48General, when were the first universal injunctions used?

00:58We believe that the best reading of that is what you said in Trump against Hawaii,

01:02which is that Wurtz, in 1963, was really the first universal injunction.

01:06There's a dispute about Perkins against Lukens Oil going back to 1940,

01:10and of course, we point to the court's opinion that reversed that universal injunction issued by the D.C. Circuit

01:16and said it's profoundly wrong.

01:18Now, if you look at the cases that the either parties cite, you see a common theme.

01:24The cases that we cite, like National Treasury's Employment Union,

01:28Perkins against Lukens Oil, Frothingham in Massachusetts against Mellon,

01:32going back to Scott against Donald,

01:34and all of those, those are cases where the court considered and addressed

01:37the sort of universal, in that case statewide, issue of provision of injunctive relief.

01:43So when the court has considered and addressed this, it has consistently said,

01:46you have to limit the remedy to the plaintiffs who are appearing in court

01:49and complaining of that remedy.

01:50So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?

01:55That's exactly correct.

01:56And in fact, those are very limited, very rare, even in the 1960s.

01:59It really exploded in 2007 in our cert-petition in Summers Against Earth Island Institute.

02:05We pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this

02:07in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims.

02:10Justice Alito?

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