During Thursday's Supreme Court oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito pressed Solicitor General John Sauer about universal injunctions.
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00:00You began by outlining what you see as the practical problems that have been created
00:07by universal injunctions.
00:12If we were to hold that the states have standing, and if it is possible for a plaintiff to get
00:21emergency certification of a class, would we, suppose we agreed with you on universal
00:27injunctions but allow those other two avenues?
00:32Would the practical problem be rectified to any substantial degree?
00:36Certainly, if there were an injunction that extended to all of the litigating states,
00:40that would cover a very substantial portion of the country, and also an emergency sort
00:46of class certification decision might also grant very broad relief.
00:51So the answer is that the practical problem would not be solved.
00:55And if that's the case, what is the point of this argument about universal injunctions?
01:01I think the point is that universal injunctions exceed traditional principles of Article 3,
01:07and they exceed the traditional equitable authority.
01:09And that's what yields all these sort of pathologies, so to speak, of the current practice of issuing
01:14them very, very easily.