Lower Courts Are Saving The Rule of Law — Now the GOP Wants to Stop Them
Issues
This excerpt is from a piece by Keith Thirion that originally ran in Democracy Docket on April 24, 2025.
In just the first three months of Trump II, injunctions are doing essential work against his anti-constitutional executive orders. They are protecting families from being separated, keeping people in their jobs, ensuring people get fairly paid for the work they do (or already did), and upholding fundamental concepts of the Constitution like due process. Nationwide injunctions exist specifically to protect against bad-faith government actions like we’ve seen from this administration.
It’s no surprise then that House Republicans passed a bill they brazenly called the “No Rogue Rulings Act” (NORRA), which would severely kneecap judges’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions. Under NORRA, judges could only provide relief to the people who brought a lawsuit, even if plenty of other people were already affected or could be subsequently. The clear goal of the legislation is to buy time for Trump to get away with as much harm to as many people as he can before judges can rein him in.
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Our courts are our last defense for democracy and the rule of law, and NORRA should die in the Senate. We can’t always count on our courts to do the right thing, but we certainly need them to be empowered to try. With new attacks every day, we’re bleeding out; it’s hardly the time to discuss a ban on tourniquets.