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Summary Trump fired three Biden-appointed Democratic commissioners

Judge blocked removal, saying Trump overstepped authority

Conservative justices power ruling while liberals dissent

WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court let Republican President Donald Trump on Wednesday remove three Democratic members of the government’s top consumer product safety watchdog, boosting his power over federal agencies set up by Congress to be independent from presidential control.

Granting a Justice Department request, the justices lifted Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox’s order that had blocked Trump from dismissing three Consumer Product Safety Commission members appointed by Democratic former President Joe Biden while a legal challenge to their removal proceeds.

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Maddox had ruled that Trump overstepped his authority in firing Commissioners Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr.

The Supreme Court in a brief unsigned order indicated that the Trump administration was likely to show that the president is authorized by the U.S. Constitution to remove Consumer Product Safety Commission members. It was the latest in a series of legal victories for Trump in which the Supreme Court halted lower court rulings that had blocked his actions.

The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal members dissented on Wednesday.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the court had again used its “emergency docket to destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission was created by Congress in 1972 and tasked with reducing the risk to consumers of injury or death from defective or harmful products. The agency sets safety standards, conducts product-safety investigations and issues recalls of hazardous products.

To establish the five-member commission’s independence from direct White House control, Congress authorized the president to fire commissioners only for neglect of duty or malfeasance, not at will.

Nicolas Sansone, an attorney for the fired commissioners, vowed to continue fighting for their reinstatement.

“The Supreme Court’s intervention deprives the public of important voices on the Consumer Product Safety Commission and sows substantial legal uncertainty,” Sansone said.

After being notified in May that Trump had fired them, Boyle, Hoehn-Saric and Trumka sued, arguing that their removals were without basis and that Trump had exceeded his authority. The staggered, seven-year terms of the commissioners were not set to expire until October 2025, 2027 and 2028, respectively, according to court filings.

The Justice Department argued that the law shielding commissioners from being fired except for good cause violates the president’s removal authority under the Constitution’s provision delineating executive power.

A 1935 PRECEDENT

Maddox, a Biden appointee, sided with the commissioners in a June 13 ruling and ordered their reinstatement. The judge upheld the commission’s removal protections under a 1935 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that preserved similar protections for U.S. Federal Trade Commission members.

Kagan wrote that Wednesday’s decision “all but overturned” the Humphrey’s Executor precedent.

The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on July 1 denied the administration’s request to halt Maddox’s reinstatement order. This prompted the Justice Department’s emergency filing to the Supreme Court.

The commissioners in their Supreme Court filing had urged the justices to reject the administration’s request. They said that allowing the dismissals would deprive the American public of critical consumer safety expertise and oversight.

In May, the Supreme Court in a similar case allowed Trump to remove two Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board – despite job protections for these posts – while litigation challenging those removals proceeded.

The court in that ruling said the Constitution gives the president wide latitude to fire government officials who wield executive power on his behalf and that the administration “is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power.”

The court on Wednesday said that the Consumer Product Safety Commission “exercises executive power in a similar manner as the National Labor Relations Board.”

In her dissent, Kagan criticized the conservative majority for using the court’s emergency docket – an abbreviated mode of adjudication involving shorter-than-usual written briefs and no oral argument – to “override Congress’s decisions about how to structure administrative agencies so that they can perform their prescribed duties.”

“By allowing the President to remove Commissioners for no reason other than their party affiliation, the majority has negated Congress’s choice of agency bipartisanship and independence,” Kagan wrote.

“By means of such actions, this court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of government to another,” Kagan added.

The Supreme Court has sided with Trump in a series of cases on an emergency basis since he returned to office in January, including clearing the way for his administration to pursue mass government job cuts, gut the Department of Education and implement some of his hardline immigration policies.

Reporting by John Kruzel; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham

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Toys are displayed on shelves on May 15 in Austin, Texas. – Brandon Bell/Getty Images/File

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed President Donald Trump to remove three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission for now, the latest instance in which the conservative court has backed an emergency appeal from the administration.

The court’s three liberal members dissented from the decision.

In a brief, unsigned order, the court said that it was bound to follow an earlier decision it made that allowed Trump to remove for now two top officials at independent federal labor agencies while legal challenges played out.

“The Consumer Product Safety Commission exercises executive power in a similar manner as the National Labor Relations Board, and the case does not otherwise differ from Wilcox in any pertinent respect,” the court said in its order.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan, writing for her two colleagues on the left, said the court was destroying “the independence of an independent agency,” and was taking a piecemeal approach to giving the president more power.

“The majority has acted on the emergency docket—with ‘little time, scant briefing, and no argument’ — to override Congress’s decisions about how to structure administrative agencies so that they can perform their prescribed duties,” she wrote. “By means of such actions, this Court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to another.”

Trump dismissed the three board members in May, but a federal district court last month ordered their reinstatement. The administration asked the Supreme Court to pause that lower court order, a move that would take those three commissioners off the board once again.

Like other emergency cases that have come before the Supreme Court since Trump’s return to power, the central question is about how much control a president has over independent agencies whose leadership is supposed to be free from the political whims of the White House.

The three board members involved in the case – Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr. – were appointed by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate.

The court has been receptive to Trump’s arguments on the point in earlier cases, giving his administration far more control over those agencies – at least in the short term.

In May, the court allowed Trump to fire officials on two independent federal labor agencies that enforce worker protections.

“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president,” the court wrote in its unsigned opinion at the time, “he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents.”

Writing for the dissenting justices, Kagan said the majority seemed to have effectively overruled a decades-old Supreme Court case, Humphrey’s Executor v. US, that allowed Congress to require presidents to show cause – such as malfeasance – before dismissing board members overseeing independent agencies.

“For 90 years, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States has stood as a precedent of this court,” Kagan wrote in dissent. “Our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law.”

But the Department of Justice read the court’s decision in the labor cases to do exactly that, and it argued the decision should control what happens with the consumer product board as well.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, created in the 1970s, is charged with protecting consumers from dangerous products by issuing recalls and taking other enforcement steps. Its five board members serve staggered, seven-year terms and by law can be removed only “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

But the Supreme Court has increasingly voiced skepticism about the constitutionality of such requirements.

Five years ago, the court’s conservatives held that those kinds of protections for the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau violated separation of powers principles. The president’s power to “remove – and thus supervise – those who wield executive power” flows directly from the Constitution, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. But the court’s decision nevertheless appeared to leave the Humphrey’s precedent intact.

A federal district court ordered the three consumer product board members to be reinstated, and they were. The Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected Trump’s request to block that decision. In a concurring opinion, US Circuit Judge James Wynn noted that the Supreme Court had not yet technically overturned Humphrey’s.

“That precedent remains binding on this court unless and until the Supreme Court overrules it,” wrote Wynn, who was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump can fire three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission for now the Supreme Court said on July 23 in the latest decision boosting the ability of the president to control independent agencies.

The ruling was made over the objections of the court’s three liberal justices.

“Once again, this Court uses its emergency docket to de­stroy the independence of an independent agency, as estab­lished by Congress,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote. “By means of such actions, this Court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to another.”

The five-member regulatory commission, created by Congress in 1972, aims to keep people from being injured or killed by defective or harmful products.

Commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate in staggered seven-year terms to protect them from political or industry pressure and to protect the agency from abrupt changes in composition. By law, commissioners can be removed only for “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

But, in May, Trump fired without cause the three members appointed by President Joe Biden: Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr.

A federal judge in Maryland ordered the commissioners reinstated, saying the threat to public safety from removing them outweighed any hardship the administration might suffer from keeping them on while the firings are being challenged.

In his June ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox also said the product safety commission is similar in structure and function to another independent agency that was the center of a landmark 1935 ruling − Humphrey’s Executor v. United States − limiting the ability of the president to remove independent agency officials.

“Humphrey’s Executor remains good law and is binding on this Court,” Maddox wrote.

But the Trump administration said Maddox instead should’ve taken his cue from the Supreme Court’s May decision allowing the president to fire Democratic members of two federal labor boards while the former members challenge their dismissals.

A majority of the Supreme Court agreed. In a brief and unsigned opinion, the majority said the situations were similar. There’s greater risk of harm in allowing the commissioners to continue to serve after Trump fired them than the potential harm of preventing a wrongfully removed officer from continuing to serve, the majority said.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said there’s “at least a fair prospect” that the court will overturn the 1935 ruling.

Because of that, Kavanaugh said, he would have preferred for the court to take up that underlying issue now, before it’s worked its way through the lower courts. That would end confusion about whether Humphreys Executor is still good law, he wrote.

In the past week, judges have reinstated members of the National Credit Union Administration and of the Federal Trade Commission who were fired by Trump.

The CPSC is now effectively controlled by Biden’s appointees even though Trump is president, lawyers for the government said in a filing.

Decisions made by the commissioners who are “hostile” to Trump’s agenda have “thrown the agency into chaos and have put agency staff in the untenable position of deciding which Commissioners’ directives to follow,” the Department of Justice said.

Attorneys for the three commissioners appointed by Biden reminded the Supreme Court that the justices twice in the past year declined to review appeals court decisions that upheld restrictions on the president’s ability to remove CPSC members without cause.

And Maddox, the district judge, noted that the term of one of the three Biden appointees expires in October, giving Trump the chance to appoint her successor and to “exert significant influence over the agency.”

The recall list page on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) website. Tada Images/Adobe Stock

The U.S. Supreme Court granted President Donald Trump’s emergency request to fire members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) without cause. The ruling allows Trump to proceed with his purge of three Democratic CPSC commissioners and replace them with appointees of his choosing, despite federal law requiring “neglect of duty or malfeasance” for removal.

In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the decision allows for “the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to another.”

The court, in a 6-3 vote, blocked a lower court ruling Wednesday that reinstated the fired commissioners, siding with Trump and halting the lower court’s enforcement of statutory protections.

In its ruling, the Court cited a similar decision from May, Trump v. Wilcox, which allowed Trump to remove Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board.

“The stay we issued in Wilcox reflected our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer,” the Court wrote. “The same is true on the facts presented here.”

Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a blistering dissent accusing the majority of upending nearly a century of legal precedent that protects the independence of federal agencies – all without full briefing, oral argument or a decision on the merits.

“Once again, this Court uses its emergency docket to destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress,” Kagan wrote.

Kagan mocked the stacking of precedent with no clear rationale, noting that the court’s only justification was its previous order in Wilcox.

“Next time, though, the majority will have two (if still under-reasoned) orders to cite,” Kagan added. “Truly, this is turtles all the way down.”

Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, recently told Democracy Docket that in not offering explanations, the Supreme Court is damaging its own authority.

“The power of the Court is its judgment. It doesn’t have the power of the purse nor the power of the sword,” Kreis said. “So, when six justices fail to explain the Supreme Court’s rulings and let major changes in the federal government’s structure go forward that appear to be inconsistent with the law, one must ask why?”

The CPSC was designed by Congress to be bipartisan, with five members serving staggered terms. By law, the president cannot remove commissioners without cause and no more than three of the Commissioners can be affiliated with the same political party.

The same structure governs other independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Communications Commission. Trump’s firings — now twice greenlit by the court — appear to break that model.

The justices did not rule on the case’s legal merits yet. But by staying the lower court’s ruling, the court effectively sided with Trump’s expansive view of executive authority while appeals proceed.

The case now heads to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with potential full review by the Supreme Court in the coming term.

Jacob Knutson contributed to this reporting.

Judges have begun blocking Trump policies through class actions and administrative challenges, after the Supreme Court limited nationwide injunctions.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump recently declared victory against what he called “radical left judges” blocking his second-term policies − such as toughening immigration enforcement and reducing the federal workforce − after the Supreme Court pulled the rug out from under their reasoning.

But at least seven judges − four appointed by Republican presidents, including one by Trump − have continued to block Trump policies under legal strategies that the high-court justices suggested in their landmark ruling.

From New Hampshire to Texas, judges with lifetime appointments to the federal bench have temporarily blocked Trump’s policies through two bedrock legal strategies that allow a president’s opponents to challenge federal polices: class-action lawsuits and administrative challenges. The latest blocks hit the Republican chief executive’s restrictions on birthright citizenship, deportations under the Alien Enemies Act and layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Those orders came after the Supreme Court changed the litigation landscape on June 27 with a decision in a dispute over Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship. In the case called Trump v. CASA, the justices limited nationwide injunctions that individual judges had been issuing − a ruling that the president and his top Department of Justice appointees celebrated at the White House soon after.

But even the Supreme Court justices suggested class actions or administrative challenges could take their place − and judges around the country were listening.

“The short answer,” according to Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, is that the impact of the court’s decision “is likely to be muted.”

“Look, there’s lots of other ways to get widespread relief,” Bagley told USA TODAY. “The fact is they are available now.”

Under class actions, judges can broaden a case from a handful of people to thousands or even millions who argue they were all harmed by a Trump policy. Decisions then carry widespread and potentially nationwide impact.

Another strategy is to challenge a regulation under the Administrative Procedure Act, a perennial workhorse since 1946 ‒ after the expansion of federal agencies under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‒ which allows legal opponents to argue that government policies are irrational or without justification. A judge who agrees with people or groups challenging a policy can then “set aside” the regulation, which traditionally invalidated it for the whole country.

Both legal strategies have drawbacks and experts said the Supreme Court may eventually put limits on these sorts of lawsuits, too. But the associate justices who work alongside Chief Justice John Roberts just laid out a roadmap for them to challenge government policies and lower court federal judges have already begun certifying class actions and upholding administrative challenges.

Presidents of both parties complained about judges blocking policies nationwide

Nationwide injunctions have been a thorn in the side of presidential administrations of both parties.

The argument against them is that a district court judge in one of 94 jurisdictions nationwide shouldn’t be able to halt a policy for the entire country, whether it’s then-President Joe Biden’s forgiveness of student loans or Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship spelled out via executive order on the first day of his second term.

The number of nationwide blocks on administration policies exploded in recent decades. George W. Bush faced six, Barack Obama had 12 and Biden had 14, according to a study in Harvard Law Review. Trump faced 64 in his first term and dozens more in the first months of his second term.

Attorney General Pam Bondi complained at a news conference the day of the Supreme Court’s CASA decision that 35 of the first 40 national blocks on Trump policies came from five jurisdictions, where regional judges thought they were “emperors.”

“These judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation,” Trump said June 27. “This was a colossal abuse of power.”

Supreme Court upends nationwide injunctions in birthright case

Rather than rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s birthright order in the CASA case, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s six-to-three majority opinion focused on judges blocking presidential policies. She wrote that under the 1789 Judiciary Act, regional judges lacked that authority unless necessary to provide “complete relief to the plaintiffs before the court.”

Barrett’s opinion ordered judges to review their nationwide injunctions within 30 days, which experts expect to lead to many being abandoned. But justices offered suggestions for where litigants could turn next to challenge the government.

Justice Samuel Alito, who agreed with Barrett, suggested people could file class-action lawsuits. The hitch is that it can be time-consuming and costly to get a judge to sort out who might be harmed by an administration policy and certify a class of litigants.

“Putting the kibosh on universal injunctions does nothing to disrupt” the requirements of class-action lawsuits, Alito wrote. “But district courts should not view today’s decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors of” class action rules.

Alan Trammell, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, said after Barrett’s ruling that class actions “are going to bear a whole lot more of the weight of this litigation.” But Alito “more or less said the quiet part out loud” that it could be hard to get judges to certify classes, Trammell said.

“Depending on your perspective, there is the risk or the possibility that there will be these snap decisions or what somebody referred to as drive-by class actions when it’s supposed to be a fairly rigorous process,” Trammell told USA TODAY.

But other experts said it won’t be that hard to get judges to certify class actions. That’s because in cases against the government, people are trying to halt a policy. In cases against another person or business, people are often trying to win damages, which can get complicated as judges resolve who deserves a share of the money and how much.

David Marcus, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied class actions beginning in 2011, when the Supreme Court tightened restrictions on them, and found courts were still favorable to litigants in 75% of cases through 2020.

“There shouldn’t be a lot of fights over whether the evidence supports certification,” Davis told USA TODAY. “Most of them are quite easy, clear-cut cases.”

Judges swiftly declare class actions for birthright, asylum cases

Judges have already begun certifying classes of plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration in the month since the high court’s decision in late June. The same day as Barrett’s ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit against Trump’s birthright citizenship order in New Hampshire before the same judge who ordered the nationwide injunction in the CASA case.

On July 10, U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship by ruling the litigants could proceed as a class. The class covers all children or future children born after Feb. 20, 2025, to parents who weren’t citizens or legal permanent residents.

Laplante found the children “have demonstrated likelihood” of eventually winning the case and “are likely to suffer irreparable harm” if the policy isn’t blocked while the case is litigated.

Marcus, the UCLA professor, called the ruling “bullet-proof.”

“It’s not a quick-and-dirty order,” Marcus said. “It’s a picture-perfect administration of well-settled doctrine.”

In another case in Washington, D.C., three nonprofits challenged a Trump proclamation issued on Inauguration Day that disallowed immigrants from remaining in the country while pursuing asylum claims. On July 2, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss declared anyone affected by Proclamation 10888 a class and overturned it.

Moss ruled that nothing in the Immigration and Nationality Act or the Constitution grants the president the sweeping authority in his proclamation.

The Trump administration appealed the ruling July 3.

Even before the CASA decision, federal judges in two cases blocked the government from deporting Venezuelans under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act as alleged gang members of Tren de Aragua.

In southern Texas, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriquez, who was appointed by Trump, certified a class for Venezuelans who were designated enemy aliens. Rodriguez permanently blocked the administration from using the statute to deport alleged gang members.

In southern New York, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein also certified a class and temporarily blocked deportations.

The government has appealed both decisions to circuit courts.

What is the Administrative Procedure Act?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who also joined Barrett in the CASA decision, suggested another remedy. He wrote that litigants may ask a judge under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) to “’set aside’ a new agency rule” while a case is argued.

Adam Zimmerman, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said Kavanaugh and Roberts have each spoken favorably about litigants challenging government policies under the APA. If someone challenged that strategy, they could side with justices who opposed Barrett’s opinion − Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson − to uphold the strategy.

“I think the court didn’t just open the door open to nationwide relief, I think there’s a really good chance there are five justices who are ready to walk right through it,” Zimmerman told USA TODAY.

Some judges have begun doing just that.

One technicality is that the APA covers department regulations, not the president. After Trump issues an executive order, agencies adopt regulations to put it into effect. The process can take months or years as agencies make initial proposals and gather public comment before issuing a final rule. The APA sets out the procedures for adopting regulations and also the rules for how judges review them. Litigants challenge the regulations, not the president’s order.

“A president telling his subordinates to think about doing nasty stuff is not enough for the courts to get involved,” Bagley said. “The agencies have to do the nasty stuff.”

Judge blocks HHS layoffs under APA as ‘arbitrary and capricious’

In federal court in Rhode Island, 19 states challenged the firing of thousands of workers from the Department of Health and Human Services by claiming the move deprived them of services for citizens that Congress mandated.

HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy acknowledged to reporters that in making the staffing cuts that “20% would have to be reinstalled because we’ll make mistakes.” He said science jobs and frontline health jobs weren’t cut.

On July 1, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose temporarily blocked the layoffs based on violations of the APA by ruling HHS’ action “was both arbitrary and capricious as well as contrary to law.”

“Yet another group of plaintiffs seek relief from a federal court to halt sweeping changes to a federal agency’s operations which they claim disregard congressionally mandated programs to the detriment and peril of all who live in the United States,” DuBose wrote.

DOJ lawyers urged the judge on July 11 to restrict her block to only the programs affected in states participating in the lawsuit. DuBose asked for more written arguments by July 31 about how the Supreme Court decision could affect the case.

Judge halts ‘slapdash approach’ to erasing HHS web pages

In federal court in Washington, D.C., HHS got into another legal scrape when the advocacy group Doctors for America challenged its decision to take down web pages filled with vital healthcare information.

The removals, which included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, were based on another one of Trump’s Inauguration Day executive orders from Jan. 20 declaring only two sexes and forbidding government spending on “gender ideology.”

On July 3, U.S. District Judge John Bates ruled the department took “a slapdash approach” by removing information that mentioned “gender” or “pregnant people” from pages that doctors had come to rely upon. He ordered the department to restore the missing pages but said the government could take them down later if done through “reasoned decision-making.”

“This case involves government officials acting first and thinking later,” Bates wrote, by removing “hundreds or even thousands of health care webpages and datasets.”

The government submitted a report July 18 saying that 67 web pages out of 212 identified in the lawsuit had been restored. Six web pages had been removed for reasons other than a memo from the Office of Personnel Management or the HHS guidance disputed in the lawsuit. Officials continue to review other web pages for restoration “as soon as practically possible,” the government report said.

Judge ‘set aside’ DHS directive to end work permits for Haitians

In federal court in New York, nine Haitians and two advocacy groups sued the Department of Homeland Security to prevent an early end to a temporary program providing work permits and protection from deportation after earthquakes.

On July 1, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan decided under the APA to temporarily “set aside” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s directive to end the program that began in 2010 and was extended several times. Noem sought to end the program six months early on Aug. 3.

Cogan distinguished his ruling from an injunction. He said the government wouldn’t be hurt by a postponement and that the government could still end the program if it went through the right steps.

“These orders are different in nature from injunctions, which prohibit an agency from taking a certain action at all, ever,” Cogan wrote.

Government lawyers submitted a letter July 18 saying Noem acknowledged the temporary program would end Feb. 3, 2026, as scheduled under the last extension.

What’s next? Experts place no ‘strong bets’ given high stakes of the disputes

As judges increasingly wade into class actions and administrative challenges, legal experts say the Supreme Court could eventually tinker with those legal strategies, too.

“I actually worry that sometimes the harder cases make bad law,” Zimmerman said. “I do worry that with the political stakes involved, the Supreme Court might feel pressure to make a rushed or bad decision that could have effects on other types of really beneficial class actions. I hope that doesn’t happen.”

Another possibility deals with the APA. Judges have “set aside” regulations, effectively invalidating them for the entire country, which Bagley calls “a national injunction under another name.”

But he argued that judges could begin limiting regulatory remedies to the participants in lawsuits, rather than the whole country, just as the Supreme Court limited nationwide injunctions in CASA.

“I think we’re going to see some development of the law,” Bagley said. “I think we can’t make strong bets at this point about how the law will develop.”