By Andrew Chung
Nov 14 (Reuters) - When President Donald Trump's administration convinced the US Supreme Court last year to restrict the ability of federal judges to block his actions nationwide — a major boost to his power — the ruling left untouched a separate tool that some of them have used to stymie presidential policies.
Now Trump is taking aim at that tool as well in another challenge to judicial authority that could further insulate his far-reaching agenda against broad legal attacks.
An appeal
filed by Trump's Justice Department now pending before the Supreme Court urges the justices to curtail the longstanding ability of judges to halt the actions of federal agencies that hold immense power to carry out the Republican president's policy priorities.
According to the administration, courts should not be able to shut down an agency's regulation entirely, instead limiting any relief granted only to the specific plaintiffs in a given case.
Aditya Bamzai, a University of Virginia expert in administrative law, said a win for Trump in the case could let the US government continue to enforce rules broadly on all but the plaintiffs in a given case, potentially for years as litigation plays out, even after judges have deemed them 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," Bamzai added.
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump and his allies have castigated judges who have impeded his policies — deriding some as radical or corrupt — even as he tests the limits of presidential powers.
At the Trump administration's behest, the Supreme Court in June 2025 clamped down on nationwide — or "universal" — injunctions that can block the government from enforcing a policy against anyone, not just the challengers who sued. Judges had increasingly deployed these orders in a wide array of cases against Trump, including those alleging violations of the US Constitution.
IMPEDING EXECUTIVE ACTION
The new appeal arises from a challenge by Texas medical providers to federal rules implementing a statute Trump signed into law during his first term in office to limit unexpected medical bills. The appeal forms part of the administration's concerted push to make it harder for the judiciary to impede executive actions. The Supreme Court is expected to consider whether to take up the case early next year.
The kinds of lawsuits targeted by Trump's administration are brought under a 1946 US law called the Administrative Procedure Act, or APA, which governs the way federal agencies operate including how regulations are implemented.
Judges and appeals courts have long claimed the power under this statute to "hold unlawful and set aside" agency regulations they deem illegal, invalidating them on a universal basis.
Since Trump returned to office, his administration has faced hundreds of lawsuits challenging his aggressive moves to limit immigration, pursue mass deportation, end diversity initiatives and curtail transgender rights, among other actions, that have pushed the boundaries of presidential authority.
Various plaintiffs have sued by invoking the APA in numerous cases including to fight the termination of humanitarian legal status for hundreds of thousands of migrants living in the United States, major cuts to research grants related to racial minorities or LGBT people, and the use of a mass voter verification system to conduct sweeping citizenship checks.
EXECUTIVE OVERREACH
Proponents, including numerous state governments that regularly sue the federal government, say this judicial tool is an essential bulwark against executive overreach. Others say the APA is important to maintain uniform regulations applied equally to everyone.
"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," Levin said. "It's a tool they (judges) should have — not one they should use in every case, but ... there are some cases where the need for it is compelling."
The court's 2025 ruling restricting the power of judges came in litigation over Trump's bid to limit birthright citizenship, a right long recognized in the United States. That ruling addressed judicial power, not the legality of Trump's birthright citizenship directive.
Though Democratic President Joe Biden's administration also had asked the Supreme Court to rein in universal injunctions as lower courts hindered many of his key initiatives, the 2025 ruling proved to be a major victory for Trump.
The justices issued a separate 6-3 ruling last June on the legality of Trump's birthright citizenship policy, rejecting it as unconstitutional.
'SURPRISE' MEDICAL BILLS
The administration wants to extend the constraints that the Supreme Court's 2025 ruling placed on injunctions to similar orders judges may issue to invalidate policies under the APA.
The regulation at issue in the case being appealed by the administration sought to constrain "surprise" medical bills from hospitals and health providers outside a patient's health insurance network. A Texas association of medical doctors, air-ambulance providers, and other plaintiffs argued that the regulation violated the APA and artificially deflated their insurance reimbursement rates.
The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals voided parts of the rule nationwide in August on the grounds of an APA violation.
The Trump administration's appeal is not challenging the 5th Circuit's decision about the regulation's legality. Rather it seeks to prevent the judicial use of the APA to stop a policy nationwide.
The administration contends, as it did in its case against universal injunctions, that the APA does not grant courts such sweeping authority, instead allowing them to block a regulation's enforcement at most against the specific plaintiffs who challenged it in a particular case.
The Supreme Court "should return the lower courts to their proper role under the APA," the Justice Department said in its filing.
If the Supreme Court agrees, Levin said, "it would take longer for challengers to get unlawful regulations removed from the books."
Biden's administration also tried in 2023 to convince the Supreme Court to limit the use of this power by judges 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 in that case on other grounds.
Trump's administration may face pushback from a broad array of opponents on its new effort.
Texas, Florida and some other states, mostly Republican-led, had urged the 5th Circuit not to "neuter" the APA's effectiveness, calling the law 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," these states said.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
