Aggregation and the “Universal” Injunction

Authors

• Portia Pedro, Boston University School of LawFollow
• Adam Steinman

Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2026

ISSN

0017-811X

Publisher

Harvard Law Review Association

Language

en-US

Abstract

A crucial function of judicial review is not only “to say what the law is,”¹ but also to provide the remedies to vindicate that law.²  Judicial review plays an especially important role when government officials act in ways that violate federal law, including when they violate the Constitution.³  When government officials violate the law, the judicial review function supports a remedy that requires officials to comply with federal law by ceasing to pursue the illegal policy or practice.

Such “compliance” injunctions have been given the label “universal” or “nationwide” injunctions insofar as they go beyond giving “complete relief to the plaintiffs before the court.”⁴  Among other things, this framing couches compliance injunctions as aggregation devices — as improper attempts to “create de facto class actions.”⁵  Although this characterization has never been entirely accurate,⁶ the majority in Trump v. CASA, Inc.⁷ embraced it and, as a result, narrowly construed the federal courts’ statutory authority to issue such injunctions in cases brought by individual plaintiffs.⁸  The CASA decision makes it imperative to reckon with “universal” injunctions through the lens of aggregation — specifically, through the lens of class actions under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.⁹

In this Essay, we begin with a brief summary of the CASA decision’s holding regarding the availability of “universal” injunctions.¹⁰  Part II discusses the relationship between remedies and judicial review and the important role that such injunctions play in that regard.  Part III explores how class actions could serve as an alternative path for federal courts, after engaging in judicial review, to make their decisions meaningful by requiring officials to comply with the law and to cease illegal actions or policies.  We also respond to several objections to the use of class actions in this context.  The final Part addresses some implications of the class action route to “universal” injunctions, identifying the core functional connection between class actions and such injunctions, but also acknowledging some of the problems that this class action route may pose.

Recommended Citation

Portia Pedro & Adam Steinman, Aggregation and the “Universal” Injunction , 139 Harvard Law Review 1791 (2026).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4298