Chuck Grassley lays out plan to rein in wayward judges putting ‘unnecessary stress’ on courts

Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, argues that ending nationwide injunctions should be a bipartisan effort.

Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has introduced the Judicial Relief Clarification Act of 2025, which would place limits on federal courts by preventing them from issuing injunctions that apply to parties who are outside of the relevant case. Grassley has a large group of Republican co-sponsors but there aren't any Democrats supporting the bill yet.

"When a national injunction is put in place, it affects all the other 92 district federal district courts, I should say, court districts throughout the country. It becomes national," Grassley said on the "John Solomon Reports" podcast. 

"We want to limit what the judge can do to that district and to the people before it. And the second thing is, we want it to be appealable very quickly, so if the judge screws up constitutionally, we can do something about it," he added. 

Politicizing the courts

Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution vests the judicial power in the Supreme Court and allows Congress to establish inferior courts, regulate their jurisdiction, and set their structure. 

Grassley said that universal injunctions "put unnecessary stress on the courts and politicize the courts" and that there needs to be a long term solution to the problem.

"This is relatively new happening with national injunctions, because they were not very used at all in the first 175 years of our country, and they've only become dominant in the last maybe 15, 20, years," he said.

"By the way, this shouldn't be a partisan issue as well, because Democrats in the Biden administration were condemning judges that were putting national injunctions in and we need to make sure that hopefully this becomes a bipartisan issue. I don't know that it will, but it ought to," he added.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., predicted that the Supreme Court would ultimately decide the future of nationwide injunctions issued by district judges. Blackburn noted that there were 15 nationwide injunctions against Trump  in the month of February and only 14 nationwide injunctions during former President Joe Biden's entire for four years in office.

"I am certainly that Chief Justice Roberts will do that. In addition to that, it is important to realize that there is zero constitutional authority and zero statutorial authority that allows a federal district judge to issue a nationwide injunction," she said on the "Just the News, Not Noise" TV program.

"We know that a federal district judge is limited in scope to the case that is in front of him and the district in which he is seated. And for these district judges to think that they can do a universal injunction and have it stand is something that is activist activity," she added.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a House Judiciary Committee member, introduced the "No Rogue Rulings Act," which would prevent a U.S. district court from issuing any "order providing for injunctive relief, except in the case of such an order that is applicable only to limit the actions of a party to the case before such district court with respect to the party seeking injunctive relief from such district court." 

The bill was amended prior to passing out of the committee. The current version of the bill would allow Congress to "establish a three-judge panel or other lower court responsible for issuing national injunctions so that this power could no longer be wielded by a single, rogue judge," as noted by the American First Policy Institute.

Democrats have defended the record number of nationwide injunctions by calling the current government criminal. "If the number of decisions striking down Trump illegalities is striking today, it’s only because the sheer number of illegal acts committed in the first 100 days is unprecedented," Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said at a recent House hearing.