Fix the Court has long supported legislative proposals that aim to curb nationwide injunctions.

Since there are a lot of proposals on this out there, we want to put down a marker as to the principles such legislation should adhere to:

1. Transparency: Lawsuits seeking to stop a law, regulation or policy from going into effect nationally must not hide the ball and must say so in the filing.

2. Procedural clarity: These lawsuits may, of course, be filed in any district, or division within a district, in the country. That said, once they’re filed, the clerk of the court where they’re filed must randomly assign them to a three-judge panel within the district, similar to what exists for suits challenging congressional boundaries under federal law (28 U.S.C. §2284). Currently, lawsuits for which three-judge district court panels are convened are directly appealable to the Supreme Court (see 28 U.S.C. §1253), and that’d be the case here, too.

3. Fairness: The effective date of the law should be Jan. 21, 2029, or later. GOP-appointed judges issued plenty of injunctions against Obama and Biden policies, and Democratic appointees have issued and will issue injunctions against Trump directives. In order to get buy-in from both parties on this proposal, it would need to go into effect at a future date on which the identity of the President is unknown.