Sen. Chuck Grassley Introduces ‘Judicial Relief Clarification Act’ to Rein in Activist Judges

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced a proposal Monday to rein in judicial injunctions like the ones currently hampering President Donald Trump’s popular MAGA agenda.

The Judicial Relief Clarification Act of 2025 (JRCA) would “limit federal court orders to parties directly before the court, ending the practice of universal injunctions,” according to a Judiciary Committee Majority press release. The bill also aims to clarify the constitutional role of the judicial branch.

1. Forbids federal courts from issuing sweeping relief against the government to persons not before the court—ending the practice of universal injunctions and diminishing the incentive to forum shop for a sympathetic judge.

2. Requires parties seeking universal relief against the government to use the class action process to show that class-wide relief is proper.

3. Makes temporary restraining orders (TROs) immediately appealable, strengthening appellate review.

4. Amends the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and Declaratory Judgment Act to clarify that courts may only issue relief under those statutes to parties before the court.

Sen. Grassley will hold a hearing Wednesday to discuss his “legislative solutions to the bipartisan problem of universal injunctions.”

The proposal comes after a slew of district court rulings and orders blocked multiple key Trump administration objectives, including efforts to end birthright citizenship, terminate federal grants, end DEI initiatives and use a wartime law to deport criminal illegal immigrants.

President Trump has railed against the rulings, accusing the judges of usurping his executive authorities.

In an oped in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, Grassley wrote: “these nationwide injunctions have become a favorite tool for those seeking to obstruct Mr. Trump’s agenda.”

More than two-thirds of all universal injunctions issued over the past 25 years were levied against the first Trump administration. In the past two months alone, judges have issued at least 15 universal injunctions against the administration—surpassing the 14 President Biden faced throughout his four-year term.

“These decisions also place undue stress on the judicial system by inserting political calculation into the selection of the judges and the resolution of disputes,” the senator wrote.

Grassley pointed out that this judicial overreach has occurred amid an NBC poll showing that “more registered voters believe our country is on the right track than at any other point in the past two decades.”

“For a number of years, but particularly in the last few months, we’ve increasingly seen sweeping orders from individual district judges that dictate national policy,” he said in a statement, Monday.

“Our Founders saw an important role for the judiciary, but the Constitution limits judges to exercising power over ‘cases’ or ‘controversies.’ Judges are not policymakers, and allowing them to assume this role is very dangerous,” Grassley said. “The Judicial Relief Clarification Act clarifies the scope of judicial power and resolves illegitimate judicial infringement upon the executive branch. It’s a commonsense bill that’s needed to provide long-term constitutional clarity and curb district courts’ growing tendency to overstep by issuing sweeping, nationwide orders.”

The bill is cosponsored by Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.).

Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160 (1948)

No question has been raised as to the validity of these administrative actions taken pursuant to Presidential Proclamation 2526, dated December 8, 1941, 6 Fed.Reg. 6323, issued under the authority of the Alien Enemy Act.

The order recited that the petitioner was deemed dangerous on the basis of the evidence adduced at hearings before the Alien Enemy Hearing Board on January 16, 1942, and the Repatriation Hearing Board on December 17, 1945. The district court which examined these proceedings found that petitioner had notice and a fair hearing, and that the evidence was substantial.

The district court found that:
“The petitioner was born in Berlin, Germany, on February 5, 1890. He was out of Germany for most of the period of 1923 to March, 1933. He returned to Germany in March, 1933, and became a member of the Nazi party. Later he had some disagreements with other members, and, as a result, he was sent to a German concentration camp, from which he escaped March 1, 1934, after being confined for over eight months. Sometime thereafter, he came to this country and published a book, ‘I Knew Hitler’ [’The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped The Blood Purge’ — ‘In memory of Captain Ernst Roehm and Gregor Strasser and many other Nazis who were betrayed, murdered, and traduced in their graves’], in 1937. His petition for naturalization as an American citizen was denied December 18, 1939.”

The petitioner’s attitude was thus expressed in his brief before the district court:
“Fundamentally, it matters not where I live, for I can strive to live the right life and be of service where ever I am. Besides, it may well be a better thing to do the best I can while I can in the midst of a defeated people suffering in body and soul than to be a futile and frustrated something in the midst of a triumphant people breathing the foul air of self-complacency, hypocrisy, and self-deceit.”

dissent extracts from
Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160 (1948):

MR. JUSTICE BLACK, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, MR. JUSTICE MURPHY and MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE join, dissenting.
The petition for habeas corpus in this case alleged that petitioner, a legally admitted resident of the United States, was about to be deported from this country to Germany as a “dangerous” alien enemy, without having been afforded notice and a fair hearing to determine whether he was “dangerous.” The Court now holds, as the Government argued, that, because of a presidential proclamation, petitioner can be deported by the Attorney General’s order without any judicial inquiry whatever into the truth of his allegations. The Court goes further and holds, as I understand its opinion, that the Attorney General can deport him whether he is dangerous or not. The effect of this holding is that any unnaturalized person, good or bad, loyal or disloyal to this country, if he was a citizen of Germany before coming here, can be summarily seized, interned, and deported from the United States by the Attorney General, and that no court of the United States has any power whatever to review, modify, vacate, reverse, or in any manner affect the Attorney General’s deportation order. MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS has given reasons in his dissenting opinion why he believes that deportation of aliens, without notice and hearing, whether, in peace or war, would be a denial of due process of law. I agree with MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS for many of the reasons he gives that deportation of petitioner without a fair hearing as determined by judicial review is a denial of due process of law. But I do not reach the question of power to deport aliens of countries with which we are at war while we are at war, because I think the idea that we are still at war with Germany in the sense contemplated by the statute controlling here is a pure fiction. Furthermore, I think there is no act of Congress which lends the slightest basis to the claim that, after hostilities with a foreign country have ended, the President or the Attorney General, one or both, can deport aliens without a fair hearing reviewable in the courts. On the contrary, when this very question came before Congress after World War I in the interval between the Armistice and the conclusion of formal peace with Germany, Congress unequivocally required that enemy aliens be given a fair hearing before they could be deported.

The Court relies on the Alien Enemy Act of 1798. 1 Stat. 577, 50 U.S.C. §§ 21-24. That Act did grant extraordinarily broad powers to the President to restrain and “to provide for the removal” of aliens who owe allegiance to a foreign government, but such action is authorized only “whenever there is a declared war between the United States” and such foreign government, or in the event that foreign government attempts or threatens the United States with “any invasion or predatory incursion.”

The powers given to the President by this statute, I may assume for my purposes, are sufficiently broad to have authorized the President, acting through the Attorney General, to deport alien Germans from this country while the “declared” second World War was actually going on, or while there was real danger of invasion from Germany.

Mr. Otis, who was most persistent in his expressions of anti-French sentiments and in his aggressive sponsorship of this and its companion Alien and Sedition Acts, is recorded as saying
“. . . that, in a time of tranquility, he should not desire to put a power like this into the hands of the Executive; but, in a time of war, the citizens of France ought to be considered and treated and watched in a very different manner from citizens of our own country.”

For nearly 150 years after the 1798 Act, there never came to this Court any case in which the Government asked that the Act be interpreted so as to allow the President or any other person to deport alien enemies without allowing them access to the courts. In fact, less than two months after the end of the actual fighting in the first Word War, Attorney General Gregory informed the Congress that, although there was power to continue the internment of alien enemies after the cessation of actual hostilities and until the ratification of a peace treaty, still there was no statute under which they could then be deported. For this reason, the Attorney General requested Congress to enact new legislation to authorize deportation of enemy aliens at that time.

A bill to carry out the recommendations of the Wilson administration was later passed, 41 Stat. 593 (1920), but not until it had been amended on the floor of the House of Representatives to require that all alien enemies be given a fair hearing before their deportation. 58 Cong.Rec. 3366. That a fair hearing was the command of Congress is not only shown by the language of the Act, but by the text of the congressional hearings, by the committee reports, and by congressional debates on the bill. In fact, the House was assured by the ranking member of the Committee reporting the bill that, in hearings to deport alien enemies under the bill, “a man is entitled to have counsel present, entitled to subpoena witnesses and summon them before him and have a full hearing at which the stenographer’s minutes must be taken.”

the purpose of deportation, so far as it was authorized (if authorized) under the 1798 Act, was not to protect the United States from ideas of aliens after a war or threatened invasion, but to protect the United States against sabotage, etc., during a war or threatened invasion.

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom MR. JUSTICE MURPHY and MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE, concur, dissenting.

It is undisputed that, in peacetime, an alien is protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U. S. 228.

In deportation proceedings, due process requires reasonable notice (Tisi v. Tod, 264 U. S. 131, 264 U. S. 134), a fair hearing (Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135, 326 U. S. 156; Chin Yow v. United States, 208 U. S. 8, 208 U. S. 12; Low Wah Suey v. Backus, 225 U. S. 460), and an order supported by some evidence. Vajtauer v. Commissioner, supra, p. 273 U. S. 106; Zakonaite v. Wolf, 226 U. S. 272, 226 U. S. 274. And see Kwock Jan Fat v. White, 253 U. S. 454.

The rule of those cases is not restricted to instances where Congress itself has provided for a hearing. The Japanese Immigrant Case, 189 U. S. 86, decided in 1903, so held. The Court in that case held that due process required that deportation be had only after notice and hearing, even though there, as here, the statute prescribed no such procedure, but entrusted the matter wholly to an executive officer.

See United States ex rel. Schlueter v. Watkins, 67 F. Supp. 556, aff’d, 158 F.2d 853;

In the Schlueter case, it was held that the Constitution and the statute do not require a hearing, and thus an alien enemy cannot complain of the character of the hearing he did receive. 67 F. Supp. at 565.

The Court said, 189 U.S. p. 189 U. S. 101:
“. . . no person shall be deprived of his liberty without opportunity at some time, to be heard before such officers in respect of the matters upon which that liberty depends — not necessarily an opportunity upon a regular, set occasion, and according to the forms of judicial procedure, but one that will secure the prompt, vigorous action contemplated by Congress, and at the same time be appropriate to the nature of the case upon which such officers are required to act. Therefore it is not competent for the Secretary of the Treasury or any executive officer at any time within the year limited by the statute arbitrarily to cause an alien who has entered the country, and has become subject in all respects to its jurisdiction, and a part of its population, although alleged to be illegally here, to be taken into custody and deported without giving him all opportunity to be heard upon the questions involving his right to be and remain in the United States. No such arbitrary power can exist where the principles involved in due process of law are recognized.”

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/335/160/

50 USC

CHAPTER 3—ALIEN ENEMIES
Sec.
21.Restraint, regulation, and removal.
22.Time allowed to settle affairs and depart.
23.Jurisdiction of United States courts and judges.
24.Duties of marshals.

§21. Restraint, regulation, and removal
Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies. The President is authorized in any such event, by his proclamation thereof, or other public act, to direct the conduct to be observed on the part of the United States, toward the aliens who become so liable; the manner and degree of the restraint to which they shall be subject and in what cases, and upon what security their residence shall be permitted, and to provide for the removal of those who, not being permitted to reside within the United States, refuse or neglect to depart therefrom; and to establish any other regulations which are found necessary in the premises and for the public safety.

§22. Time allowed to settle affairs and depart
When an alien who becomes liable as an enemy, in the manner prescribed in section 21 of this title, is not chargeable with actual hostility, or other crime against the public safety, he shall be allowed, for the recovery, disposal, and removal of his goods and effects, and for his departure, the full time which is or shall be stipulated by any treaty then in force between the United States and the hostile nation or government of which he is a native citizen, denizen, or subject; and where no such treaty exists, or is in force, the President may ascertain and declare such reasonable time as may be consistent with the public safety, and according to the dictates of humanity and national hospitality.

§23. Jurisdiction of United States courts and judges
After any such proclamation has been made, the several courts of the United States, having criminal jurisdiction, and the several justices and judges of the courts of the United States, are authorized and it shall be their duty, upon complaint against any alien enemy resident and at large within such jurisdiction or district, to the danger of the public peace or safety, and contrary to the tenor or intent of such proclamation, or other regulations which the President may have established, to cause such alien to be duly apprehended and conveyed before such court, judge, or justice; and after a full examination and hearing on such complaint, and sufficient cause appearing, to order such alien to be removed out of the territory of the United States, or to give sureties for his good behavior, or to be otherwise restrained, conformably to the proclamation or regulations established as aforesaid, and to imprison, or otherwise secure such alien, until the order which may be so made shall be performed.

§24. Duties of marshals
When an alien enemy is required by the President, or by order of any court, judge, or justice, to depart and to be removed, it shall be the duty of the marshal of the district in which he shall be apprehended to provide therefor and to execute such order in person, or by his deputy or other discreet person to be employed by him, by causing a removal of such alien out of the territory of the United States; and for such removal the marshal shall have the warrant of the President, or of the court, judge, or justice ordering the same, as the case may be.

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title50/chapter3&edition=prelim

That’s current law.

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