[T]he Supreme Court’s June 2025 Trump v. CASA decision... held that so-called “universal injunctions” “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts.” Because of this decision, the government and some courts are limiting the application of relief, sometimes only to named plaintiffs such as FPC and its members.
Two important such victories have occurred lately: Hoffman v. Bonta held that California cannot deny FPC members and other plaintiffs the right to use non-resident carry permits. That means that if you are a resident of another state who has to travel into California, you can as an FPC member compel California to process you for a non-resident carry permit there. Meanwhile the just-decided FPC v. Bondi compels all states and the Federal government not to enforce Post Office carry restrictions against FPC members.
FPC has responded by creating a secure site for members to download an ID card identifying them as such, so they can make use of these legal victories. Membership is cheap, and funds the effort to repeal bad gun control laws through lawsuits like these.
This points to a general principle of resisting government or corporate power through civil organizations that aim at human liberty. Just as some fight for freedom of speech, and others for freedom of the right to keep and bear arms, and others to hold the government to privacy laws or to prevent unconstitutional searches or arrests, these civic organizations have proven to be a major force historically in holding the line. Or even in expanding it: our modern 1st Amendment freedoms did not exist a hundred years ago, until they were won in courts by anarchist organizations and their lawyers, as Michael Willrich demonstrated compellingly in his history American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. Whether or not one agrees with their general thrust politically, we would all be much poorer in freedoms if it hadn't been for the work of such organizations a hundred years since.
FPC does good work. We're lucky they're out there.
I do not understand how a court can create two legal classes of citizen.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, one class allowed to exercise a constitutional right in a Post Office, and the other prohibited.
Something is very wrong.
A good point, however, the end to courts issuing broad nationwide injunctions is also a good thing. Once the appeals are finalized, it will presumably be resolved one way or the other for the reasons you suggest; during the process, however, the court has issued an injunction against enforcement that is limited to the plaintiffs only.
ReplyDeleteI do not understand how a court can create two legal classes of citizen.
ReplyDeleteDistrict courts have always done that with their rulings prior to their abuse of universal injunctions, albeit by limiting their rulings to those in their district (or regions in the case of appellate courts).
That this is (I claim) some district court judges throwing temper tantrums by over-limiting the reach of their rulings in a manner originally reserved for settlements doesn't obviate the fact (again, I claim) that the restrictions on universal injunctions at the district level is a net gain.
Eric Hines
I will correct you slightly- they existed, as they always have by God, but the government unjustly denied them to some extent until a hundred years ago.
ReplyDelete"...they existed, as they always have by God..."
ReplyDeleteI agree with that, although the right to speak freely did exist in a form at that time: before the early 20th century law cases, it only barred prior restraint. Once you said something, you could be punished at law for it -- and especially during WWI, the list of things you could be punished for saying was extravagantly long.
The WWI list was especially atrocious given the political restrictions, as political speech -- especially dissenting speech -- was the real point of the First Amendment. You were free to criticize the President or the Navy, provided you didn't mind going to prison for it. That's not quite what I think the Founders, or God, might have intended.
Even before the war, there were limits we wouldn't accept today that seemed appropriate to the governing class at the time. Giving accurate medical information about the use of condoms, for example, was considered akin to pornography; and of course, actual pornography was on the list. The famous example that people still confidently cite about being unfree to shout 'fire!' in a crowded theater existed at that time too, since replaced with a saner standard.