By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -U.S. Senate Republicans have added language to President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill that would restrict the ability of judges to block government policies they conclude are unlawful.
Text of the Republican-led U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s contribution to the bill released by its chair, Senator Chuck Grassley, late on Thursday would limit the ability of judges to issue preliminary injunctions blocking federal policies unless the party suing posts a bond to cover the government’s costs if the ruling is later overturned.
The bond requirement in the Senate’s version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is different from the provision the Republican-controlled House of Representatives included when it passed the bill last month that would curb courts’ power in a different way.
The House version curtails the ability of judges to enforce orders holding officials in contempt if they violate injunctions. Judges use contempt orders to bring parties into compliance, usually by ratcheting up measures from fines to jail time. Some judges who have blocked Trump administration actions have said officials are at risk of being held in contempt for not complying with their orders.
Congressional Republicans have called for banning or curtailing nationwide injunctions blocking government policies after key parts of Trump’s agenda have been stymied by such court rulings. The House in April voted 219-213 along largely party lines in favor of the No Rogue Rulings Act to do so, but the Senate has not yet taken up the measure.
A White House memo in March directed heads of government agencies to request that plaintiffs post bonds if they are seeking an injunction against an agency policy. Such bonds can make obtaining an injunction a cost-prohibitive option in cases concerning multi-billion-dollar agenda items.
Grassley’s office said in a statement the language the Judiciary Committee proposed would ensure judges enforce an existing requirement that they make a party seeking a preliminary injunction provide a security bond to cover costs incurred by a defendant if a judge’s ruling is later overturned.
Judges rarely require such bonds when a lawsuit is not pitting two private parties against each other but instead challenging an alleged unlawful or unconstitutional government action. Several judges have denied the Trump administration’s requests for bonds or issued nominal ones.
Republicans, who control the Senate 53-47, are using complex budget rules to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with a simple majority vote, rather than the 60 votes needed to advance most legislation in the 100-seat chamber.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s piece of the bill would also provide the judiciary funding to study the costs to taxpayers associated with such injunctions and provide training for judges about the problems associated with them.
A spokesperson for Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, criticized the Republican-drafted legislative text, saying “Republicans are targeting nationwide injunctions because they’re beholden to a president who is breaking the law — but the courts are not.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Rod Nickel)
