Classwide Relief After CASA

Rule 23(b)(2) Classes and APA Vacatur After Trump v. CASA

In Trump v. CASA, Inc., 145 S.Ct. 2540 (U.S. 2025), the Supreme Court held that "[u]niversal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts" and stayed the birthright-citizenship injunctions "to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue." The Court explained that "‘complete relief’ is not synonymous with ‘universal relief’"; complete relief is instead "a narrower concept, long embraced in the equitable tradition, that allows courts to ‘administer complete relief between the parties’"; and it reasoned that "[b]y forging a shortcut to relief that benefits parties and nonparties alike, universal injunctions impermissibly circumvent Rule 23’s procedural protections." In a concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh identified two mechanisms that in his view remain available after the decision: plaintiffs challenging federal action "may sometimes seek to proceed by class action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) and ask a court to award preliminary classwide relief that may, for example, be statewide, regionwide, or even nationwide," and in APA cases "plaintiffs may ask a court to preliminarily ‘set aside’ a new agency rule."

The first mechanism is class certification under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23. Subdivision (b)(2) permits certification where "the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds that apply generally to the class, so that final injunctive relief or corresponding declaratory relief is appropriate respecting the class as a whole", and the plaintiffs challenging the birthright-citizenship order invoked that standard within two weeks of CASA. Barbara v. Trump, 790 F.Supp.3d 80 (D.N.H. 2025) provisionally certified a nationwide class of children targeted by Executive Order 14160 and preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the order on a classwide basis. The court explained that "[c]ourts routinely grant provisional class certification for purposes of entering injunctive relief" but that "‘[p]rovisional’ certification does not lower the bar with respect to the Rule 23(a) and (b) standards; the court must conduct a rigorous inquiry and satisfy itself that the putative class meets those requirements." The court concluded that "[t]he inclusion of future class members in a class is not itself unusual or objectionable" because "[w]hen the future persons referenced become members of the class, their claims will necessarily be ripe", and it found that "the denial of citizenship status to newborns, even temporarily, constitutes irreparable harm." The court also acknowledged CASA’s admonition that "district courts should not view today’s decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors of Rule 23."

The second mechanism is statutory review under the Administrative Procedure Act. 5 U.S.C. § 706 provides that "[t]he reviewing court shall" "hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be" "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law" or "contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity", relief that operates on the agency action itself rather than against particular parties. Five days after CASA, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services v. Noem, 793 F.Supp.3d 19 (D.D.C. 2025) certified a Rule 23(b)(2) class and vacated the guidance implementing the asylum-shutdown proclamation. The court reasoned that "the APA typically mandates that the Court ‘shall’ ‘set aside’ the challenged ‘agency action’" and that "under the plain language of the APA, the Court must ‘annul or vacate’ the unlawful agency action", and it rejected the government’s jurisdictional objection because § 1252(f)(1) "does not, in any event, limit the Court’s authority to vacate unlawful agency action under the APA" and because "the availability of those remedies alone establishes redressability." The certification analysis applied the standard from Dukes: "[t]he key to the (b)(2) class is the indivisible nature of the injunctive or declaratory remedy warranted—the notion that the conduct is such that it can be enjoined or declared unlawful only as to all of the class members or as to none of them."

The district courts that have addressed the question have uniformly held that CASA does not limit relief under the APA. Doe v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-15483 (N.D. Ill. Jan 23, 2026) postponed the termination of Burma’s TPS designation and held that CASA’s "historical analysis of the equitable authority that federal courts inherited under the Judiciary Act of 1789" "does not necessarily define the federal courts’ authority under the APA, an entirely different statute that Congress enacted a century and a half later"; courts, it observed, "have thus long understood section 706 to authorize ‘vacatur’—vacating the agency action itself, rather than enjoining enforcement of the action against specific plaintiffs." Later decisions have applied the same reasoning at final judgment. Pablo Sequen v. Albarran, No. 5:25-cv-06487 (N.D. Cal. Jun 23, 2026) granted final class certification and vacated ICE courthouse-arrest policies, holding that "[t]he reasoning and holding in CASA were grounded in and limited to the statute at issue there" and that the opinion "says nothing that calls into question the longstanding practice of vacating agency action under the APA". The court noted that "vacatur and remand is the default remedy under the APA," and that "[m]ultiple district courts in this circuit have concluded that full vacatur remains an available remedy in the wake of CASA." It rejected relief limited to the named plaintiffs as inconsistent with the statutory text, concluding that "[p]rohibiting the enforcement of the challenged policies only against particular individuals would not comply with" Congress’s "instruction to ‘set aside’ the policies themselves."

Because the decisions to date treat Rule 23(b)(2) certification and vacatur under the APA as independent sources of authority for relief extending beyond the named plaintiffs, the scope of relief available in a given case depends on which mechanism the complaint supports, and the two are frequently pleaded together. In the cases granting early classwide relief, provisional certification was sought and decided together with the motion for a preliminary injunction, and the courts applied the requirements of numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy with the same rigor at the provisional stage as at final certification; a class defined by the terms of the challenged policy itself is the most likely to present the indivisible remedy that Rule 23(b)(2) contemplates. The APA remedies are available only where the operative measure is agency action — implementing guidance, a rule, or a TPS designation, rather than an executive order standing alone — which is also why the decisions granting them run against the implementing officials rather than the President, and the two provisions differ in effect: vacatur under § 706 is a final remedy that nullifies the action itself, while postponement under § 705 is interim relief pending judicial review. To the government’s recurring argument that CASA forecloses these remedies, the district courts have given a consistent answer — CASA construed the equitable authority conferred by the Judiciary Act of 1789, and the APA is a different statute with a different command.