Last week, we wrote that concerns about excessive, unchecked executive branch power resulting from the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA—which declared universal/nationwide injunctions likely exceeded district courts’ equitable authority under FRCP 65—felt premature, because there were a number of other levers district courts could pull to deliver the equivalent of nationwide injunctive relief. We discussed how Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) is one such lever. That section authorizes courts to “postpone the effective date” of a challenged agency action pending judicial review utilizing the same four-factor test applicable to requests for injunctive relief.
Two days after our writing, in Cabrera v. U.S. Department of Labor, Judge Dabney Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in an action brought by seven individual plaintiffs, issued a preliminary stay of a Department of Labor (DOL) initiative to close 99 Job Corps Centers nationwide. To do so, the Cabrera court invoked its authority under Section 705 of the APA after applying the four-factor injunctive relief test.
Meet the new nationwide injunction (hiding in plain sight for decades). Same as the old nationwide injunction.
Cabrera considered a May 29, 2025 DOL announcement that it would terminate contracts to operate 99 Job Corps Centers, resulting in their closures no later than June 30, 2025. Job Corps is a program established by the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act (WIOA) to provide disadvantaged youth with educational and technical training to allow them to enter the labor force; the centers to be shuttered provide the academic and vocational training contemplated by the program, as well as housing for Job Corps program enrollees.
On June 18, 2025, seven Job Corps student enrollees filed a lawsuit challenging the closures, both on their behalf and a putative class of student enrollees at all 99 centers to be closed. The plaintiffs alleged the closures were arbitrary and capricious, exceeded statutory authority, and violated procedural requirements detailed in the WIOA, all in violation of the APA. The plaintiffs sought either a preliminary injunction ordering the reopening of the centers that had been closed and a resumption of the program or, alternatively, a stay of the closures pursuant to Section 705 of the APA.
In granting the requested stay, after concluding that it had jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ claims and plaintiffs had standing to bring them, the Cabrera court walked through the four-factor test for injunctive relief. It ruled the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims because the WIOA outlined specific circumstances and procedures for the closure of Job Corps centers, which DOL had not followed. The court also found the plaintiffs had established irreparable harm resulting from the closures in the form of a loss of essential services—e.g., housing, healthcare, vocational and educational opportunities—and that plaintiffs’ harm outweighed any asserted by DOL.
Crafting a remedy in the face of DOL’s CASA-based arguments against extension of an injunction beyond the plaintiffs, the Cabrera court explained that “the scope of relief under the APA is not party-restricted.” Instead, the APA “specif[ies] what courts are authorized to do with respect to agency actions, not parties.” (Emphasis in original.) And referencing Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Corner Post, Inc. (as did we in our recent article), the Cabrera court explained there was “good reason to think that Congress did not intend to wholly incorporate traditional equitable principles when specifying the kinds of relief a court may grant under the APA.” Accordingly, the Cabrera court entered a stay of DOL’s termination initiative pursuant to Section 705 of the APA. (Notably, because the Cabrera court did not issue an injunction under FRCP 65, it rejected DOL’s request that plaintiffs post a bond, because the APA contains no such requirement.)
DOL will likely appeal the Cabrera decision, and the question of whether Section 705 of the APA allows district courts to award the universal relief CASA constrained is all but certain to make its way to the Supreme Court. But in the meantime, Cabrera provides an important, immediate reminder that while CASA may have restricted one form of universal preliminary relief, it guided litigants toward another, equally powerful one: the APA.