Editing Injunction (section)

====History====
Injunctions have been especially important at two moments in American history.

First, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, federal courts used injunctions to break strikes by unions. For example, after the [[United States government]] successfully used an injunction to outlaw the [[Pullman Strike|Pullman]] boycott in 1894 in ''[[In re Debs]]'', employers found that they could obtain [[United States federal courts|federal court]] injunctions to ban strikes and organizing activities of all kinds by [[trade union|unions]]. These injunctions were often extremely broad; one injunction issued by a federal court in the 1920s effectively barred the [[United Mine Workers of America]] from talking to workers who had signed [[Yellow Dog contract|yellow dog]] contracts with their employers. Unable to limit what they called "government by injunction" in the courts, labor and its allies persuaded the [[United States Congress]] in 1932 to pass the [[Norris-LaGuardia Act]], which imposed so many procedural and substantive limits on the federal courts' power to issue injunctions that it effectively prohibited federal court from issuing injunctions in cases arising out of labor disputes. A number of states followed suit and enacted "Little Norris-LaGuardia Acts" that imposed similar limitations on state courts' powers. The courts have since recognized a limited exception to the Norris-LaGuardia Act's strict limitations in those cases in which a party seeks injunctive relief to enforce the [[grievance (labour)|grievance]] [[arbitration]] provisions of a [[collective bargaining]] [[Contract|agreement]].

Second, injunctions were crucial to the second half of the twentieth century in the desegregation of American schools. Federal courts gave injunctions that carried out the command of ''[[Brown v Board of Education]]'' to integrate public schools in the United States, and at times courts took over the management of public schools in order to ensure compliance. (An injunction that puts a court in the position of taking over and administering an institution—such as a school, a prison, or a hospital—is often called a "[[structural injunction]]".)

Injunctions remain widely used to require government officials to comply with the Constitution, and they are also frequently used in private law disputes about intellectual property, real property, and contracts. Many state and federal statutes, including [[Environmental law|environmental statutes]], [[Civil rights law|civil rights statutes]] and [[Employment discrimination law in the United States|employment-discrimination statutes]], are enforced with injunctions.

In ''[[Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo, S.A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc.]]'' (1999), the Supreme Court stated that the scope of federal injunctive relief is constrained by the limits on equitable remedies that existed in the English [[Court of Chancery]] around 1789.

In 2025, United States Attorney General [[Pam Bondi]] and other Justice Department officials argued in a court filing that "an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction", after the [[Second presidency of Donald Trump|second Trump administration]] completed deportation flights despite a federal judge verbally ordering the flights to be returned to the United States.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Wolfe |first1=Jan |title=Trump Administration Defends Deportation Flights After Court Order |url=https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-administration-defends-deportation-flights-after-court-order-72de8008 |access-date=March 20, 2025 |work=The Wall Street Journal |date=March 17, 2025 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20250317212433/https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-administration-defends-deportation-flights-after-court-order-72de8008 |archive-date=March 17, 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Jansen |first1=Bart |title=Government lawyers argue oral orders not enforceable |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/17/trump-deportation-alien-enemies-act-live-updates/82487553007/ |access-date=March 20, 2025 |work=USA Today |date=March 18, 2025}}</ref>