Editing Injunction (section)

===United States===

====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>

====Forms====
Injunctions in the United States tend to come in three main forms: temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions and permanent injunctions.<ref name="aba">{{cite web|title=Understanding Injunctions|url=https://www.americanbar.org/publications/insights_on_law_andsociety/14/winter-2014/understanding-injunctions.html|website=Insights|publisher=American Bar Association|access-date=6 September 2017|date=Winter 2014}}</ref> For both temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, the goal is usually to preserve the status quo until the court is able to decide the case.

=====Temporary restraining orders=====
A special kind of injunction that may be issued before trial is called a "temporary restraining order" or TRO. A TRO may be issued without notice to the other party or a hearing. A TRO will be given only for a short period of time before a court can schedule a hearing at which the restrained person may appear and contest the order. If the TRO is contested, the court must decide whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Temporary restraining orders are often, but not exclusively, given to prevent domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, or harassment.

=====Preliminary injunctions=====
Preliminary injunctions are given before trial. Because they are issued at an early stage, before the court has heard the evidence and made a decision in the case, they are more rarely given.{{Citation needed|date=April 2025}} The requirements for a preliminary injunction tend to be the same as for a permanent injunction, with the additional requirement that the party asking for the injunction is likely to succeed on the merits.<ref>{{cite web|title=Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7 (2008)|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9332929800353837765|publisher=Google Scholar|access-date=6 September 2017}}</ref>

=====Permanent injunctions=====
Permanent injunctions are issued after trial. Different federal and state courts sometimes have slightly different requirements for obtaining a permanent injunction. The Supreme Court enumerated the traditional four-factor test in ''[[eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C.]]'' as:<ref>{{cite web|title=eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006)|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4819344338954570996|publisher=Google Scholar|access-date=6 September 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=A.W. Chesterton Co., Inc. v. Chesterton, 128 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 1997)|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6847254962391449413|publisher=Google Scholar|access-date=6 September 2017}}</ref>
# the plaintiff has suffered irreparable injury;
# [[Legal remedy|remedies available at law]] are inadequate to compensate that injury;
# considering the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, a [[Equitable remedy|remedy in equity]] is warranted; and
# the public interest would not be disserved by an injunction.

The balance of hardships inquiry is also sometimes called the "undue hardship defense".<ref name="Neglected Defense">{{cite journal |ssrn=2040896 |title=The Neglected Defense of Undue Hardship (and the Doctrinal Train Wreck in Boomer v. Atlantic Cement) |volume=4 |issue=3 |page=1 |journal=[[Journal of Tort Law]] |first=Douglas |last=Laycock|year=2012 |doi=10.1515/1932-9148.1123|s2cid=155015267 }}</ref> A stay pending appeal is a mechanism allowing a losing party to delay enforcement of an injunction while appeal is pending after final judgment has been granted by a lower court.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Pedro|first=Portia|date=2018-06-01|title=Stays|url=https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/335|journal=California Law Review|volume=106|issue=3|pages=869}}</ref>'''{{rp|871}}'''

====Antitrust====

The DOJ and the FTC have investigated patent holders in the United States for seeking preliminary injunctions against accused infringers of [[standard-essential patents]], or patents that the patent holder must license on [[reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing|reasonable and non-discriminatory terms]].<ref>Press Release, U.S. Dep't of Justice, Statement of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division on Its Decision to Close Its Investigation of Samsung's Use of Its Standards-Essential Patents (7 Feb. 2014) [hereinafter DOJ Closes Its Samsung Investigation], available at http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2014/303547.pdf; Decision and Order § IV.D, Robert Bosch GmbH, No. C-4377 (F.T.C. 23 Apr. 2013). {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140407140856/https://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2014/303547.pdf|date=2014-04-07}}</ref> There is an ongoing debate among legal and economic scholars with major implications for antitrust policy in the United States as well as in other countries over the statutory limits to the patent holder's right to seek and obtain injunctive relief against infringers of standard-essential patents.<ref>J. Gregory Sidak, ''Injunctive Relief and the FRAND Commitment in the United States'' at 16, ''forthcoming in'' 1 Cambridge Handbook of Technical Standardization Law: Antitrust and Patents (Jorge L. Contreras ed., Cambridge Univ. Press 2017), https://www.criterioneconomics.com/injunctive-relief-and-the-frand-commitment-in-the-united-states.html.</ref> Citing concerns of the absence of competition facing the patent holder once its technology is locked-in to the [[technical standard|standard]], some scholars argue that the holder of a standard-essential patent should face antitrust liability when seeking an injunction against an implementer of a standard.<ref>Joseph Farrell, John Hayes, Carl Shapiro & Theresa Sullivan, Standard Setting, Patents, and Hold-Up, 74 ANTITRUST L.J. 603 (2007); Jorge L. Contreras, Fixing FRAND: A Pseudo-Pool Approach to Standards-Based Patent Licensing, 79 ANTITRUST L.J. 47 (2013).</ref> Other scholars assert that patent holders are not contractually restrained from pursuing injunctions for standard-essential patent claims and that patent law is already capable of determining whether an injunction against an infringer of standard-essential patents will impose a net cost on consumers, thus obviating the role of antitrust enforcement.<ref>J. Gregory Sidak, ''The Meaning of FRAND, Part II: Injunctions'', 11 J. COMP L. & ECON 201 (2015), https://www.criterioneconomics.com/meaning-of-frand-injunctions-for-standard-essential-patents.html.</ref>