Chapter § 6.04 Actions for Injunctive Relief

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Publication year: 2020

§ 6.04 Actions for Injunctive Relief

Before 1976, “it was nearly impossible to get an injunction against the United States.”¹⁹¹ Injunctions were at times available against government officials, but “courts used the sovereign immunity doctrine and the principle of indispensable parties to dismiss actions against officials that crossed the line into suits against the government.”¹⁹² But, in 1976, Congress revised the Administrative Procedures Act (the “APA”) to effect a limited waiver of the government’s sovereign immunity and bar its use of the indispensable party doctrine in the present context. The APA provides that “[a]n action in a court of the United States seeking relief other than money damages and stating a claim that an agency or an officer or employee thereof acted or failed to act in an official capacity or under color of legal authority shall not be dismissed nor relief therein be denied on the ground that it is against the United States or that the United States is an indispensable party.”¹⁹³ The statute also specifies that it does not confer “authority to grant relief if any other statute that grants consent to suit expressly or impliedly forbids the relief which is sought.”¹⁹⁴ The APA adds a further limitation: “Agency action made reviewable by statute and final agency action for which there is no other adequate remedy in a court are subject to judicial review.”¹⁹⁵ As one court explained, “[t]he APA’s waiver is thus tempered by no fewer than three restrictions on suit: (1) the action cannot be for money damages;¹⁹⁶ (2) the action cannot be expressly or impliedly forbidden by another statute; and (3) the action cannot be one for which adequate remedy is available elsewhere.”¹⁹⁷

--------

Notes:

^[191] Paul Frederic Kirgis, Section 1500 and the Jurisdictional Pitfalls of Federal Government Litigation, 47 Am. Univ. L. Rev. 301, 316 (1997) (explaining that, prior to the 1976 amendments to the APA expressly allowing injunctions against the United States, the primary avenue for challenging the United States was the APA-based judicial review of agency action).

^[192] Id.

^[193] 5 U.S.C. § 702.

^[194] Id.

^[195] 5 U.S.C. § 704.

^[196] Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U.S. 879, 904 (1988) has caused confusion over the years regarding the scope of the APA’s waiver of sovereign immunity. In Bowen, the Supreme Court explained that not all monetary relief is necessarily “money damages,” holding that the term “money damages” in the APA is properly understood as...