The end of the Supreme Court term ends nationwide injunctions in federal courts…

In late June, in Trump v. CASA, Inc., a divided U.S. Supreme Court put the kibosh on so-called universal injunctions by federal district judges, holding that such broad injunctions lack a “historical pedigree” and are “outside the bounds of a federal court’s equitable authority under the Judiciary Act.” The majority opinion by Justice Barrett drew stinging dissents from Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, who agreed that the holding “renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit.” It was fascinating to read the separate opinions in Trump v. CASA and to see such a fundamental disagreement among the Justices about the equitable powers of federal courts.

…but what about statewide injunctions in state court…?

As I finished reading Trump v. CASA, the thought occurred to me that I did not know off the top of my head whether common pleas courts in my own state of Ohio are authorized to issue statewide injunctions. This seemed to me like the kind of question any Ohio attorney worth his or her salt should know the answer to. Sadly, my addled (and more than middle-aged) brain could not immediately recall the “right” answer.

…does artificial intelligence know the Ohio rule…?

It then occurred to me that asking this question  of a Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Large Language Model (LLM) not only would give me a quick answer to what seems like a relatively straightforward question but also would allow me to brush up on a current, hip technological medium. And maybe even help me avoid some of those “OK, Boomer” epithets from my Gen-Z kids.

Because my law firm carefully regulates the use of GenAI by attorneys, and prohibits GenAI use whenever clients say so, I have had relatively little personal experience creating and refining AI prompts and analyzing the responses to those prompts by the various LLMs currently available. I’m also not the kind of guy who, when the workday is over, runs home to a computer and waits breathlessly for OpenAI to release the next iteration of ChatGPT so that I can “chat” with the latest and greatest version of an inanimate entity that is millions of times smarter and faster than I am. The responses I received from three different GenAI models to my simple query (“Does an Ohio common pleas court have authority to issue a statewide injunction?”) reassured me that, at least for now, the critical research skills of human lawyers still have a meaningful place in the world when it comes to answering questions for clients and/or arguing points to judges. Below I quote the key portions of responses to that same, deceptively “simple” question – does an Ohio common pleas court have authority to issue a statewide injunction? – from three different LLMs that I queried: 

• Microsoft Copilot: The first sentence of Copilot’s response gave me a variation on the classic lawyer answer, “it depends,” saying: “[u]nder Ohio law, a court of common pleas does have the authority to issue injunctions, but its jurisdiction is generally limited to its own county.” (Emphasis added). My immediate reaction to this response was to wonder about exceptions to that general limitation and Copilot did not immediately identify any, which left me hanging until I asked follow-up questions.

Notably, when I asked Copilot the very same question the very next day – does an Ohio common pleas court have authority to issue a statewide injunction? – I got a more definitive answer than I did the first time. Copilot then said, “[a]n Ohio common pleas court does not have the authority to issue a statewide injunction. Common pleas courts in Ohio are trial courts with jurisdiction limited to their respective counties.” (Emphasis added). Once again, though, when I asked a follow-up question, Copilot acknowledged “there can be exceptions in certain circumstances,” and “if a case involves a matter of significant public interest or a statewide issue, a common pleas court might issue an order that has broader implications.”

Copilot’s responses convinced me that I could perhaps forgive myself for not immediately knowing the “answer” to the (seemingly) yes or no question about Ohio law that Trump v. CASA had implanted in my mind.

• Gemini: Google’s free GenAI model responded to my query in another indeterminate fashion, saying that “[i]n Ohio, the authority of a Common Pleas Court to issue a statewide injunction is a complex and highly debated legal issue. While these courts have broad ‘general jurisdiction’ over ‘all justiciable matters,’ the question of whether this includes the power to issue injunctions that apply to the entire state has been a subject of significant legal challenges and debate, particularly in recent years.” (Emphasis added).

• ChatGPT: OpenAI’s free version of ChatGPT, which I’ve heard can be a bit “sycophantic” toward its human users, first flattered me for asking a “great question,” then equivocated to say that “[i]n practice: Ohio common pleas courts do issue statewide injunctions, especially in cases challenging state statutes or regulations. Whether they should is sometimes disputed, but they are not strictly limited to county-only injunctions.” (Emphasis added). OK, clear as mud!

These are only brief excerpts from the three LLMs’ responses to my identical question about the authority of Ohio’s common pleas judges to issue statewide injunctions. And to be fair, all three LLMs I queried provided substantial additional content about the issue, offered to pull up related cases, etcetera. All three LLMs also linked to an Ohio Supreme Court entry last summer in which Justice DeWine, in a concurring opinion, criticized universal injunctions. But that was a concurring opinion, and I couldn’t help but think that those with short attention spans could be attracted to – and perhaps misled by – the initial “answers” the LLMs gave to a question that is more complicated than it appears on the surface.

For those interested in reading more about statewide injunctions, a couple of the LLMs that I queried recommended an article called Universal Injunctions in State Courts by law professor Constance Van Kley, which was published soon after Trump v. CASA. Professor Van Kley writes that the outcome in CASA should not necessarily control how individual states answer the question that I posed to the LLMs. It’s an interesting read, and I’m sure all the LLMs have already been “trained” on it, along with millions of other post-CASA data points taking assorted positions on the issue. Only time will tell how that training will evolve into new, future responses from GenAI to the basic – or maybe not-so-basic – question I posed about statewide injunctions in Ohio.