In its ongoing appeal against Epic Games over App Store rules, Apple has decided to cite a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on President Trump’s birthright citizenship directive. Here are the details.
In a new filing submitted to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this week (via Reuters), Apple argues that a June Supreme Court decision in Trump v. CASA directly supports its effort to overturn two injunctions issued in its long-running antitrust case against Epic Games.
Apple’s argument is the following: since the Supreme Court found in the Trump v. CASA case that federal judges do not have “freestanding authority” to issue so-called universal injunctions, the district court overstepped its authority when it extended App Store-related remedies to every developer in the U.S., not just Epic.
From Apple’s filing:
Apple Inc. respectfully submits that Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. __, (2025), confirms that the district court’s civil contempt order cannot stand, and that the district court improperly extended its injunctions—new and old—to nonparties. First, CASA reinforces that the district court erred by wielding civil contempt as punishment. CASA explains that “[u]nder ‘traditional principles of equity practice,’” civil contempt is used to “‘coerce . . . compliance with an injunction.’” Slip Op. 15 n.11 (quoting Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U.S. 554, 560 (2019)). Rather than hew to that principle, the district court imposed a new injunction that zeroes out Apple’s commission on developers, even though the district court previously concluded—and this Court affirmed—that Apple could charge a commission, just as Epic does on its store. Opening Br. 11, 34-36. Second, CASA establishes that the district court lacked authority to extend its injunctions—and especially its new zero-commission rule—to all developers. CASA held, for the first time, that federal courts lack freestanding authority to issue “universal” injunctions and may fashion only “complete relief between the parties.” Slip Op. 16 (citation omitted; emphasis added); see id. at 15 (argument that “complete-relief principle justifies the award of relief to nonparties” is “mistaken”). The district court’s new injunction, like its original one, applies to “[e]very developer in the United States.” Opening Br. 41 n.4. Neither Epic nor the court demonstrated that remedy was “necessary to provide complete relief,” much less justified such “maximum” scope. Slip. Op. 17-18. CASA requires those showings. Moreover, Epic opted out of a developer class action (since settled) and elected to pursue this case alone, not on behalf of other developers, making the district court’s universal injunctions all the more inapt. See id. at 14 (rejecting universal injunctions as a “workaround” for satisfying “Rule 23’s requirements”).
Under CASA, neither of the district court’s injunctions can stand. This Court should vacate the new injunction. And if the original injunction survives the appeal of Apple’s Rule 60(b) motion here, Opening Br. 62-71, the Court should direct the district court to reconsider it in light of CASA.
In a nutshell, Apple argues that because Epic chose to pursue the case on its own, the court’s decision should apply only to Epic. And based on the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Trump case, Apple says the court lacked the authority to extend its injunction that broadly.
In the new filing, Apple also doubled down on its earlier argument that the court had expanded remedies between the first and second injunctions, when it issued a new “zero-commission” injunction, barring it from collecting any fee on external transactions. That, Apple argues, went beyond the scope of the original order.
Apple is now asking the appeals court to vacate the second injunction entirely, and to order the district court to reconsider the first one in light of the CASA decision.
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