President Donald Trump says courts are “highly politicized” and judges treat him “so unfairly.” It’s true that no previous president has been the subject of so many lawsuits in the first 18 months of a term, but no previous president has provoked such a legal barrage either.
Trump is litigious. As a businessman, lawsuits were standard practice. He racked up more than 4,000 suits before he was first elected president in 2016, according to a USA Today tracker.
There are multiple lawsuit trackers now following suits involving Trump 2.0, including some filed by faith groups over immigration and other issues.
The Just Security tracker follows 823 cases, hundreds of which Trump already has lost. (Find other Trump lawsuit trackers here: Associated Press, New York Times and Lawfare Institute.)
Trump’s latest setback came on Monday when a judge ruled against his changes to the H-1B visa program for skilled foreign workers. Fees used to run $5,000 or so. Trump upped fees to $100,000, frustrating U.S. companies and foreign workers.
Trump’s latest setback came on Monday when a judge ruled against his changes to the H-1B visa program for skilled foreign workers.
Last Friday, a judge halted the Trump administration’s efforts to impose ideological conditions on SNAP benefits, which help nearly 40 million Americans afford groceries.
Also last week, a judge ruled against his effort to halt asylum for foreigners, saying it was illegal and improperly fueled by “anti-immigration sentiments.”
Recently, one judge said Trump lacked the authority to rename the John F. Kennedy Center after himself and ordered him to change it back. Another judge dismissed a suit intended to punish musician Chuck Redd, who canceled his scheduled Christmas performance at the renamed center.
Often, Trump’s legal defeats are not the end of a case but merely the beginning of the appeal process. In many past cases, judges ruled Trump lacked the authority to do what he did and the administration immediately appealed. Meanwhile, the chaos wrought by what Trump did strained government systems and harmed people.
Trump also has filed a number of personal lawsuits against media companies in his second term, including a $10 billion suit against England’s BBC over editing of Trump’s speech to supporters on January 6, 2021.
He sued the Wall Street Journal last year over a report about Trump’s lewd birthday card to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The case was dismissed in April. In May, he simply refiled the suit with minimal revision.
In some cases, judges allow Trump’s changes to remain in effect while legal battles continue. In other cases, Trump’s changes are blocked. Even then, the administration can be slow to do as ordered.
In February, the Supreme Court invalidated most of Trump’s global tariffs, saying only Congress can levy them. The court ordered Trump to refund the $160 billion or more in tariffs paid by nearly a million U.S. companies. To date, the government has refunded only about 12% of the illegal tariffs and continues resisting paying the rest.
One of the newest lawsuits seeks to halt Trump’s planned Sunday UFC fight on the White House South Lawn.
One of the newest lawsuits seeks to halt Trump’s planned Sunday UFC fight on the White House South Lawn, which is part of Trump’s Freedom 250 celebration.
Faith groups are behind a number of legal challenges to the administration, many of them involving immigration.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is on the receiving end of lawsuits involving ICE tactics. Suits have been filed by ELCA Lutherans, Friends (Quakers) and the Mennonite Church, among others.
Catholic groups have filed suits against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Department of State over sudden changes limiting immigrants and refugees. Filing the suits are the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.
Interfaith Alliance has sued over church-state issues, including the creation of an overtly evangelical Religious Liberty Commission and against numerous agencies over “anti-Christian Bias” policies.
An additional lawsuit seeks to undo the firing of tens of thousands of government employees.
Lawsuits against the Trump administration have come from states attorneys general, challenging federal overreach into state-level voting administration; from civil rights groups such the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Common Cause; from environmental advocates such as the Natural Resources Defense Council; from labor unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees; from journalists and lawmakers challenging the administration’s compliance with the Presidential Records Act and attacks on free speech.
One of the chief sources of legal actions against the Trump administration is Democracy Forward, which has filed more than 150 lawsuits against the administration, alongside hundreds of other legal actions such as public records investigations and public records requests.
Democracy Forward has taken more than 400 legal actions to stop executive branch excesses.
The Center for Biological Diversity and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been the most prolific nongovernmental groups filing lawsuits against the Trump administration.
The Center for Biological Diversity has filed more than 260 legal challenges against the administration to block rollbacks on climate change, wildlife protection and public lands.
The ACLU likewise has filed hundreds of legal actions and challenges against the administration’s policies on civil rights and liberties.