Since Donald Trump took workplace 100 days in the past, the president and his administration have confronted a median of greater than two lawsuits per day, difficult almost each ingredient of his agenda.
The breakneck tempo of the president’s insurance policies has been matched in almost equal pressure by a flood of litigation — a minimum of 220 lawsuits in courts throughout the nation — difficult greater than two dozen government orders, the firing of twenty high-ranking authorities officers, and dozens of different government actions.
Whereas the Trump administration has had some victories within the courts, federal judges have blocked key elements of Trump’s agenda starting from elements of his immigration coverage and army tips to his effort to roll again variety and fairness initiatives.
“The administration has mainly gone on a shock-and-awe bombing marketing campaign,” mentioned Justin Levitt, a regulation professor at Loyola Marymount College. “There’s a large quantity of what they’re at the moment doing that they most likely may have achieved lawfully, however they’ve crashed via any of the prevailing authorized guardrails in an try to do the whole lot, in every single place, unexpectedly.”
The fits have come at a gentle clip — 20 in January, roughly 70 in each February and March, and about 50 to this point in April — because the Trump administration has rolled out its new insurance policies.
Roughly 60 of these instances have targeted on the president’s immigration coverage, with courts to this point blocking the president’s makes an attempt to take away birthright citizenship, withhold funding from sanctuary cities, take away noncitizens to international locations aside from their fatherland with little-to-no due course of, and strip 1000’s of their short-term protected standing. A few of these insurance policies have earned the president rebukes from judges questioning the rationale for his unilateral immigration coverage.
“It has turn into ever extra obvious that to our president, the rule of regulation is however an obstacle to his coverage objectives,” U.S. District Decide John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, mentioned of Trump’s government order on birthright citizenship. “There are moments on this planet’s historical past when individuals look again and ask, ‘The place have been the legal professionals, the place have been the judges?’ In these moments, the rule of regulation turns into particularly susceptible. I refuse to let that beacon go darkish right this moment.”
Folks collect to protest Mission 2025 in entrance of the Supreme Court docket, March 16, 2025.
Bonnie Money/AFP through Getty Photographs
Courts have additionally blocked the Trump administration from successfully banning transgender individuals from army service, limiting gender-affirming care, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, trying to freeze trillions in funding to states and nonprofits, and shifting to dam billions in international help.
However in lots of instances federal courts haven’t stopped the president outright — tentatively permitting the mass firing of 1000’s of presidency staff, greenlighting a historic federal buyout, and, for now, permitting the dismantling of the USA Company for Worldwide Improvement. The Division of Training and the Shopper Finance Safety Bureau are additionally present process huge staffing reductions as judges actively think about the legality of the Trump administration’s cuts.
The president’s supporters have decried the litigation as a “judicial coup,” whereas these opposing his insurance policies have praised judges for serving as a test towards the administration. However the seemingly fixed battle between the Trump administration and the judiciary may threat everlasting harm to the separation of powers on the coronary heart of the Structure, some judges have warned.
“Now the branches come too near grinding irrevocably towards each other in a battle that guarantees to decrease each. This can be a dropping proposition throughout,” wrote federal Decide Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee who rebuked the Trump administration inaction after being ordered to return a person from a Salvadoran jail.
Performing in ‘dangerous religion’
Within the first hundred days since Trump took workplace, legal professionals difficult his actions in court docket alleged that his administration violated court docket orders a minimum of six instances, in accordance with court docket information reviewed by ABC Information.
Whereas no decide has held members of the Trump administration in contempt of court docket, two federal judges have sharply rebuked the federal government for appearing in “dangerous religion” throughout ongoing lawsuits. U.S. District Decide James Boasberg — who heard arguments over the deportation of two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador underneath the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th century wartime authority used to take away noncitizens with little-to-no due course of — finally decided the Trump administration probably violated his order by failing to return the migrants to the USA.
An appeals court docket briefly blocked Decide Boasberg from starting the method of contempt proceedings, however his most up-to-date ruling invoked the phrases of former Chief Justice John Marshall to explain the stakes of the Trump administration’s actions.
“The Structure doesn’t tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — particularly by officers of a coordinate department who’ve sworn an oath to uphold it. To allow such officers to freely ‘annul the judgments of the courts of the USA’ wouldn’t simply ‘destroy the rights acquired underneath these judgments’; it will make ‘a solemn mockery’ of ‘the Structure itself,'” Boasberg wrote.
Attorneys representing the Trump administration have argued that Decide Boasberg’s order fell outdoors his jurisdiction as a result of the flights in query had left U.S. airspace, and have insisted {that a} federal decide mustn’t dictate U.S. international coverage.
The Trump administration has additionally confronted authorized challenges for its refusal to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native dwelling in Maryland, to the USA after he was mistakenly deported to his house nation regardless of an order barring his deportation there as a consequence of concern of persecution.
The administration has to this point declined to convey Abrego Garcia again to the USA regardless of the Supreme Court docket ordering his launch, although administration officers have complied with a decrease court docket’s order to offer common updates about him.
The administration has rebutted orders to convey Abrego Garcia again to the USA regardless of the Supreme Court docket ordering them to facilitate his launch.
Decide Wilkinson, within the meantime, has condemned the Trump administration’s try to ship alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT jail.
“The federal government is asserting a proper to stash away residents of this nation in international prisons with out the appearance of due course of that’s the basis of our constitutional order,” he wrote. “This needs to be surprising not solely to judges, however to the intuitive sense of liberty that People far faraway from courthouses nonetheless maintain pricey.”
In an ABC Information/Washington Publish/Ipsos ballot, 65% of respondents mentioned Trump’s administration is making an attempt to keep away from complying with federal court docket orders, and 62% mentioned they do not suppose his administration respects the rule of regulation.
‘It was a sham’
With the Trump administration simply 100 days in, most lawsuits haven’t made their approach via the appeals course of to the Supreme Court docket — however the Trump administration has requested the Supreme Court docket to dam some court docket orders on an emergency foundation.
These appeals have led to some losses for the Trump administration — amongst them a 5-4 Supreme Court docket resolution ordering the Trump administration to unfreeze almost $2 billion in international help funds for work that help teams have already accomplished on the federal government’s behalf.
On the flip aspect, the Supreme Court docket — citing largely technical causes — handed the Trump administration a sequence of short-term wins, together with vacating an order blocking deportations underneath the Alien Enemies Act. In that case, the justices opted to throw out the case as a result of the case was filed within the improper court docket, declining to weigh in on the deserves of the problem.
The Supreme Court docket additionally handed the Trump administration a brief win by blocking a decrease court docket’s ruling that barred the Trump administration from firing 1000’s of probationary authorities staff with out trigger. The district decide who blocked the firings slammed the Trump administration for utilizing a “sham” and “gimmick” to fireplace 1000’s of federal employees.
“I simply need to say it’s a unhappy day when our authorities would hearth some good worker and say it was primarily based on efficiency after they know good and effectively that is a lie,” U.S. District Decide William Alsup mentioned. “That ought to not have been finished in our nation. It was a sham as a way to attempt to keep away from statutory necessities.”
However the Supreme Court docket vacated his order as a result of the plaintiffs who introduced the lawsuit — a bunch of unions and curiosity teams — lacked the authorized standing to convey the lawsuit.
Over the subsequent month, the Supreme Court docket is ready to carry oral arguments for the primary time in a lawsuit difficult the Trump administration’s try to eradicate birthright citizenship as assured by the 14th Modification, which confers American citizenship to anybody born on U.S. soil no matter their dad and mom’ immigration or citizenship standing.
The Trump administration additionally requested the Supreme Court docket to take up a authorized problem to the Pentagon’s transgender service ban after three judges blocked it from taking impact.
‘A surprising abuse of energy’
Regardless of President Trump’s vow to revive free speech and finish censorship, his administration has confronted a number of lawsuits difficult his actions on the grounds they violate the First Modification.
4 regulation companies have sued the Trump administration after they have been focused for his or her previous work, with every agency arguing the Trump administration unlawfully retaliated towards them and violated their First Modification rights. Judges have briefly blocked the Trump administration from concentrating on Susman Godfrey LLP, Jenner & Block LLP, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, and Perkins Coie LLP.
“The framers of our Structure would see this as a surprising abuse of energy,” U.S. District Decide Loren AliKhan mentioned relating to the order concentrating on Susman Godfrey LLP.
Not less than 9 regulation companies have already acquiesced to the Trump administration’s calls for, agreeing to donate a complete of $940 million in authorized providers to advertise causes supported by the president.
After the Trump administration tried to freeze greater than $2 billion {dollars} in federal funding to Harvard College, the nation’s oldest faculty cited the First Modification of their lawsuit difficult the funding freeze, arguing the “menace of extra funding cuts will chill Harvard’s train of its First Modification rights.” Greater than two in three People assist Harvard of their ongoing dispute with the Trump administration, in accordance with an ABC Information/Washington Publish/Ipsos ballot.
“Harvard shall be unable to make selections relating to its school hiring, tutorial applications, scholar admissions, and different core tutorial issues with out concern that these selections will run afoul of presidency censors’ views on acceptable ranges of ideological or viewpoint variety on campus,” Harvard’s legal professionals argued.
President Donald Trump holds an government order he simply signed in the course of the inaugural parade, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025.
Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Photographs
Not less than 9 present or current college students have challenged the Trump administration’s try to revoke their visas or inexperienced playing cards, with a number of alleging they have been focused for his or her outspoken assist of Palestinians. The Trump administration’s coverage of revoking scholar visas marks the federal government’s most aggressive strategy in additional than twenty years and the primary time college students have been focused over their speech, in accordance with immigration legal professional Renata Castro.
“The federal government is speech — the train of free speech — and utilizing that to dig into perceived immigration violations in order that they will revoke scholar visas,” Castro mentioned.
The Trump administration additionally invoked a hardly ever used regulation — 8 U.S.C. § 237 (a)(4)(C)(i) — to justify eradicating noncitizens comparable to Mahmoud Khalil, a authorized everlasting resident who was a outstanding determine throughout scholar protests at Columbia, as a result of he and others allegedly hurt U.S. international coverage.
In response to an evaluation of previous immigration instances carried out by political scientists Graeme Blair and David Hausman, the USA had solely used that provision as a foundation to take away a noncitizen two instances within the final 25 years.
“The Trump administration is concentrating on me as a part of a broader technique to suppress dissent,” Khalil wrote in a public letter final month from an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. “At stake usually are not simply our voices, however the basic civil liberties of all.”
Earlier this month, an immigration decide dominated that Khalil might be deported on the grounds that he threatens U.S. international coverage. Whereas he remained in ICE detention and ready an enchantment, Khalil’s spouse gave beginning to their youngster final week.
