Trump presidency in 100 days keeps courts busy with deportation, transgender and tariff lawsuits

Donald Trump’s presidency is 100 days old on Wednesday, and its bold and often controversial moves have spawned more than 200 lawsuits, according to online publications tracking policy and legal issues arising from the new administration.

Trump’s first presidency, between 2017 and 2021, was also marked by litigation compared to previous administrations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) once sent out a press release marking its 400th legal filing against that Trump administration; the ACLU said by comparison it had challenged the George W. Bush administration in its first term a total of 13 times.

The Trump administration is also making use again of the shadow docket, or emergency docket, which is when Supreme Court justices are asked to address an issue on an expedited basis without oral arguments. According to Supreme Court historian Steve Vladeck, who wrote a book on the topic, the Trump administration made much more frequent use of this avenue in its first term than the Bush, Joe Biden or Barack Obama presidencies.

What’s different in this Trump presidency is how the White House is reacting to even just temporary setbacks from judges’ orders. According to an ABC News report, the Trump administration has been accused in court of violating orders six times, usually in cases concerning deportations. 

As well, Attorney General Pam Bondi has reacted to losses with alarmist language, branding judges who have made rulings against the White House as being “rogue” or “radical.” Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller has been accused by a former Bush administration lawyer of “grossly misrepresenting” a signed Supreme Court order in the much-publicized Kilmar Abrego Garcia case as a victory for the government, when the ruling actually called on it to facilitate the deported man’s return to the U.S.

Comments from Trump, White House officials and congressional Republicans raising the spectre of impeaching judges as a result of adverse rulings in the last three months led to a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.

Here is a look at some of the major themes and cases developing so far.

Birthright citizenship

The Trump administration case that will be first up for oral arguments before the Supreme Court is set for May 15 and concerns an executive order to restrict automatic birthright citizenship. 

Trump directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. 

Challengers argued that Trump’s order violates a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.

Should the government prevail, the U.S. would not necessarily be an outlier among advanced nations. Britain and Australia in the 1980s modified their laws to prevent so-called birth tourism, requiring a parent to be a citizen or permanent resident in order for a newborn to qualify for citizenship.

Overall, it is estimated by various think-tanks that millions of people currently living in the U.S. are considered unauthorized immigrants, and many from that group had children of their own. The issue has taken on salience with reports that U.S.-born children have been part of at least one deportation of a family to Honduras — and raises the question of whether those children would have a right to citizenship should they return to the U.S. in the future.

Deportations

Just under one-third of the total caseload involves issues related to immigration, with questions being raised whether many U.S. residents have been given due process before being deported.

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 19 temporarily barred Trump’s administration from deporting Venezuelan men in immigration custody after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices. 

Three federal judges subsequently criticized the administration’s approach to immigration — and temporarily halted new deportations in their judicial districts made using the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law historically used only in wartime that Trump invoked as justification to remove certain people without hearings. One of the judges overseeing the case of Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man living in Maryland who the administration has acknowledged was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, rebuked the government for trying to circumvent an order blocking additional deportations and misleading the court about its actions. 

Federal judges have issued at least 19 orders halting or curtailing for now the administration’s ability to conduct mass deportations, but the administration has also won at least nine rulings: in cases in which judges have declined to block the government from carrying out immigration raids in places of worship, mothballing a Biden administration entry app for migrants and sending certain detainees to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Immigration authorities have also detained a number of foreign-born young adults who hold student visas, with the apparent intention to deport them. Lawyers for several students allege that the administration is violating the First Amendment, as they say the students are being singled out for past pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel statements or protest activity. In several cases, there have also been legal objections over due process, as the students have been sent to holding facilities several states away from where they were residing.

Government spending

The administration has had better luck in its efforts to downsize and reshape the government through its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been spearheaded by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk. Multiple judges had ordered thousands of fired federal workers to be reinstated after finding their terminations were likely illegal, but appeals courts later paused those rulings. 

While some judges have barred DOGE from accessing federal databases, others have allowed it to scour agencies for possible savings.

Transgender rights

The administration asked the Supreme Court on April 24 to allow implementation of Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, one of a series of Trump directives to curb transgender rights. 

Multiple judges have blocked his military ban as well as his policies to house inmates in federal prisons corresponding to their birth sex and to restrict gender-transition care for people under age of 19.

As well, there were multiple legal challenges after the Trump administration cancelled a host of grants for studies related to transgender health. The lawsuits argue that the National Institutes of Health exceeded statutory authority and acted arbitrarily by cancelling grants that failed to provide adequate explanations for how those studies fell below its standards for scientific research.

Tariffs and trade

The administration faces at least seven lawsuits challenging Trump’s sweeping tariffs against foreign trading partners. 

They are headlined by legal actions from several states led by Democratic governors. In one lawsuit, 12 states have banded together, preceded by a similar challenge from California alone.

The suits accuse Trump of overstepping his authority under the constitution by imposing the duties without congressional authorization. It is also being argued that a president can only invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — which Trump has for tariffs — when an emergency presents an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad. No such scenario currently exists, the lawsuits argue.

Other cases

Four judges have blocked for now Trump’s punitive executive orders placing restrictions on four major law firms, deeming the directives as likely acts of retaliation for speech protected by the constitution’s First Amendment. 

A judge in the past week has said that the administration acted illegally via an executive order that aimed to shut down government-operated outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which were founded decades ago to broadcast unvarnished news coverage to people in authoritarian countries. He has ordered the administration to resume funding the outlets.

The Trump administration is battling New York City over the legality of its recently enacted driving tolls for Manhattan. Recently, lawyers for the federal government inadvertently filed to the court an internal memo that seemed to argue against its own position.