Trump Lawsuits: Case Count, Government Losses, and Plaintiffs

More than 750 lawsuits have been filed challenging the Trump administration since the president’s second term began on January 20, 2025, and the Trump administration’s lawsuits win rate in those cases has been strikingly low: of the 172 cases that had reached a final decision by mid-June 2026, challengers prevailed 67 times and the government won just seven, according to tracking by The New York Times.¹ A separate tracker maintained by Just Security counts more than 800 active or completed legal challenges and shows a similar imbalance.²

How the Case Count Breaks Down

The two leading trackers use slightly different scopes but tell the same basic story.

The New York Times count of 172 final decisions splits this way: 67 wins for plaintiffs challenging the administration, 7 wins for the administration, 96 dismissals, and 2 mixed outcomes.¹ A dismissal is not the same as a government win on the merits; many dismissals turn on procedural grounds such as standing, mootness, or jurisdiction, and some cases are refiled or superseded by parallel litigation.

Just Security, which defines its categories more broadly to include cases where policies were blocked permanently, temporarily, or pending appeal, counts 262 plaintiff wins against 126 government wins, with 360 cases still awaiting rulings.² The gap between the two trackers’ totals reflects what each counts as a “win” — a temporary restraining order halting a policy counts in Just Security’s tally but may not count as a final decision in the Times’ breakdown.

Pending Cases and Injunctions

Final decisions are only a small share of the docket. The Times tracker shows 445 cases still active with at least one pending appeal.¹ In roughly 170 of those active cases, courts have at least partially halted the administration’s policies through temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions. That means the practical score — how often the administration has been stopped from acting, even temporarily — is considerably worse for the government than the final-decision tally alone suggests.

Those preliminary blocks matter because many of the challenged policies are time-sensitive: deportation flights, grant cancellations, mass firings, tariff collections. A preliminary injunction that holds through a lengthy appeal can effectively decide a policy’s fate regardless of the ultimate merits ruling.

Supreme Court Interventions

The Supreme Court has taken action in more than 30 of these cases, and its record is mixed. The Court has sided with the administration in some rulings by staying lower-court injunctions, and it has blocked the administration in others.

Among the government’s wins at the high court: a 5-4 decision vacating a district judge’s restraining order on Alien Enemies Act deportations, though the Court imposed conditions on how such removals could proceed and later extended a ban on them when due-process safeguards were lacking;³⁴ a stay of an order that would have reinstated roughly 16,000 fired probationary federal workers, decided on standing grounds;⁵ and permission for the transgender military service ban to take effect during litigation.

Among the losses: the February 20, 2026 ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, in which a 6-3 majority written by Chief Justice Roberts held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not grant the president authority to impose tariffs, calling tariff authority a “branch of the taxing power” that belongs to Congress.⁶ The Court also directed the government to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national the administration conceded it had deported in error.⁷ Oral arguments in the birthright citizenship case Trump v. Barbara on April 1, 2026, left observers reporting that the justices appeared skeptical of the administration’s position, with a decision expected by mid-2026.⁸

Where the Government Has Been Losing

The losses are not concentrated in one area. They span the administration’s major policy initiatives.

Immigration

Beyond the Alien Enemies Act rulings, the executive order ending birthright citizenship was blocked by multiple federal courts before it could take effect. In the Abrego Garcia case, a Maryland federal judge ordered the government to facilitate his return from the Center for Terrorism Confinement in El Salvador; he was returned to U.S. custody on June 6, 2025.⁹

Tariffs

After losing on IEEPA at the Supreme Court, the administration pivoted to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, imposing temporary tariffs of 10 percent under balance-of-payments authority. Those tariffs are also being challenged by states and businesses in the Court of International Trade.¹⁰ A 22-state coalition won a court order blocking new federal tariffs separately.¹¹

DOGE and the Federal Workforce

Lawsuits over the Department of Government Efficiency produced an emergency injunction from U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer blocking DOGE from Treasury payment systems.¹² On the mass firings, Judge William Alsup in San Francisco concluded in September 2025 that approximately 25,000 probationary firings were unlawful, though he declined to order reinstatement after too much time had passed; he instead ordered agencies to send letters correcting workers’ records to show they “were not terminated on the basis of personal performance.”¹³

DEI Executive Orders

A nationwide preliminary injunction from a federal judge in Maryland blocked executive orders terminating diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs, though the Fourth Circuit stayed that injunction while the appeal proceeds.¹⁴ In a related case, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher struck down a Department of Education “Dear Colleague” letter, and the administration dropped its appeal in January 2026.¹⁵

Transgender Policy

On June 1, 2026, a divided D.C. Circuit panel ruled that the military transgender service ban is illegal as applied to currently serving troops, upholding a lower-court finding that the order likely violates their constitutional rights.¹⁶ A separate court in June 2026 blocked the Bureau of Prisons from transferring transgender women into men’s facilities. A 19-state coalition won summary judgment protecting access to gender-affirming care against federal funding conditions.¹¹

Executive Orders Against Law Firms

District courts granted summary judgment against the administration in all four challenges brought by law firms targeted by sanctioning executive orders — Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey — declaring the orders unconstitutional and issuing permanent injunctions. The D.C. Circuit consolidated the four cases for argument on May 14, 2026.²

Education Funding

In September 2025, a federal judge ruled that the administration had acted unlawfully by terminating $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard University, calling the action a “targeted, ideologically-motivated assault” and barring further funding freezes.¹⁷ A separate judge blocked the attempted revocation of Harvard’s certification to host foreign students.

Who Is Bringing These Cases

State attorneys general account for a substantial share of the litigation. Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown alone had led or joined 61 lawsuits by June 2026, with more than $15 billion in federal funding at stake across those cases.¹¹ Multistate coalitions have challenged mail-in voting restrictions (23 states), environmental rollbacks including the cancellation of the $7 billion “Solar for All” program (19 to 25 states), restrictions on Public Service Loan Forgiveness, SNAP eligibility changes, and funding conditions tied to transgender policy.

Private plaintiffs — small businesses in the tariff cases, civil-rights organizations like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal in the DEI challenges, the AAUP in the university funding cases, and the targeted law firms themselves — have brought the rest.

Compliance Disputes Behind the Numbers

The win-loss tally captures rulings, not whether rulings were followed. In at least two high-profile instances, courts found the administration had defied their orders. Judge James Boasberg found probable cause that the government had acted in contempt by continuing Alien Enemies Act deportation flights after his restraining order, describing the conduct as “willful disregard” of his order.¹⁸ U.S. District Judge John McConnell found that the administration had violated the “plain language” of his “clear and unambiguous” order to unfreeze federal grants and loans, though he stopped short of a formal contempt citation.¹⁹

These episodes complicate any effort to translate the win rate into real-world outcomes. A plaintiff can win in court and still face delay, partial compliance, or further legal fights to enforce what they won.

What the Counts Do Not Include

These trackers cover lawsuits challenging the administration — its executive orders, agency restructuring, funding decisions, and enforcement actions. They do not include the personal legal cases involving Trump himself, such as the Manhattan hush-money conviction, the E. Jean Carroll civil judgments, the New York civil fraud appeal, or the dismissed federal and Georgia criminal prosecutions. Those run on separate dockets with their own outcomes and are not part of the administration-litigation win rate discussed here.

Reading the Record

Two features of the current numbers are worth keeping in mind as the dockets grow. First, most cases remain unresolved: with 445 cases still active in the Times’ tracker and 360 awaiting rulings in Just Security’s, the final-decision figures reflect a small, early slice.¹² Second, the government’s path on appeal has already changed several outcomes. The Fourth Circuit stayed the DEI injunction; the Supreme Court stayed the probationary workers’ reinstatement order; the D.C. Circuit narrowed the transgender military ruling to active-duty plaintiffs. Early district-court losses do not always survive, and preliminary wins at any level can shift when the appellate record is complete.

Even allowing for that, the pattern across both trackers is consistent: through mid-2026, courts have blocked, enjoined, or ruled against the administration far more often than they have sided with it.

1
The New York Times. Trump Administration Lawsuits Tracker
2
Just Security. Tracker of Litigation and Legal Challenges to the Trump Administration
3
Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. J.G.G.
4
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Again Bars Trump From Removing Venezuelan Nationals
5
SCOTUSblog. Justices Pause Order to Reinstate Fired Federal Employees
6
Supreme Court of the United States. Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump
7
Supreme Court of the United States. Noem v. Abrego Garcia
8
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Appears Likely to Side Against Trump on Birthright Citizenship
9
ABC News. Trump Administration Argues It Complied With Court Order to Return Abrego Garcia
10
Peterson Institute for International Economics. Trumps Latest Tariffs in Court
11
Washington Attorney General. Washington Attorney Generals Federal Litigation Tracker
12
Courthouse News Service. Federal Judge Blocks DOGEs Access to Treasury Payment System
13
GovExec. Trumps Mass Probationary Firings Were Illegal, Judge Concludes
14
AAUP. AAUP Case Challenging Trump Administrations Executive Orders on DEI
15
EdSource. Trump Administration Abandons Anti-DEI Court Battle
16
GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders. Talbott v. USA
17
U.S. News & World Report. Trumps Higher Education Crackdown
18
ABC News. Trump Administration Acted in Contempt of Court Over Deportation Flights
19
Brennan Center for Justice. What Courts Can Do if the Trump Administration Defies Court Orders