President Trump has tamed Congress and largely defanged the federal bureaucracy as he pursues his vigorous second-term agenda, but federal district judges have rushed to the battlements to take him on.
As Mr. Trump crosses the six-month mark in office, he has faced at least 500 lawsuits challenging his executive actions, or a rate of four lawsuits for every business day since Jan. 20.
District judges have made substantive rulings in more than half of those cases, and the results have been grim for Mr. Trump. According to The Washington Times’ Trump litigation tracker, judges have ruled against the president’s position 75% of the time.
About 50 of those cases were part of the administration’s ill-fated effort to boot some foreign students over irregularities in their immigration and criminal records. Mr. Trump lost roughly 90% of those cases.
Still, district judges ruled against the government, either by issuing injunctions or otherwise delaying Mr. Trump’s agenda, a stunning 70% of the time.
Leading the opposition are judges appointed by Presidents Obama and Biden, who have ruled against Mr. Trump’s positions more than 125 times. That works out to more than 80% of the cases on which they have ruled so far.
However, the resistance crosses party lines. Judges appointed by President Reagan ruled against Mr. Trump in all 15 cases to reach substantive outcomes, and George W. Bush appointees ruled against Mr. Trump nearly 85% of the time.
Only judges appointed by Mr. Trump have a generally positive reception, ruling in favor of the president 70% of the time.
“Overall, with the important exception of Trump lower court judges, lower court judges have tended to be a check against some of the overreaching by the Trump administration,” said Elliot Mincberg at People for the American Way. “That has been across all the different lines. The exceptions have been Trump judges.”
Courts have heard an incredible range of cases, including unprecedented immigration battles, transgender prisoners’ rights, and groundbreaking questions about the limits of presidential power in firing federal workers or restructuring government agencies.
That is, of course, a reflection on the unfathomable range and pace of Mr. Trump’s actions over the past six months.
His aggressive agenda is backed up by novel legal arguments that confound judges.
“He’s just very, very unconventional, and establishmentarians — and judges are overwhelmingly represented by establishmentarians in both parties — they are offended,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican former Virginia attorney general.
“For them, it isn’t that they’re pro-illegal immigration, it’s that they don’t like the unconventional approach that Donald Trump takes,” he said.
Another part of the explanation for Mr. Trump’s losing record in the courts is where the cases are being brought.
The federal district court in the District of Columbia is at the top of the list, with nearly 40% of the cases in The Times’ database. Massachusetts is second, with about 10% of all cases, and Maryland is third, with about 7% of all cases.
These three courts account for more than half of all the cases across more than 90 judicial districts nationwide.
The District of Columbia’s position is obvious, given that it’s in the seat of the federal government. Massachusetts and Maryland seem odd before looking at the makeup of the judges. Of the 10 active regular judges in Maryland, only one was appointed by a Republican. Of the 12 regular judges in Massachusetts, 11 were appointed by Democrats.
It’s such fertile ground that other states rush to the federal court in Massachusetts to bring lawsuits.
New York is leading three cases in the court there. Massachusetts has only two. California and New Jersey also are leading two cases apiece in Massachusetts.
Overall, Democratic-led states have brought at least 40 of the cases, according to the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
In a fundraising email, the association asked donors to contribute to continuing the onslaught. It said the state attorneys general have been “the most powerful group holding the administration accountable.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, immigration rights groups and labor unions are also high on that list. Indeed, the top single lead plaintiff in The Times’ litigation database is the American Federation of Government Employees.
The Times’ database is culled from court records. It is not exhaustive but likely representative of the Trump litigation, slightly weighted toward the districts where high-profile cases were more likely to be brought.
The data for this report was current through Wednesday.
It found that district judges appointed by Mr. Biden ruled against the Trump position 80% of the time, Obama judges 82%, George W. Bush judges 84%, and Clinton judges 79%. One Carter judge has ruled in one case against Mr. Trump.
All 15 cases involving a Reagan-appointed judge went against Mr. Trump. Most of those were handled by Judge Royce Lamberth, who ended up with a series of cases challenging the government’s wind-down of the U.S. Agency for Global Media and new Trump policies on the treatment of transgender prisoners.
Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee in Massachusetts, has ruled against the Trump position in several cases involving changes at the National Institutes of Health.
On the other hand, judges appointed by Mr. Trump support the president’s position in 70% of the 40 cases.
Legal experts generally said the difference in rulings from judges appointed by Mr. Trump versus Mr. Obama or Mr. Biden isn’t as much of a reflection of political favor as it is a profound dissonance in judicial philosophies and Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of presidential power.
“He’s deliberately pushing the legal envelope,” said Zachary Price, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
Mr. Cuccinelli, now a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, said a “personal element” in some judges’ treatment of the administration — a Trump factor, so to speak — shouldn’t be ignored.
“He inspires a unique part of judges to cast aside their judicial obligations,” he said. “They excuse it in a variety of ways in their own minds, but excuse it they do. The very same executive orders, coming from George Bush senior, would never get the extreme response of the courts that is occurring with President Trump.”
That shows up even in rulings where judges side with the administration on the legal arguments but still feel compelled to signal their angst that they couldn’t rebuff the president.
Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee, unloaded on the Justice Department even as he agreed that he was powerless to stop Attorney General Pam Bondi’s termination of grants.
“Defendants’ rescinding of these awards is shameful. It is likely to harm communities and individuals vulnerable to crime and violence. No federal agency, especially the Department of Justice, should conduct itself in such manner,” he said in a written opinion.
“But displeasure and sympathy are not enough in a court of law. The court’s powers are limited. It cannot act without jurisdiction or in the absence of a valid cause of action. That is the nub here,” Judge Mehta wrote.
Though Mr. Trump has struggled among district judges, he has done better as the cases rise to higher courts.
Mr. Mincberg said the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court have been particularly permissive regarding Mr. Trump’s remake of the federal bureaucracy.
“Overall, in terms of executive authority, he’s done very well,” Mr. Mincberg said. “Towards the beginning, where, frankly, there were surprises in terms of how aggressively he moved, the courts were hesitant and at least slowed things down a bit. But unfortunately, from my perspective, he’s caught up, or they’ve caught up, and he’s getting what he wanted, led by the Supreme Court.”
Mr. Trump’s least successful line of cases so far has been his attempts to punish law firms he believes are too friendly with Democrats and dozens of cases in which foreign students successfully challenged their removal from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System.
Mr. Price said the judges are doing “reasonably well under challenging circumstances.”
“That’s not to say every decision is correct, or I agree with everything, [but] as the litigation process plays out, they’ve been doing a decent job of trying to sort the good from the bad and uphold the rule of law,” he said.
Mr. Cuccinelli saw it differently.
“I don’t think the administration has been fairly treated at the district court level,” he said.